Find link building prospects worth emailing
Link building starts with a good list, and building it by hand means hours of Google searches and spreadsheet pasting. This prompt has your todo.is agent search for resource pages, recent roundups, unlinked mentions and broken links in your niche, check each site is real and relevant, find a contact route and suggest a pitch angle for every prospect.
The prompt
- Build a list of [NUMBER] link building prospects for [YOUR SITE], which covers [YOUR NICHE]. The page I want links to is [TARGET PAGE]. Use Google searches like my niche + "resources", my niche + "useful links", "best" + niche + "blogs", recent roundups, and pages that mention topics from my target page. For each prospect: URL of the page, site name, type (resource page, roundup, blog post with broken link, unlinked mention, local directory), why it fits, whether the site looks active (recent posts) and genuine (not a link farm), a contact page or public email, and a one-line pitch angle. Skip sites that sell links or ask for payment. Deliver as an Excel file sorted by fit, and tell me the 10 best ones with a short reason.
What to change
- [NUMBER]: How many prospects, e.g. "50". Quality drops if you ask for hundreds at once.
- [YOUR SITE]: e.g. "saltwatertrails.com".
- [YOUR NICHE]: Your topic, e.g. "kayak fishing in the Pacific Northwest".
- [TARGET PAGE]: The page you want people to link to, e.g. a guide, tool or study: "saltwatertrails.com/tide-safety-guide".
Example result
- Link building prospects: saltwatertrails.com
- Target page: /tide-safety-guide. 120 pages checked, 50 kept.
- By type
- • Resource pages: 17 (paddling clubs, harbor safety pages, outdoor stores)
- • Recent roundups: 9 ("best kayak fishing blogs", "Pacific Northwest paddling resources")
- • Broken links: 8 (pages linking to tide safety articles that no longer exist)
- • Unlinked mentions: 4 (articles naming Saltwater Trails without a link)
- • Local directories and clubs: 12
- Top 5 prospects
- • Puget Paddlers Club / Safety resources: links to 20 safety guides, last updated this year. Angle: your guide covers tide tables for kayakers, which their list lacks.
- • Coastal Outfitters blog / "Before your first ocean paddle": links to a tide article that returns 404. Angle: offer your guide as the replacement.
- • Northwest Angler Magazine / gear roundup: mentions Saltwater Trails by name, no link. Angle: thank them and ask for a link to the guide.
- • Kayak Fishing Weekly / reader resources: active, accepts suggestions through a form.
- • Harbor Town visitor center / water activities page: lists local safety guides. Angle: local expert resource.
- Skipped
- • 23 sites asking for payment, 31 inactive since 2022, 16 off-topic
- Next step
- Ask your agent to write a short personal email for each of the top 14, saved as Gmail drafts.
How to do it with todo.is
- Choose one page you want links to. A useful guide, tool or study works far better than a sales page.
- Fill in the brackets and paste the prompt into todo.is or send it to your agent on Slack.
- Your agent searches, filters out weak sites and builds the Excel list with contacts and angles.
- Follow up with "write outreach emails for the top 10 as Gmail drafts". Nothing is sent without your OK.
Tips for a better result
- Broken link and unlinked mention prospects have the highest reply rates, because you are helping them fix something.
- Check that resource pages still get updated. A page untouched for five years rarely adds links.
- Relevance beats size. A small club page in your niche is often a better link than a big unrelated blog.
- Never buy links. It breaks Google's spam policies and can get a site penalized.
link building prospects: FAQ
- What makes a good link building prospect? A real, active site on your topic, with a page where a link to you would genuinely help its readers, and a way to contact the owner.
- How many prospects do I need? Reply rates for outreach are usually low, so 30 to 50 well-chosen prospects per campaign is a sensible start. Personal emails to fewer sites beat bulk emails to many.
- Can todo.is send the outreach emails? It can draft them as Gmail drafts with Google connected, and only sends after you approve each one.
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