Link prospecting

OpenSEO Link Prospecting

Goal

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

Required inputs

• projectId
• User domain or target URL
• Linkable asset, page, product, study, tool, or topic
• Optional competitors
• Optional market/location/language

OpenSEO MCP tools

• get_serp_results: find ranking articles, listicles, resource pages, comparisons, and topical publishers.
• get_backlinks_overview: inspect competitor domain or page backlink/referring-domain patterns.
• get_domain_overview: qualify important prospect domains.
• get_ranked_keywords: understand what a prospect or competitor ranks for when topical fit matters.
• search_local_businesses and get_local_serp_results: use for local SEO link prospecting when nearby businesses, local competitors, or Maps/category signals can reveal partnership targets.
• research_keywords: expand prospecting queries.

Contact discovery tools

After OpenSEO identifies good prospects, use available non-OpenSEO browsing or search tools for public contact discovery. Depending on the client, this may be web search, page fetches, browser automation, or a search API.

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/topic:

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

Use get_serp_results in batches for the most relevant patterns. Send at most 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. Call get_serp_results for those queries.
4. If competitors are provided, call get_backlinks_overview for the strongest competitor domains or pages first. Continue without backlink evidence if it is unavailable.
5. For local SEO, use search_local_businesses and get_local_serp_results 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/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

Start with:

• Best outreach angle
• Highest-priority prospect type
• Any data limitations

Then include:

Prospect URL	Site/domain	Source	Relevance	Suggested angle	Contact path	Priority

Then provide 2-3 reusable outreach drafts:

• Resource/list inclusion
• Article update/reference suggestion
• Competitor alternative/comparison angle

Guardrails

• Do not invent email addresses, social handles, or contact names.
• Do not say OpenSEO found contact details unless an OpenSEO tool returned them. Attribute contact discovery to the web/search/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.

<!-- Source: https://github.com/every-app/open-seo/tree/main/.agents/skills/link-prospecting (MIT) -->