What is link prospecting?

Link prospecting is the research stage of link building: finding websites that could plausibly link to you and checking whether each one is worth contacting. It covers where prospects come from, such as competitor backlinks, roundups and resource pages, and the vetting that removes link farms and irrelevant sites before any outreach starts.

What DR should a link prospect have?

There’s no universal number, and no DR is a pass on its own. I agree on a metric floor that fits the niche at the start of a campaign, then judge each site on real organic traffic, relevance and how it links out. A relevant blog with a modest DR and a loyal audience is usually a better prospect than a high-DR site with no readers.

How can I tell if a website sells links to anyone?

Check its outbound links across recent posts. If a food blog links to a crypto presale, a CBD store and a loan broker in the same month, it sells to whoever pays. A public price list, a “sponsored” tag on most articles and the domain appearing on link marketplaces point the same way.

Can link prospecting be automated?

Parts of it can. Link prospecting tools pull competitor backlinks, filter lists by metrics and find contact details far faster than a person. Reading the site, judging relevance and spotting link-selling patterns still takes someone who looks at the pages, and that is where most bad prospects get caught.

Link Prospecting: How I Vet a Site Before Pitching It

Link prospecting is the part of link building nobody sees, and it decides almost everything. A great pitch to the wrong site still earns a bad link, while a plain pitch to the right site can earn one that sends readers for years. So before I write to anyone, the site has to pass checks that take far longer than the email itself.

Below is that process as I run it for outreach campaigns, from finding link building prospects to recording the ones that pass. If you do your own backlink prospecting, copy the checklist, and if you pay someone else to do it, use it to check their work.

Where link prospecting starts: six places to look

If you’re wondering how to find link building opportunities that aren’t already on every vendor’s list, start with evidence: pages that already link to sites like yours, and pages that already rank for your topics.

Competitor backlink gaps

Sites that link to several of your competitors but not to you have already shown they link in your space. Backlink tools like Ahrefs or Semrush have link intersect or gap reports that find them quickly. Look at the linked pages too: links often cluster around a few guides or tools, which tells you what earns links in your niche.

Content that ranks for your topics

Search the queries your customers use and read what ranks. Sites on page one are relevant by definition, and the ranking shows that Google trusts them, which no third-party metric can prove.

Roundups and “best of” lists

Listicles and comparisons, whether a “best hardware wallets” guide or a “gifts for runners” post for an ecommerce store, rank for commercial queries and help readers decide. AI answers often cite them too, which is the idea behind GEO outreach. The pitch is simple: here is a product that belongs on this list, and here is why.

Resource pages

Curated lists of tools, guides and suppliers exist to link out, and search operators like intitle:resources or inurl:links surface them. Check the last update first: a list nobody has touched in years won’t be touched for you.

Unlinked brand mentions

If a site already mentions your brand without linking, the editor has done the hard part, and a polite note asking for a link is one of the easiest wins in outreach. Brand monitoring tools or a plain search for the brand name will find them.

Niche communities

Forums, newsletters, Discord servers and subreddits lead to small enthusiast blogs that barely register in backlink tools, which is exactly why nobody else is pitching them. In hobby niches like gaming, they can be the best source there is.

Link prospecting tools: collect, don’t decide

Link prospecting tools fall into a few groups: backlink indexes, SEO suites that estimate traffic and rankings, crawlers and search operators, and email finders. They are excellent at building and pre-filtering a long list, but none of them can tell you whether a site is real. That is what the rest of this checklist is for.

Why DR alone misleads

Domain Rating, like Domain Authority and similar scores, estimates the strength of a site’s backlink profile, and that’s all it measures. It says nothing about whether the site has readers, whether it’s relevant to you or whether it sells links to anyone who pays.

It’s also easy to game. Links from other weak sites push the score up, and an expired domain keeps its old backlinks after it’s rebuilt into something else. That’s how a DR 60 site can have almost no organic traffic while a DR 20 blog has a devoted audience and real rankings. I use DR as a floor to filter a list, never as the reason a site passes.

My link prospecting checklist, step by step

I run the checks roughly in this order, cheapest first, so the slow ones (reading articles, digging into history) only go to sites that survive the quick ones.

1. Organic traffic, trend and geography

Open the site’s estimated organic traffic graph for at least the last two years. I want a line that’s stable or growing. A cliff that lines up with a Google core or spam update and never recovers is usually a no, and so is a sudden spike from nowhere, which often means an expired domain was just rebuilt.

Then check where the traffic comes from: readers in your target market are worth more than a bigger audience elsewhere. Treat the figures as estimates, since tools undercount small niche sites, and read the shape of the line rather than the number. Low traffic can be fine in a tight niche, but zero isn’t.

2. What the site actually ranks for

Open the top organic keywords and top pages. A gardening blog should rank for gardening. If its best pages are about celebrity net worth, lottery results or casino bonuses, the site is chasing traffic wherever it can, or renting its authority to someone else’s content.

3. Topical relevance

Would a regular reader of this site plausibly care about the page I want to link to? I look through recent posts for a natural spot where the link would help an article, not just sit in it. A general news site with an active section on your topic can pass, while a perfect-looking domain with no natural context for the link can’t.

4. Outbound link patterns

How a site links out tells you who it serves. I check the outbound links in a sample of recent posts and the site’s linked domains in a backlink tool. Editorial sites link to sources and references that fit the article. Sites that sell to everyone link to casinos, payday lenders, essay services and supplement shops from posts about parenting or travel, often several per article.

5. Link-selling footprints

Accepting guest posts or charging a fee doesn’t disqualify a site, since plenty of real publishers do both. The question is whether it exists for readers or for link buyers. These footprints point to buyers:

A “write for us” page with a price list and no topic it won’t accept.
A “sponsored” or “guest post” tag on most recent articles.
Bylines like “Admin” or “Guest author” on most posts, with no author pages.
A publishing pace that jumped from a few posts a month to several a day.
The domain listed with a price on public link marketplaces.

6. Content quality and authorship

I read several recent articles in full. Real sites have named authors, an About page that describes a real person or company, and articles someone clearly edited. If the writing is thin, spun or machine-made filler, or I wouldn’t read the site myself, I don’t want a client’s brand on it.

7. Indexation

A quick site: search (site:example.com) shows whether Google has the site indexed at all, though the count it returns is rough. Searching for the titles of a few posts from the last few months, especially guest posts, tells you more. If those aren’t being indexed, a link in the next one won’t be either.

8. Spam signals and domain history

Run the domain through the Wayback Machine. An English “finance news” site that sold shoes in another language three years ago, for example, is almost certainly an expired domain rebuilt to sell links. Also look for injected pharma links, security warnings and a backlink profile full of obvious spam.

9. How the site treats sponsored content

Some publishers label paid placements and mark the links sponsored or nofollow, and some label them but leave the links dofollow. Others do neither and publish anything for anyone. I record the attribute for every prospect, because it changes what a placement is worth.

Link prospecting checklist: what good looks like and the red flag for each check
Check	What good looks like	Red flag
Organic traffic	Stable or growing, mostly from your target market	A cliff after an update, or visits from the wrong countries
Ranking keywords	Queries a niche reader would search	Celebrity net worth, lottery results, off-topic bonuses
Relevance	A natural place for the link in recent posts	An angle you’d have to invent
Outbound links	Few, editorial, on-topic	Unrelated commercial niches in unrelated posts
Footprints	Editorial posts clearly outnumber paid ones	Price lists, “sponsored” on most posts
Content and authors	Named authors, edited articles, a real About page	“Admin” bylines, thin or spun text
Indexation	Posts from recent months appear in Google	Months-old posts still missing from the index
Domain history	Same topic for years	Expired domain rebuilt around a new topic
Sponsored content	A clear policy, attribute stated up front	Won’t say how paid links are marked

Red flags that get a site cut immediately

Most checks are judgment calls, weighed against each other. These aren’t. Any one of them removes the site before a pitch is written:

Strong authority metrics with no real organic traffic behind them.
Links to unrelated high-risk niches scattered across unrelated posts.
Posts from past months that Google still hasn’t indexed.
An expired domain rebuilt under a new topic, or signs of a hack.
A reply offering the same deal on a batch of “sister sites” at once, which means a network.
A site you’d be embarrassed for the client’s customers to land on.

How vetting changes in iGaming and crypto

The checklist stays the same in these niches, but the weight of each check shifts. In casino and iGaming outreach, many publishers refuse the topic and the rest are pitched constantly, so link farms cluster exactly where you need to look. Casino links on a gambling site are normal. The question is whether the gambling content is editorial, with reviews and guides by named authors, or a general blog with a “casino” category full of paid posts.

Geography matters even more, because gambling markets are regulated country by country and publishers often restrict which markets they cover or ask for specific wording. A site with readers in the wrong country is rarely worth its fee.

In crypto, the classic trap is the “news” site that runs press releases and sponsored posts and little else. Check how much of the front page is original reporting, and whether the same articles appear word for word on other crypto sites. Read traffic against the market too: crypto audiences rise and fall with prices, so a drop in a quiet market isn’t a penalty if similar sites fell as well.

How a vetted prospect goes into the sheet

A prospect that passes becomes a row with enough detail for someone else to decide without redoing the research:

Domain and target article: the site, plus the exact URL when it’s a niche edit in an existing post.
Placement type: guest post, link insertion or mention.
Metrics and the date checked: DR, estimated organic traffic, trend and main traffic country, dated because metrics drift.
Relevance note: one line on why the site fits and where the link would sit.
Link attribute: dofollow, nofollow or sponsored.
Fee and terms: the publisher’s price and what it covers, including content and how long the post stays up.
Flags: anything that nearly failed vetting, so the person approving can weigh it.
Status: pitched, replied, negotiating, awaiting approval or live, then the live URL and anchor once published.

When I run a campaign, this is the shared sheet the client sees, updated weekly, and nothing is published until they approve the row.

When to walk away

Vetting doesn’t end when a site passes, and some prospects fall apart in negotiation. I walk away when:

The price is out of proportion to what the site delivers, even if the budget could cover it.
The editor won’t confirm the link attribute, placement or fee before publishing.
The only offer is a link in an old article that isn’t indexed or gets no traffic.
The site changes for the worse between vetting and publishing.
The content would have to become something the client wouldn’t put their name to.

Sometimes the pool itself runs dry, because a narrow niche only has so many sites that meet the agreed bar. The honest move is to say so and widen the search carefully (adjacent topics, other markets, other placement types) rather than quietly lower the bar.

If you’re reviewing a prospect list someone else built, the same checks apply, and my guide to outsourcing link building covers the questions to ask them.