Link prospecting

Goal

Find realistic pages, sites and authors that might reference the user's page, product, study, guide or tool. Use agenticseo for prospect discovery, then use your web, search or browser tools for contact discovery.

Use the installed agenticseo command. Lookups are billed by DataForSEO and need DATAFORSEO_API_KEY; each result states its cost and points to an evidence file.

Required inputs

• The user's domain or target URL
• The linkable asset, page, product, study, tool or topic
• Optional competitors
• Optional market/location/language

Project context

1. Run agenticseo context first and ground the outreach in it: positioning supplies the claim that makes a link worth giving, and the saved competitors are the backlink profiles to mine. If there is no project, set one up as seo-project-setup step 1 describes.
2. This skill needs positioning and competitors. If either is empty, run a minimal inline setup: ask the user why someone would cite them and who they compete with, or infer it from the site and agenticseo competitors and confirm, write it to .agenticseo/context.json, then continue. Never front-load the full interview; suggest seo-project-setup at the end for the rest.
3. Before paying, check researchLog. If the same research ran within the last 30 days, reuse its evidence and say so instead of buying it again.
4. On finish, write back what is durable: the linkable asset in keyPages, any competitor whose backlink profile proved useful in competitors, and append { "entryDate": "<today from agenticseo context>", "summary": "Link prospecting: <asset/target page>. Verdict: <conclusion>. Evidence: <paths>" } to researchLog. Run agenticseo context to validate.

Deliver as a report

Deliver through the seo-report skill. If that skill is not available, say so and stop before writing the report.

Commands

• agenticseo serp "QUERY"...: find ranking articles, listicles, resource pages, comparisons and topical publishers, up to 10 queries per call.
• agenticseo backlinks overview DOMAIN: a competitor domain's or page's backlink and referring-domain profile, with its top referring domains.
• agenticseo backlinks domains DOMAIN and agenticseo backlinks links DOMAIN: page through a competitor's referring domains and individual backlinks (--include, --min-domain-rank, --link-type dofollow, --hide-lost) when its profile is the best source of prospects.
• agenticseo domain DOMAIN: qualify important prospect domains.
• agenticseo ranked DOMAIN: what a prospect or competitor ranks for, when topical fit matters.
• agenticseo local businesses and agenticseo local serp: for local link prospecting, when nearby businesses, local competitors or Maps categories can reveal partnership targets.
• agenticseo research "SEED"...: expand prospecting queries.

Contact discovery tools

After agenticseo identifies good prospects, use your web search, page fetch or browser tools for public contact discovery.

Look for:

• Author byline pages
• Contact pages
• Editorial guidelines
• About/team pages
• LinkedIn, X, Bluesky or other professional profiles
• Newsletter or publication masthead pages
• Public email addresses in page HTML or visible page text
• Structured data such as Person, Organization, sameAs or email

Only record contact details that were actually found. Include the source URL for any email, profile or contact form.

Prospecting query patterns

Build queries from the asset or topic:

• <topic> resources
• best <category> tools
• <competitor> alternatives
• <topic> statistics
• <topic> guide
• <topic> examples
• <topic> templates
• <topic> software
• <topic> for <audience>

Run agenticseo serp for the most relevant patterns, up to 10 queries per call.

Workflow

1. Clarify the linkable asset and the reason someone would reference it.
2. Build 5–10 prospecting queries by default.
3. Run agenticseo serp for those queries.
4. If competitors are provided, run agenticseo backlinks overview for the strongest competitor domains or pages first, and page through their referring domains when the overview shows a useful profile. Continue without backlink evidence if it fails.
5. For local SEO, use agenticseo local businesses and agenticseo local serp around priority locations to identify nearby competitors, categories and local SERP evidence before searching for local chambers, associations, campus resources, community pages and directories.
6. Filter prospects:
   • Keep topical relevance and editorial pages.
   • Prioritize articles, directories, resource pages, comparisons, statistics pages, templates and curated lists.
   • Deprioritize homepages, login pages, thin affiliate pages, spam, unrelated forums, and direct competitors unless a comparison angle is valid.
7. For each good prospect, define the outreach angle:
   • Broken or missing resource
   • Better current data
   • Useful tool/template
   • Alternative or comparison inclusion
   • Expert quote or supporting reference
8. For the strongest prospects, visit or search the prospect site to find the best contact path.
9. Draft outreach messages. If contact details were found, include the source. If not, list the next best contact-discovery path.

Output format

Title: Link Prospecting: <linkable asset> — <date> (see seo-report).

If a report template applies (see seo-report), its sections and tone replace this list.

Sections in this order:

1. The angle: one or two opening sentences naming the best outreach angle and the prospect type to work first.
2. Prospects: a table of prospect URL, site, source, suggested angle, contact path and priority. Keep it under about eight columns; drop the ones that add nothing for this run.
3. Why these: one finding per prospect worth explaining: the evidence that they link to things like this, then the exact ask.
4. Outreach drafts: the message text for each of two or three reusable angles: resource or list inclusion, an article update, and a comparison mention.
5. Limitations: notes: contact paths not found, prospects that are direct competitors or likely paid placements, and which source found each contact detail.
6. What to do next: an ordered list: who to send to first, and in what order.
7. How this report was made: opens with the skill link line from seo-report, pointing at https://github.com/kid7st/agenticseo/blob/main/.agents/skills/link-prospecting/SKILL.md ("AgenticSEO Link Prospecting skill"), then which commands returned prospects (with costs and evidence paths) and which came from the web or the browser.

Guardrails

• Do not invent email addresses, social handles or contact names.
• Do not say agenticseo found contact details; it does not return them. Attribute contact discovery to the web, search or browser source used.
• If contact details are not available after a reasonable search, recommend specific discovery steps such as checking the author page, contact page, LinkedIn, X or a reputable contact-enrichment tool.
• Avoid spammy mass outreach. Personalize by page and reason.
• Flag prospects that are direct competitors or likely paid placements.
• On exit code 3, ask the user to fix the key; on exit code 4, report the error and any charged cost, and do not retry in a loop.