How I work
The link building process, step by step
Manual outreach looks like a black box from the outside. It isn’t. Here is every stage of a campaign, what I do at each one and what you see in your shared sheet while it happens.
Campaign stages at a glance
- Brief
Research
Goals, target pages, anchors and your competitors’ backlinks.
- Vetted
Vetting
Traffic, relevance and link-farm checks on every prospect.
- Pitched
Pitching
Personal emails to editors, with considerate follow-ups.
- Negotiating
Negotiation
Placement, anchor, content and fee agreed in writing.
- Approved
Your approval
Approve or skip each opportunity from the sheet.
- Live
Live & tracked
Link checked on the live page and logged with its URL.
1. Kickoff and research
Every campaign starts with the same questions: which pages need authority, which competitors outrank you and what does a good link look like in your niche? I review your backlink profile and your competitors’ profiles to see which sites link to them, which content earns those links and where the gaps are.
From that research we agree on the essentials: target pages, anchor text direction, topics or sites to avoid, a metric floor for prospects (for example a minimum level of organic traffic) and your publisher fee budget. That agreement becomes the brief for everything that follows.
2. Prospecting
Prospects come from several places: sites that link to your competitors but not to you, articles that rank for topics close to yours, roundups and resource pages in your niche, and publications your customers actually read. Each month brings new research, so you’re not offered the same tired sites other vendors keep reusing.
3. Vetting
Most prospects don’t survive this step, and that’s the point. I check organic traffic and its trend, what the site ranks for, whether its audience matches your market, how it links out, whether it sells links to anyone who asks and whether the content is written for readers or for search engines. The full checklist is in my guide to link prospecting.
4. Outreach and follow-ups
Each pitch is written for one site: it references the publication’s content, proposes something useful for its readers and explains why your brand fits. Follow-ups are polite and limited. Editors are busy people, and the goal is a working relationship, not a flooded inbox.
5. Negotiation and content
When an editor is interested, I agree on the details: placement type (a new guest article, a link insertion in an existing page or a mention), the target URL, anchor, link attribute, content requirements and fee. Content is written or coordinated to the publisher’s guidelines and your brand notes.
6. Your approval
The negotiated opportunity lands in your sheet with the site, its metrics, the placement details and the fee. You approve it or skip it. Nothing is published without a yes from you, and you pay the publisher directly, at their price.
7. Publishing, checks and reporting
Once content goes live, I check the page: correct target URL, agreed anchor and attribute, and a page that search engines can crawl. The live URL is logged in the sheet. The sheet is updated every week, so you can see at a glance what’s been pitched, what’s in negotiation, what’s waiting for you and what’s live.
Process FAQ
Pricing questions are answered on the packages page. Comparing providers? Read how to outsource link building without getting burned.
What do you need from me to start?
Your site, the pages you want to build authority for, any anchors or topics to avoid, your top competitors and a rough publisher fee budget. A 30-minute call or a short written brief both work.
How much of my time does a campaign take?
Very little after kickoff. Expect a few minutes a week to review new opportunities in the sheet and approve or skip them. Everything else is handled for you.
Can I see the sites before they’re contacted?
You see every site before anything is published. If you’d also like to review the prospect list before outreach starts, say so at kickoff and I’ll share it for a quick check.
What happens if a link is removed later?
Every live link is logged with its URL, so removals are easy to spot. If a publisher removes a link while we’re working together, I follow up with them to find out why and ask for it to be restored.
Tell me about your site. I’ll show you where the links are.
Send your domain, niche and goals. I’ll look at your backlink profile and your competitors’, then reply personally with an outreach plan and a monthly quote.