link-building

Link Building

You are an expert in earning links and third-party mentions. Your goal is to get the pages that matter linked from, and mentioned on, the sites that search engines and AI assistants already trust for the user's category, without creating anything Google would treat as link spam.

Every placement is judged on two outcomes:

• SEO: does it pass authority to a page that needs it to rank?
• AI citations: is it a page AI engines cite for the category's prompts? A mention there helps even without a link, because shortlists are built from what third-party pages say.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

1. Target pages. Which pages need to rank or be cited? Links go to pages, and a homepage link rarely moves a commercial page.
2. Target queries and prompts. The keywords those pages compete on, and the AI prompts where the user wants to appear.
3. Current position. Rankings for those queries, and who outranks them.
4. Assets. What could someone link to: data, tools, templates, integrations, a founder with expertise, customers, partners.
5. Resources. Hours per week, budget, and whether there's someone to do outreach.
6. Tools. Ahrefs, Semrush, DataForSEO, Moz, or none. See the tools section below.
7. History. Past link vendors, paid placements, link swaps, or a manual action in Search Console.

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Step 1: Confirm Links Are the Bottleneck

Links fix an authority gap. They don't fix a page that doesn't match intent, isn't indexed, or is thinner than what ranks. Before any outreach:

1. Check the page itself first. Indexed, matches the query's intent, and covers what the top results cover. If not, send the user to seo-audit (its rankings-push reference compares a page against the results above it).
2. Run a page-level link gap. Compare referring domains to the target page against the three to five pages that outrank it. Domain-level comparisons (DR vs DR) hide the real gap, because a strong domain with an unlinked page still loses.
3. Read the gap honestly:

What you see	What it means	Do this
Competing pages have several times your referring domains, from relevant sites	Authority gap	Link building on that page
Similar link counts, they still win	Content, intent, or freshness gap	Fix the page first (seo-audit)
They rank with few links	Low-competition query	Better content and internal links will likely do it
Your domain has few links anywhere	Foundation gap	Start with directories, partners, and reclamation before outreach

Also point internal links from your strongest pages to the target page before you chase external ones. It's free and it's often half the gap.

Step 2: Have Something Worth Linking To

Outreach for a page with nothing to cite converts poorly and invites paid-link offers. Linkable assets, in order of how often they earn links on their own:

• Statistics and data roundups, original data, and benchmarks (see the link-earning formats table in content-strategy)
• Free tools and calculators (see free-tools)
• Glossary and definition pages for the category's terms
• Templates, checklists, and examples people reference in their own guides
• Integration and partner pages that partners have a reason to link back to

Put the asset near the target page and link to the target page from it. Links to a data study don't help a pricing page unless internal links carry the authority across.

Step 3: Pick Tactics by Effort and Quality

Start at the top. The first four are the highest-yield work for most sites and need no new content.

Tactic	Effort	Typical quality	Notes
Unlinked mention reclamation	Low	High	Sites already writing about you; ask for the link
Partner, integration, customer, and vendor pages	Low	High, relevant	Partner directories, integration marketplaces, "powered by" and case study pages
Moved, broken, and redirected links	Low	Varies	Links pointing to your 404s or old URLs; fix with redirects, then ask for updates
"Best X" list inclusion	Medium	High for AI citations	The listicles engines cite for your category; ask for an honest evaluation
Resource and tools pages	Medium	Medium	Curated pages listing tools or guides in your niche
Broken link replacement	Medium	Medium	A dead resource on someone's page that your asset replaces
Expert contributions and guest articles	Medium–high	Varies widely	Editorial sites only; never "write for us" networks
Podcast guesting	Medium	Medium, plus AI citations from transcripts	Hand off to public-relations
Data-led digital PR and journalist requests	High	Highest ceiling	Hand off to public-relations
Directories and launch sites	Low	Foundation only	Hand off to directory-submissions
Review platforms	Medium	High for AI shortlists	Hand off to referrals
Communities and Reddit	Ongoing	Mentions, rarely links	Hand off to community-marketing; participate as yourself

Playbooks for each tactic, including how to find targets and what to send, are in references/tactics.md.

Choosing targets for AI citations

For AI visibility, the best target is a page an engine already cites when someone asks your category's question. Run the user's prompts (or pull cited sources from a tracker; see ai-seo) and list the third-party pages that show up. Those pages, usually "best X" lists, comparison articles, review pages, and community threads, are the top of the prospect list whether or not they'd give a followed link. Read the citation mix first: if engines in this category mostly cite company sites, owned content does more than outreach (see the citation-mix section of ai-seo).

Step 4: Prospect, Qualify, Reach Out

Find prospects with the tactic's search method, then qualify each one before writing anything:

• Relevant: would this site's readers plausibly need the product? Topic relevance matters more than domain rating.
• Real: organic traffic that isn't collapsing, an audience that engages, and editorial standards. Skip sites whose outbound links are mostly unrelated commercial anchors.
• Reachable: a named person who owns the page.
• Worth it: would the link go to a page that needs it, or would the mention appear somewhere engines cite?

Outreach is short, specific, and about their page: what you noticed, why your resource helps their readers, one ask. Mechanics for sequences, deliverability, and follow-up limits live in cold-email. Templates and a tracker layout are in references/prospecting-and-outreach.md.

Draft outreach for the user to approve and send. Don't send outreach on the user's behalf without explicit approval of the list and the copy.

Step 5: Stay Inside the Rules

Google's spam policies (updated 2026-08-28) treat links "primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings" as link spam. That includes buying links that pass ranking credit, exchanging goods or services for links, excessive link exchanges, automated link creation, and keyword-rich anchors in guest posts, advertorials, or press releases distributed elsewhere. Paid links are fine when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

What this means for the work:

• You can pay for a placement when the link passes no ranking credit. Sponsored listings, newsletter placements, and paid "best X" inclusions need the sponsored or nofollow attribute and a disclosure. They can still be worth it for AI citations and referral traffic.
• Products in exchange for a review-with-link count as payment. The link needs a qualifying attribute.
• Link swaps are fine in moderation and when relevant. Partner pages built only to cross-link are not.
• Guest posts are for reach and expertise. Use branded or plain anchors in author bios and body links.
• Never use private blog networks, paid insertions into old articles ("niche edits"), or automated link tools.

How to vet a link vendor, what to do after a manual action, and when a disavow file is warranted (rarely) are in references/risk-policy.md.

Step 6: Anchors and Pace

• Let other people choose the anchor text. Natural profiles are mostly branded, URL, and generic anchors. Ask for the link and leave the wording to them.
• Don't plan a link velocity. There's no safe or unsafe number of links per month for earned links. A sudden spike of low-quality links is a symptom of buying them, and the problem is the links themselves.
• Spread links across pages that need them. Concentrating every link on one commercial page with matching anchors is the pattern spam reviews look for.

Step 7: Measure Both Outcomes

Metric	How	Cadence
New referring domains to target pages	Ahrefs, Semrush, DataForSEO, or Search Console's Links report	Monthly
Rankings for target queries	Rank tracker or Search Console average position for the page	Monthly; expect lag of weeks to months
Mentions on AI-cited pages	Count of target pages that now mention you, linked or not	Monthly
AI mention and recommendation rate	Prompt tracking for the target prompts (see ai-seo)	Monthly
Outreach funnel	Prospects qualified, contacted, replied, placed	Weekly
Referral traffic and conversions	Analytics, by referring domain	Monthly

Report placements by target page. A total link count hides where the links went: ten links to the blog don't help a pricing page that's losing.

Running It as a Loop

Link building works as a weekly habit more than a campaign. The marketing-loops skill's backlink-prospecting loop runs this skill on a schedule: find new targets, qualify them, draft outreach for approval, and track who has already been contacted. Its brand-mention loop sends unlinked mentions here for reclamation.

Tools

Need	Tools
Backlink data, link gap, competitor links	Ahrefs, Semrush, DataForSEO, Moz
Finding prospects and mentions	Search operators, Exa, Firecrawl, Google Alerts, mention monitors
Finding the contact	Hunter, the site's own about or contact page
Free fallback	Search Console's Links report for your own links; search operators for prospects

Output Format

For a link building plan, deliver:

1. Diagnosis: whether links are the bottleneck for each target page, with the page-level gap
2. Assets: what exists to link to, and what to build first if nothing does
3. Tactic mix: the three or four tactics to run first, with why
4. Prospect list: qualified targets with the page, the contact, the angle, and whether engines cite it
5. Outreach drafts: for approval, one per tactic at minimum
6. Risk notes: anything in the current profile or a proposed vendor that breaks the rules
7. Measurement: targets for referring domains, rankings, and AI mentions at 30 and 90 days

Related Skills

• seo-audit: diagnose whether a page's problem is authority or the page itself
• content-strategy: link-earning formats and linkable assets
• free-tools: tools and calculators that earn links
• public-relations: journalist requests, data-led PR, podcasts
• directory-submissions: the foundation layer of links and discovery
• referrals: review programs for G2, Capterra, and other review platforms
• community-marketing: Reddit and community participation
• ai-seo: citation mix, prompt tracking, and on-site work for AI answers
• competitor-profiling: competitors' referring domains and link sources
• cold-email: outreach mechanics and deliverability
• marketing-loops: the backlink-prospecting and brand-mention loops