Link prospecting is the research step of link building: finding websites that could plausibly link to you, checking each one is worth a link, and recording why they would link and how to reach them. Outreach only works as well as the list behind it.
By Kristijan GjorgjioskiIndependent SEO consultantPublished 18 October 2026 · 7 min read
Most link building fails before the first email goes out.
The problem isn't the pitch. It's the list.
Link prospecting is the research step that decides who you contact, and a weak list makes good outreach look bad.
Below: the five prospect types, where to find them, how to qualify each one and what a usable list looks like.
Link prospecting is the process of finding websites that could plausibly link to yours, checking each is worth a link, and recording the reason they would link and how to reach them.
It sits between strategy and outreach.
Strategy decides what you're offering. Prospecting finds who would want it. Outreach makes the ask.
Here's a quick example:
A roofing firm wants more local links. Prospecting turns up a town business directory listing four of its rivals, a builders' merchant that features "recommended contractors", and a local news site that covered a storm-damage story last winter.
Three prospects. Three different reasons to link. Three different approaches.
It isn't exporting a list of high-authority domains in your niche.
It isn't buying a "guaranteed placements" spreadsheet.
And it isn't outreach. If you're writing emails before you know why each site would link, you've skipped prospecting.
Prospecting matters because the quality of your list caps the results of everything after it.
Here's why I spend more time on the list than on the emails.
A link from a site your buyers read does two jobs. It can send visitors, and it tells search engines where you belong.
A link from a random high-authority site does neither well.
Every email to someone with no reason to link is wasted effort.
Send enough of them and your domain starts looking like a spammer's to inbox filters.
Google's spam policies list "low-quality directory or bookmark site links" and excessive link exchanges as examples of link spam.
Good prospecting filters those out before anyone is tempted.
I sort every prospect by the reason it would link.
That reason decides the approach, so it's the most useful column in the sheet.
| Prospect type | Why they'd link | How you get the link |
|---|---|---|
| Directories and listings | They exist to list businesses like yours | Sign up, sometimes pay |
| Relationships | You already work together | Ask: suppliers, partners, associations, clients |
| Existing mentions | They already name you | Ask them to add the link |
| Dead or weak resources | Their page links to something broken or outdated | Offer a genuine replacement |
| Editorial | You have a story, data or expertise | Pitch: expert comment, data, guest articles |
These are the easiest wins, because no persuasion is needed.
The work is finding the ones your market actually uses and skipping the rest. I cover that in detail in how to find directory listing opportunities.
Trade associations, suppliers, manufacturers you're certified with, event organisers, local charities you sponsor.
These people already know you. Prospecting here means listing every relationship and checking whether their site has a page where you belong.
Pages that name your business but don't link to it.
The prospect has already done the hard part. My guide to turning unlinked brand mentions into links walks through the ask.
Resource pages and guides in your niche that link to pages which no longer exist.
These only work if you have a true replacement. Broken link building covers the method.
Publications, trade titles, podcasts and blogs your buyers read.
These need something worth covering: data, a strong opinion or a real story. That's digital PR territory.
The best prospect sources are your competitors' backlinks, targeted Google searches and your own business relationships.
Here's how I use each.
Start here.
Export the referring domains of the five to ten businesses that outrank you, merge them, and count how many competitors each domain links to.
A site linking to one rival might be a coincidence.
A site linking to most of them is part of your market, and you should probably be there too.
This is also how you find "best X in [town]" listicles that feature your competitors and not you. My guide to competitor backlink analysis goes deeper on reading those profiles.
Search operators find prospects no backlink tool will show you, especially for small towns and niche trades.
A few patterns I use:
[your trade] [town] directory for local listing sites[your trade] intitle:resources for resource pages[your town] "local businesses" for community and council pages[your trade] association "find a member" for trade bodies"[competitor name]" -site:competitor.com for pages mentioning rivalsKeyword tools hold very little data for a trade plus a small town. Searching Google directly fills that gap.
Open your accounts system and your supplier list.
Every organisation you pay, get paid by or belong to is a potential prospect. These convert at a far higher rate than cold prospects in my experience, because the person already knows who you are.
You qualify a prospect by checking five things: relevance, real traffic, a believable reason to link, a working route in and how it links out. Authority scores come last.
Here's the checklist I run on every row:
| Check | Pass | Fail |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | Covers your topic, trade or area | Unrelated niche, or covers everything |
| Real traffic | Has organic visitors and ranks for real searches | No traffic, or traffic only from spammy terms |
| Reason to link | You can say in one sentence why they'd link | "They have high authority" is the only reason |
| Route in | A sign-up form, named editor or contact | No contact details, or only a "write for us, fees apply" page |
| Link practice | Links out with care, to sources readers would want | Pages stuffed with unrelated outbound links |
The traffic check removes dead directories and abandoned blogs fast.
The link practice check catches sites selling links. If every article links to a casino, a CBD shop and a payday lender, move on.
My guide on checking backlink quality covers these signals one by one.
Use it as context, not as the sort order.
Domain rating measures how strong a site's own backlink profile is. It says nothing about whether your buyers read it.
Sort by authority and the top of your list fills with big general sites. Sort by competitor overlap or relevance and the sites that matter to your market rise instead.
If a prospect asks for payment, that's advertising.
Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links says paid placements should carry rel="sponsored". Judge them on the audience, not the link. I make that case in full for paid business directories.
A good prospect list is one someone else could pick up and work through without asking you a single question.
These are the columns I use:
Keep it short.
Thirty checked prospects with a reason on every row will produce more links than three thousand scraped domains.
Tip: sort the finished list by effort. Listings and relationships first, because they're quick. Editorial last, because it needs an asset and a pitch.
Start with the quickest source: export the referring domains of your top five competitors and count the overlap.
Then add your own relationships and a handful of Google searches for your trade and town. Qualify every row against the five checks, and you'll have a list worth working before you write a single email.
The directory and listing layer is the part I've automated. My link prospecting automation pulls competitors from real search results, collects and filters their referring domains, finds each sign-up route and labels it free or paid, then I check every row by hand.
When you're ready for the outreach-led prospect types, that's link building work. If you'd like the listing side done first, see how my competitor directory prospecting works.
Link prospecting is the research stage: finding and vetting sites that might link to you. Link building is the whole process, which also includes creating something worth linking to, outreach, follow-up and tracking. Prospecting decides who you contact. Get it wrong and even a well-written outreach email goes to people with no reason to reply.
Fewer than most people think. In my experience, a checked list of a few dozen prospects is often enough for a quarter of work for a small or local business. Volume matters less than fit. A list where every row has a clear reason to link will out-perform a list of thousands scraped from a tool and sorted by authority score.
A backlink tool that exports competitors' referring domains, Google search for operator queries, and a spreadsheet. Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz are common examples of backlink tools. A free option is to start from your own relationships and Google searches only, which works for local businesses but misses much of what competitors have.
Only on publications your buyers actually read, where you have real expertise to share. Google's spam policies list advertorials that include links passing ranking credit as link spam, and keyword-stuffed guest posts placed purely for links sit close to that line. Prospect for publications, not for link slots.
Parts of it can. Pulling competitors' referring domains, counting overlap, filtering out sites with no traffic and classifying which sites accept listings are all repeatable. Judging whether a site is a genuine fit, and what to say to the person who runs it, still needs a human. I automate the first part and check every result by hand.
About the author
Kristijan Gjorgjioski
Independent SEO consultant · 6+ years in SEO · 60+ client websites worked on
I'm an independent SEO consultant with 6+ years in SEO. I run audits, migrations and content programmes for businesses in Europe, the UK and the USA, and I build the automation behind my own research.
Book a free 30-minute call. I look at your site first and tell you plainly what I would fix, and in what order.