Browser backlink submission

Overview

Given a qualified prospect list and a single source-of-truth site profile, drive each target's submission form to completion, capture evidence, and emit an auditable log. This skill is execution-only — it assumes prospects are already vetted upstream and assumes anchor / description copy is either pre-supplied or fetched via the agent's main loop.

Outcome: a submission-log.json with one row per attempt (status, evidence, live URL once verified) plus screenshots under ./out/backlinks/. No fabricated successes, no fire-and-forget, no link-farm targets ever.

Mental model

A submission run is a pipeline: profile → per-target field mapping → form drive → evidence capture → verification follow-up. Most failures are not bugs — they are signals: captcha walls, login-required, paid-only, dead form, off-topic category. The skill's job is to detect, classify, and log these honestly so the user gets a reliable picture of what shipped.

Three immovable invariants:

1. Never submit to a target the prospect list did not qualify. If a target looks shady mid-run (hidden links, casino/pharma neighbours, "1000 directories for $5" footer), skip and log skipped:quality.
2. One identity per run. Reuse the same email, brand name, contact, anchor pool — directories that detect inconsistency flag listings. The profile is the source of truth.
3. Evidence or it didn't happen. Every submitted row needs a post-submit screenshot and either a confirmation URL or a confirmation-email subject line.

Rules

The site profile (input contract)

The user (or an upstream step) supplies one JSON file. If any required field is missing, stop and ask — do not invent values.

Field	Required	Notes
name	yes	Brand / site / product name as it should appear
url	yes	Canonical URL, no UTM, https
tagline	yes	≤ 80 chars
description_short	yes	≤ 160 chars
description_long	yes	300–600 chars, neutral tone
description_alt	recommended	A second long variant — rotate to avoid duplicate-content footprint
category_primary	yes	Map to each directory's taxonomy
category_alt	recommended	Fallback when primary doesn't exist on a target
tags	yes	5–10 keywords, lowercase
logo_path	yes if any target requires image	Local file; PNG ≥ 256 px square preferred
screenshot_path	recommended	For directories asking for a product preview
contact_email	yes	Real, monitored — verification mail lands here
contact_name	yes	Real human; some directories reject "Admin"
pricing	recommended	"free" / "freemium" / "paid" — startup directories ask
founded_year, location, team_size	recommended	Business directories ask
social.twitter, social.linkedin, social.github	recommended	Many forms require ≥ 1 social URL
anchors	yes	Array of 3–6 anchor texts: brand, brand+keyword, naked URL, generic ("learn more"). Rotate; never reuse same anchor more than 30% of the run.

Target classification (per prospect, before driving the form)

Target type	Treat as	Notes
Free general directory (BOTW free tier, niche aggregators)	submit	Verify it's still live and indexed
Business directory (GMB, Yelp, BBB, Apple Maps)	submit, ownership-verify	Often needs phone/postcard verification — log as pending:ownership-verify
Startup / SaaS directory (BetaList, F6S, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Tools Directory style)	submit	Usually needs account + email verify
Web2.0 property (Medium, Tumblr, WordPress.com, Notion public, Bear)	publish, not submit	Different flow — author a short on-topic post linking once, naturally
Niche industry list (curated GitHub awesome lists, vertical aggregators)	PR / issue, not form	Reroute: open issue / PR — out of this skill's scope, log skipped:not-a-form
Q&A / forum (Quora, Reddit, Stack Exchange)	NOT this skill	Persona / on-topic answers are out of scope — log skipped:not-a-form
Paid-only ($/listing)	skip unless user pre-approved budget	Log skipped:paid with the price
Link farm / "submit to 500 directories" / spammy ad-laden / hidden links / unrelated niche	skip, hard	Log skipped:quality with the reason
Captcha-walled (hCaptcha, reCAPTCHA v2, Cloudflare Turnstile)	stop and escalate	Do not attempt to bypass. Log skipped:captcha; the user solves manually if they want
Login-required and we have no account	escalate	Either user supplies creds, or log skipped:auth

Field-mapping rules

• name → "Site Name", "Title", "Project", "Tool name", "Company". Match what the form asks; never invent prefixes/suffixes.
• url → "URL", "Website", "Homepage". Always canonical https; never with tracking params.
• description_short → "Tagline", "Short description", "Pitch", fields with ≤ 160 char limit.
• description_long / description_alt → "Description", "About", "Details" (300+ chars). Rotate variants across the run; don't paste the identical paragraph 50 times.
• category → match to directory taxonomy by exact label first, then nearest synonym. If nothing fits, pick the closest and log category_mapping.
• tags → split into the form's expected separator (comma, space, enter-per-tag). Trim to the form's max count.
• anchors → only used when the target lets you choose anchor text on the link. Rotate per-target from anchors[]; track usage to keep brand-anchor share ≥ 50%.
• logo / screenshot → upload via setInputFiles on the file input; verify the upload preview appears before submit.

Drive protocol (per target)

1. Pre-flight — open URL, confirm it's the submission form (not 404, not paywall, not "submissions closed"). If wrong, log and move on.
2. Account check — if the form requires an account: look up cached creds for that domain in this session's profile vault; if absent, ask user once, then proceed. Never store creds to disk.
3. Captcha check — if a captcha is on the submit page, stop. Do not iterate.
4. Field walk — accessibility-tree first; fill in the order the form lays them out; verify each value sticks (re-read the input).
5. Category mapping — if a select / radio is required, pick by label match; if no match, pick the nearest sibling and record the mapping in the log row.
6. Upload check — for image fields, confirm the preview thumbnail rendered before submit.
7. Submit — click the actual submit button; wait for a success state: redirect, success message, confirmation page selector, or verification email.
8. Evidence — screenshot the post-submit state (full page) to ./out/backlinks/<domain>-<UTC>.png; capture the confirmation URL or message text.
9. Verification — if the target sends a confirmation email, poll the user's mailbox via the supplied flow (out of scope of this skill — escalate if no flow available); record the verified URL when it goes live.
10. Log — append one row to ./out/backlinks/submission-log.json.

Throttling and identity hygiene

• Spread across time: never submit to more than 5 targets in a row from the same IP without a 60-second cool-off.
• Pace per day: cap free-directory submissions at 20 per day per identity; business directories at 5; web2.0 publishes at 2.
• Rotate anchor variants — track use counts in-memory; never let one anchor exceed 30% of the run.
• Rotate description variants — alternate description_long and description_alt per target.
• One profile, one email, one contact name across the entire run. Inconsistency is a flag.

Submission log schema

./out/backlinks/submission-log.json is an array of rows. Append-only.

{
  "target_url": "https://example-directory.com/submit",
  "target_domain": "example-directory.com",
  "target_type": "saas-directory",
  "submitted_at": "2026-05-10T18:32:11Z",
  "status": "submitted | pending:email | pending:ownership-verify | live | rejected | skipped:captcha | skipped:paid | skipped:quality | skipped:auth | skipped:not-a-form | failed:selector | failed:timeout",
  "anchor_used": "the brand name",
  "description_variant": "long | alt",
  "category_mapping": { "requested": "Developer Tools", "selected": "Tools / Dev" },
  "live_url": null,
  "screenshot_path": "./out/backlinks/example-directory-com-20260510T183211Z.png",
  "confirmation_url": null,
  "confirmation_email_subject": null,
  "notes": "Selector for category was a custom dropdown; mapped Tools → Tools / Dev."
}

Out-of-scope handling

• Need fresh, on-topic descriptions per niche → stop; copy authoring is an upstream concern, do NOT write copy here.
• Need to qualify fresh prospects mid-run → stop. This skill does not vet new targets on the fly; prospect vetting is an upstream concern.
• Q&A / forum / community work → out of scope. Persona / on-topic answers are not this skill's job.

Examples

Example 1: Bad → Good (description handling)

❌ Bad:

For all 50 directories, paste description_long verbatim. Reuse "TheBrand" anchor every time.

✅ Good:

Alternate description_long and description_alt across submissions.
Rotate anchors from profile.anchors[]; track use, cap brand-anchor share at 50%, naked-URL at 20%, generic at 30%.

What changed: identical copy + identical anchor across many targets is the duplicate-footprint signal Google uses to discount or penalize.

Example 2: Edge case — category not in taxonomy

The site is a Developer Tools SaaS but the directory only offers Software / Other, Business / Productivity, Lifestyle. Pick Software / Other, record category_mapping: { requested: "Developer Tools", selected: "Software / Other" }, do not pick Business / Productivity because it's slightly broader — closer is better than larger.

Example 3: Edge case — captcha on submit

Form filled cleanly, "Submit" button reveals an hCaptcha challenge. Stop. Screenshot. Log skipped:captcha. Do not refresh and retry; do not attempt an OCR/solver. Move to the next target.

Checklist

• Site profile JSON validated — all required fields present, anchors[] has ≥ 3 entries, logo file exists if any target needs it
• Prospect list classified — each target has a target_type; link-farm / unrelated targets pre-filtered out
• Output directory ./out/backlinks/ exists; previous submission-log.json either rotated or appended to deliberately
• Per submission: post-submit screenshot saved, log row appended, status reflects reality (no "submitted" without evidence)
• Anchor and description rotation is enforced — no anchor or description variant exceeds its share cap
• Throttling respected — pace caps and cool-offs honored
• Captcha / paid / login-required targets skipped, not faked
• No credentials persisted to disk after the run
• Final report summarizes: total attempted, submitted, pending verification, skipped (by reason), failed (by reason)

Composition / References

• Pairs with browser-form-filling-patterns (selector resilience, file uploads, multi-step forms) — base layer.
• Runs only after an upstream prospect-vetting step has produced a qualified list — this skill does not discover or qualify prospects.
• Copy generation (descriptions, anchor variants) is an upstream concern — do not author copy inside this skill.
• Google Search Essentials — Link spam
• Google: Qualifying outbound links to your site