How to Prospect Backlinks Efficiently

In the world of SEO, one of the most important assets a website can have is a strong backlink profile. A backlink profile is a compilation of all of the domains that link back to one's website. At Mad Mango Marketing, we develop our client's backlink profiles over time through a process of white-hat, manual outreach as well as other link building strategies.

To be more specific, these steps and strategies consist of reaching out to other websites in your niche via email or phone in hopes of reaching the owner. From there, we work to develop new content, provide expert opinions for those sites, or recommend other types of media creation. We do this with the end goal of providing this backlink prospect valuable information for their visitors in return for a link from their website.

While making a concerted effort to build as many backlinks as possible may seem to be the best strategy to grow your backlink profile, be wary of some potential pitfalls. The fact of the matter is that, while some backlinks will help progress your SEO efforts, some may not help your website at all, or even hurt your website. This is where our hiring a professional SEO team or doing some serious manual filtering of potential prospects comes into play. Agencies like ours take into account the following aspects when analyzing a potential backlink:
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1. Relevance
2. Ranking & Volume
3. Relationship
4. Requirements

​These four R's are a quick tool you can use when inspecting potential prospects and deciding where to focus your own backlink-building efforts.

Relevance

When reviewing a potential backlink for one of our clients, the first thing we check is the website's relevance to our client. Google takes into account the quality and relevancy of the site's content you have a backlink with. When it comes to relevance, we focus our efforts on a few key areas:
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• the website's URL
• the overall content relevance on site
• the top pages their website is currently ranking.

Each and every one of the above-mentioned metrics has a direct influence on the way Google interprets a website's content. For this reason, we must take these all into consideration when selecting prospects to reach out to.

URL

There will always be websites that are extremely eager to collaborate and while they many offer very appealing terms, the best backlinks are never this easily found. An example can be something as easily spotted as a coupon code site or a domain name ending in a .xyz. However, there are also sites that may seem appealing after a quick look and may even have your keyword target in its URL but upon further investigation, you can find other red flags.
The URL can also give you an indication of where the website is focused, such as having ".nz" for New Zeland or ".eu" meaning it is a European domain. These are considered "Country Code Top-Level Domains", or ccTLD's. It is especially important to take these into consideration if a client is based out of the United States and does not provide services or their products outside of the US, in which case we would want to stay away from domains that are not US-based.

Overall Content & Keywords

Another Metric that is very important when filtering potential prospects is the overall content and the particular keywords that the domain is ranking for within the content. Similar to what I described previously, a lot of websites will look to rank for keywords that are easy and that might quickly increase their DR. Even if the website is hyper-focused and very relevant to your client's space and keyword focus, it may rank for a keyword that could potentially work against your SEO efforts.

For example, a URL like, "ShoeShopping.com", may rank for a few terms that relate to your client, but might also rank for some pretty negative keywords. We make sure to check that there are no peculiar outliers that might hurt our backlinks effect. I have encountered several examples of these keywords in the past, such as:

• "Free Movie Streaming Websites"
• "18+ Chat Rooms"
• "New Weight Loss Techniques"

​Google might see these keywords as negatives and that would in turn take away from our backlink's effectiveness.

Top Pages

Similar to a prospects ranking keywords, the website's "Top Pages" play a huge role in how Google might read a website's value and our backlink as an extension of that prospect's domain. It is crucial to take a deep dive into the prospect's top pages due to the fact that even if the website comes off as strictly Shoe related, their top pages might be about completely irrelevant topics. The best performing backlinks come when our prospects have well-developed pages that are relevant to our client's industry and the keywords we are working to have them rank for. ​

A Grain of Salt

While building a perfect backlink is our goal with every prospect we reach out to and every collaboration we partake in, the truth of the matter is that perfect backlink opportunities are rare and hard to come by, even when using quality backlink outreach strategies. Preferably, we look for prospects that have top pages, top keywords, and a URL that relate to and are relevant to our client. With that being said, if a prospect has very strong, industry-specific top keywords and relevant URL, but has one or two top pages that might not be perfectly relevant, that prospect is still a viable option. As long as those top pages are not inappropriate or completely out of line, the benefit of the domain's other metrics will outweigh the irrelevant aspects.
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Another way to look at link building is to know that there are going to be prospects that might not initially seem like a good option, but upon further research, can connect back to our client's field. For example, a women's fitness blog might not seem very relevant to a client who works in the online shoe sales space, but if we are able to get in touch with an editor on their team and propose a guest blog post relating to "The Best Shoes for Women's Running", it could be a great opportunity to place a backlink and expose your client to a new demographic or industry they may not have had any influence in. Some of the best opportunities we have earned for our clients have been in fields that at one point might have seemed irrelevant, but in fact, tied directly into our client's target audience.

Ranking and Volume

Another important metric that influences our choices in prospecting is a website's rankings and its volume of traffic. This can be dissected by looking at a few key metrics:
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• Organic Traffic
• Domain & URL Rating
• Domain & URL Rating of Referring Links

The Domain Rating (DR) and the URL Rating are the two primarily "rankings" we take into consideration. These two ratings determine how strong search engines interpret a website as a whole and the strength of each page within that website. These rankings have a direct impact on an increase in visibility from search engines like Google.
Organic Traffic and Domains are the two "volume" metrics that we take into consideration. These metrics not only depend on the sheer quantity of volume, but the quality and origin of the volume play a huge role as well.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic can prove to be one of the biggest indicators of a website's true value. Organic traffic is developed when a user with specific intent searches for a certain term, or keyword, and is directed to what Google sees as the best possible pages for that search term. This means that the more organic traffic a page has indicates that page having been ranked higher in Google's eyes.
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We always take a domain and a page's organic traffic into consideration when determining whether or not to reach out to a prospect. If a page has quality organic traffic, that means Google looks favorably on the domain and as a result, a link on that domain would likely perform very well. That stands true with a specific page's organic traffic as well. If you are unsure about how Google might see a particular page, organic traffic can be a good indication of whether it is ranking well.

Location of Traffic

Location of traffic might seem like a no-brainer, but the truth is it is a very important metric that must be kept in check. A domain that appears to be based in one country might receive most of its traffic from a completely different country.
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Most clients that are local or that only operate within the United States will not benefit with a backlink from a prospect who mainly receives traffic from a different country. Google might even see these links as not being natural and the link could be used against you.

DR and UR

DR

Domain Rating, or DR, is a proprietary metric developed by AHREFS to help identify the value of a website based on all of the SEO data AHREFS collects on a site:

The Domain Rating of a website, or DR, is based on a multitude of different Metrics, some of which include:

• Referring domains (how many other domains reference the website),
• Organic Keywords
• Organic Traffic

When building backlinks, we do take a website's DR into consideration as a fairly accurate evaluation of the website's value. With that being said, a good backlink opportunity does not need to have an outstanding DR. While a website with a DR anywhere between 20 to 50 does have good potential, a website with a DR of 5 that is hyper focused in our client's sector and has seen promising growth over the past 30-90 days might just as good, if not a better option.
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We do shoot to earn backlinks from websites with high domain ratings but are not above considering all of our options. We have seen just as much success with a link from a lower DR website that is much more content-focused and relevant. While everyone is shooting to earn links from high DR domains, there are a lot of quality, less recognized websites that could be an amazing place to earn a link or start a collaboration.

UR

The URL Rating, or the UR, is another proprietary metric developed by AHREFS to determine the value of a particular page within a domain. Similar to the DR, the UR is determined using several metrics:
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• Backlinks Pointing to the URL
• Unique Referring Domains Point to the URL
• Organic Search Traffic
• Organic Keywords Ranking in the Top 100

Like the website's DR, a higher UR will likely impact the effect a backlink on that page will have. Even if a website has a lower DR, a page on that website with a very high UR can be a potentially great opportunity for a backlink. For this reason, a page's UR is as big, if not bigger a factor than DR when taking a prospect into consideration on whether or not to move forward with a collaboration.
As described earlier, all metrics must be taken with a grain of salt, as a website with a low DR and great site metrics that has a page with a very high UR could be a great opportunity to earn a link. We have seen a backlink on a page that has an extremely high UR which is on a website with a low DR increase our client's DR by several points.

Referring and Linked Domains

Referring Domains

A referring domain is a website that refers to our prospect as an expert source. The amount of backlinks a website has is another factor that not only plays into the rating of the website but also shows how well a backlink to our client's website from that prospect will perform. Typically, a backlink from a website that has more domains referring to it as an expert source will perform better than a website with less.
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Looking into which domains refer to this prospect's website is also another technique to see how relevant the content on the site is, and will help you if other respected names trust this site as well.

Linked Domains

While the referring domains are very important when it comes to vetting a prospect, the number of domains that the prospect links to plays just as big of a role. A website's Domain Rating trickles down through the backlinks it has included on its website, which is one of the aspects that bring value to earning backlinks. This is what some consider "Link Juice", which is the portion of the referring websites Domain Rating that makes its way to your client's website through a backlink.
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A website DR is distributed equally to all of the backlinks on its websites, so for example, a backlink on a website with a DR of 30 where the website only links to 10 other domains would be a stronger backlink than one from a website that has a DR of 70, but links to 5,000 other websites. For this reason, it is also very important to take into consideration how many domains that prospect is linking to, as a website with a higher DR may look appealing, you have to take into consideration how many other domains you are sharing that "Link Juice" with.

Relationship

The biggest aspect of our link-building process that makes us stand out here at Mad Mango is our ability to reach prospects, display our worth and potential for collaboration, all while maintaining lasting relationships. There is no benefit to finding a link prospect if that prospect is unreachable after building. On top of that fact, a lot of these prospects receive countless inquiries on a daily basis, and our ability to make ourselves stand out is crucial. So collectively, we see the following aspects of our prospect relationships as carrying the most weight:
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• Reaching the Prospect
• Maintaining Contact with Prospect
• Proposing Further Collaborations

We have found that a lot of relationships established in this space are limited to one-time collaborations or projects, and there are always amazing opportunities left on the table.

Reaching the Prospect

All prior background research, filtering, and prospecting are pointless if we are not able to reach out and successfully contact the prospect. We are able to maintain a very high contact rate by incorporating several strategies into our outreach:
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• Displaying Worth
• Personalizing Outreach
• Commenting on Prospects Domain
• Proposing Collaborations
• Offering Great Content
• Much More

A lot of our prospects receive numerous emails every day, but our ability to express the fact that we are real people looking to collaborate along with the value we bring to each collaboration allows us to operate with very high response rates.

Maintaining Contact with Prospect

The biggest benefit of our customized outreach strategy is our ability to track backlinks and the fact that we preserve and maintain each relationship in which we earn backlinks. We have the contact information, previous correspondences, and all link details for each backlink we have ever built.
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We track each and every backlink that we build on a monthly basis. If we ever run into an issue with a link we have built, whether it be the link not connecting or the linking page having been taken down, we are readily able to contact the prospect we collaborated with in building the link to mend the issue, to establish a new backlink, or whatever is necessary to recoup the missing link. This allows us to keep a current list of all of our client's backlinks as well as the information necessary to update or mend broken links.

​Proposing Further Collaborations

The best SEO is SEO that is developed naturally. The best examples we have of natural collaborations come from relationships we have that we have established from link building. A relationship can flower from a simple backlink collaboration into a full-fledged podcast episode, product review, website feature, or much more.
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What separates Mad Mango Marketing from the rest is our pursuit to gain the most out of each relationship we establish. There is always opportunity left on the table, and it is of the utmost importance to investigate every avenue and propose further collaborations that go above and beyond simply earning a backlink.

Requirements

Each prospect has its own terms and requirement for any form of collaboration. Whether we are collaborating on a piece of content, participating in a product review, providing an expert opinion, or any other form of collaboration, the prospect will have requirements that we will have to meet. Some of these requirements are standard, some are good signs, and some might be red flags. We always take these requirements into consideration and do our best to maximize our SEO efforts with each collaboration.

Word Count Requirement

When developing content for a website, the prospect may have parameters that we will have to follow. One of these is almost always the word count of an article if we have been tasked with creating content. While word count usually doesn't pose an issue, there may be a situation where the word count a website requires for a guest piece of content might be more than what we are looking to provide. Since we develop all of our content in-house, the size of an article does play an important role. With that being said, we rarely ever run into an issue with the word count for a piece of content we have been tasked to create. ​

Limit on Number of Do-Follow Backlinks

This ties directly into word count, as the larger the article, the more natural it is to have more than one backlink included on that page. This will not only include backlinks to our client's website but backlinks to other expert sources as well. Google will read an article that has too many backlinks relative to its size as a bad thing and will weigh the backlink accordingly.
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Some websites may restrict the number of backlinks allowed in the article regardless of the word count. While this may not make or break a collaboration, it is definitely something to keep in mind when choosing a prospect to work with. Sometimes this can even prove to be a good thing since it is showing that the prospect pays attention to every detail of the content and is working to build the highest quality pages. This ties directly into the "linked domains" metric we discussed earlier, as we look to avoid backlinks on websites that have pages that appear to be "stuffed" with backlinks.

Quality requirements

A lot of our prospects will have their own checks and balances in terms of the content we provide. Some websites will have their editorial team review and approve of our content before posting it. We have run into issues in the past where the website we are working with is not very clear on the direction of the content and has denied the article that we have provided. In this case, we will either edit the piece to fit their needs or we will look for a different prospect that is interested in publishing a similar article. It is very important to be on the same page with the prospect you are collaborating with, and understanding what both parties expect to get out of the relationship is key. ​

Inspecting Our URL

Every once in a while, a prospect will need to inspect our client's website to approve of a backlink to that domain. This is quite rare and I have not run into this more than a handful of times. While this may seem frustrating, I see it as a good sign. It shows that the website is cautious and does not collaborate with just any website. The only issue I have ever encountered with this level of quality control is that it might take the prospects team several days to pass the approval.
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As I stated earlier, we have never run into an issue where the prospect has turned down our client's website, as we are constantly developing our client's domains and making sure our clients have the best possible websites. We typically see websites inspect our client's URLs when we are working together on a more serious collaboration, such as a series of multiple pieces of relating content or interviews with our clients as expert sources.

Conclusion

While having a large backlink profile is great, the quality of the backlinks that lie within that profile is more important. Even more important than the quality and quantity of the backlinks built are the relationships that we maintain with the prospects we worked with directly to establish the backlink. The truth of the matter is that having 10 high-quality, white-hat backlinks that we can actively track, manage and repair will benefit our clients more than 100 blackhat links that are inorganic, irreparable, and overall unhealthy for our client's backlink profile. This link building strategy has allowed us to successfully develop all of our client's backlink profiles into extremely beneficial assets that will continue to bring them traffic well into the future.
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Our backlink prospecting strategies, as well as our ability to capitalize on opportunities that many might leave on the table, allow us to maximize our potential with each prospect and earn our clients the best possible collaborations. If we put in the work, follow the metrics described above, as well as pay attention to all of the facts laid out in front of us, choosing the best prospects to reach out to becomes clear and obvious. From that point on, the possibilities of each collaboration are endless!