The Link-Building Brief: Seven Decisions Before Outreach

Before researching publishers, decide what a useful opportunity would look like. Without a brief, a campaign can produce a long prospect list while leaving the important questions unanswered: useful to whom, for what purpose, and under which commercial terms?

This working template is designed for an agency or business commissioning editorial outreach. It is a proposed operating method, not a ranking formula. Copy the seven fields into your project and resolve the missing information before approving an opportunity.

1. Business purpose

Choose the immediate purpose: reach a relevant audience, contribute specialist knowledge, support a launch or establish a useful industry relationship. Describe the action a reader could reasonably take next. Keep a delivered publication separate from the eventual commercial outcome.

Example: introduce a maintenance guide to plant engineers who might use its inspection checklist. This gives the researcher a more useful target than "get links to our home page".

2. Reader and market

Specify the reader's role, language and market. Name adjacent audiences that could also be relevant. Decide whether a specialist trade publication, local business publication or practitioner community would fit.

Do not treat country-level traffic as evidence of a particular professional audience. Record what is known about readership and what remains an assumption.

3. Destination and reader benefit

Choose the actual destination URL. Explain what a visitor will find there and why it belongs in the proposed article. Check that the page works and that its claims are supportable before requesting attention from an editor.

If the destination offers a resource, make that resource usable. An article about inspecting equipment should not send the reader to an unrelated enquiry form just because that page is commercially important.

4. Material available to an editor

List the evidence you can contribute: an original method, a documented test, an interview, an approved example or an expert explanation. Identify who can answer follow-up questions and approve technical statements.

A customer's project is not automatically available for publication. Mark consent and evidence availability explicitly. If no suitable material exists yet, create or document it before promising an article.

5. Opportunity approval

Name the person who approves publishers and content. Request the relevant section, recent article examples and a written explanation of audience fit. Record the date and scope of any metrics.

Ahrefs describes Domain Rating as a proprietary domain-wide backlink metric. Its organic traffic figures are estimates, not first-party traffic counts. Use those measures as context and label their source; they do not replace a review of the actual publication. [1][2]

6. Commercial and link treatment

Separate the outreach fee, content work and any publisher charge. An agency should specify whether the provider communicates directly with the end client or supplies unbranded material for agency approval.

Google recommends sponsored for paid-placement links and also accepts nofollow for that purpose. Record the agreed treatment before accepting a paid opportunity. [3] Keep unconfirmed publisher availability and charges marked as unconfirmed.

7. Completion and follow-up

Define the evidence needed at handover: live URL, check date, approved destination, observed link attributes and any agreed disclosure. State who handles changes or removal under the agreement.

Measure outcomes in separate columns. A published article is a delivery event. Referral visits, qualified enquiries and collected revenue are later observations. Recording them separately prevents a completed task from becoming an unsupported growth claim.

Your working brief

Download the plain-text template, or copy the fields below into your project notes.

Download the brief (.txt)

Business purpose: To be agreed
Reader, language and market: To be agreed
Destination URL and reader benefit: To be agreed
Evidence or expertise available: To be agreed
Publisher/content approver: To be agreed
Commercial scope and link treatment: To be agreed
Completion evidence and follow-up owner: To be agreed
Unresolved decisions: To be agreed

Sources

Put the brief to work

Preparing an agency or brand campaign? Explore editorial outreach and white-label support, or send us your brief.