# Backlinks

Monitor the link profile, understand anchor distribution, find opportunities and run outreach.

Backlinks has two panels: Overview, the client’s live link profile and its metrics, and Store, where link placements can be purchased for the client.

## The profile

- Every discovered backlink with source page, target page, anchor text, source authority and nofollow status.
- Domain metrics over time: domain authority, page authority, linking domains and spam score.
- Anchor text distribution, aggregated by external pages and root domains.
- Top linked pages, so you can see which assets actually attract links.

## What a healthy profile looks like

| Signal | Healthy pattern | Warning pattern |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Anchor mix | Mostly brand name and naked URLs, a modest share of descriptive phrases, very little exact-match commercial anchor. | A large share of exact-match commercial anchors ("best plumber austin") built quickly, reads as manipulated to Google. |
| Linking domains vs total links | A growing number of unique referring domains over time. | Link count climbing while referring domains stay flat, usually many links from a handful of low-value sites. |
| Spam score | Low and stable. | Rising spam score, often from a paid placement vendor with a poor network. |
| Velocity | Steady acquisition matching outreach and content cadence. | A sudden spike with no matching campaign, worth investigating as a possible negative-SEO attempt or scraped content. |

## AI summary

The backlink summary reads the profile and writes the interpretation: where authority is concentrated, whether the anchor mix looks natural, which competitors out-link the client, and what to do next. It is the section to paste into a client report.

## Finding opportunities

- Competitor gaps: domains linking to several competitors but not to the client.
- Unlinked mentions worth converting into links.
- The marketplace, for vetted paid placements with visible metrics and pricing.

## Outreach

The outreach tracker holds each prospect, its status and the conversation history. AI drafts the first email from the prospect page and the client's own material, and sending runs through your verified outreach domain so replies come back to you.

1. **Add prospects**: Pull from a competitor-gap list, an unlinked-mention result, or add a domain manually.
2. **Draft the email**: Generate a first-touch email referencing the specific page or mention, generic "link exchange" emails get ignored and can flag as spam.
3. **Send and track status**: Move prospects through stages (contacted, replied, negotiating, placed, declined) as replies come in.
4. **Follow up**: A single, polite follow-up after a week or two is usually worthwhile; more than that has diminishing returns and risks the sending domain's reputation.

> **Verify your sending domain first**: Outreach from an unverified domain lands in spam and damages the domain's reputation. Set this up in Agency → Email templates before your first campaign.

## Common problems

**Domain authority is not moving despite new links**

Authority metrics lag actual link acquisition and weight referring-domain quality heavily. A handful of low-authority links will barely register, check whether new links are coming from genuinely relevant, reasonably authoritative sites.

**Outreach emails are not getting replies**

Check the pitch is specific to the recipient's page, not a template with the name swapped in, and confirm the sending domain is verified and not landing in spam.

**A competitor gap list is mostly low-quality directories**

Filter by minimum authority before running outreach, not every domain linking to a competitor is worth pursuing.

**Spam score jumped suddenly**

Check the profile for a burst of new links from unfamiliar domains; this can indicate a negative-SEO attempt or a paid vendor using a low-quality network. Consider a disavow if the pattern is clearly manipulative.