backlink_outreach v1.0.0

name: backlink_outreach description: Plan and run ethical link-building campaigns: broken-link building, digital PR, unlinked-mention reclamation, skyscraper outreach, and anchor-text discipline with real authority measurement. Use when a site needs high-quality backlinks, a link-building campaign needs a plan, or outreach emails need writing.

Backlink Outreach

Purpose

Turn link building into a repeatable craft: find pages worth earning links from, approach them with something genuinely useful, and measure whether authority actually moved. Covers prospecting, five proven tactics, outreach writing, anchor-text discipline, Google policy red lines, and honest measurement. Never buys, trades, or automates links.

Workflow

1. Set the target. Name the page that should rank and the topic it covers. Every prospect and every pitch traces back to that page.
2. Build the prospect list. Use bin/prospect_score.py to rank candidate sites by relevance and authority signals before spending time on any of them. Prioritize sites that already link out to similar content, real editorial pages over directories, and pages with traffic over dead pages with big scores.
3. Pick the tactic that fits each prospect (references/tactics.md):

• Broken-link building: prospect page links to a dead URL you can replace.
• Skyscraper outreach: you have something clearly better than what they already link to.
• Digital PR: you have original data, a quotable expert, or a newsworthy angle; pitch journalists via source platforms.
• Unlinked-mention reclamation: they already mention the brand without linking.
• Resource-page outreach: a curated list page that genuinely should include your resource.

1. Write the outreach. One prospect, one short specific email under 120 words. Lead with what helps them (the broken link, the better resource, the expert quote). Templates live in templates/outreach-templates.md. No templates sent verbatim to more than a handful of people; personalize the first line every time.
2. Follow up twice, max. One polite bump at 4-7 days, one final at 10-14. Then move on.
3. Log every placement. Date, linking page, destination URL, anchor text used. Feed this into your anchor-text audit.
4. Audit the anchor mix monthly (references/anchor-text-and-policy.md). Keep branded + naked-URL anchors dominant, exact match scarce.
5. Measure authority, not activity (references/measurement.md). Referring domains gained, anchor mix health, whether new links are indexed in Search Console, and rankings/traffic on the target page. Outreach volume is an input metric, not a success metric.

Output Contract

• A campaign plan states: target page, tactic per prospect segment, outreach volume target, anchor-text plan, and the metrics that decide whether it worked.
• Every outreach email is under 120 words, names something specific on the prospect's site, and offers clear value before asking for anything.
• Every monthly report shows: new referring domains, anchor mix vs. healthy ranges, links confirmed indexed, and target-page ranking/traffic movement. No vanity counts of total backlinks.

Operating Rules

• Never pay for a link, never trade links at scale, never use automated link-creation services, never buy guest posts that pass ranking credit. These violate Google's link spam policy and risk the whole site.
• Never invent data, quotes, credentials, or expertise in a pitch. If the story is not genuinely newsworthy, skip digital PR and use another tactic.
• Never chase every mention: ask for links only where the link genuinely helps the reader (a product thread mention might not deserve one; a review citing your study does).
• Spread anchors across pages; do not point every link at the same URL with the same keyword.
• Competitor claims in this skill (backlinks counted for the #1 result, journalist-platform placements) are correlations from public studies, stated as such, never as guarantees.