Link Research has two jobs: understand backlink opportunity, and decide whether an inbound link offer is worth your time.
Most link work fails because the team only asks "is this domain strong?" That is not enough. A useful link also needs topical fit, page fit, placement fit, and a reason the receiving page benefits.
The two modes
Backlinks. Use this to research a domain's backlink profile, competitor link gaps, lost links, new links, and pages that attract authority.
Inbound Link Fit. Use this when someone emails you offering a guest post, link swap, niche edit, or partnership. Paste the domain, scan its articles, check keyword overlap, and decide whether the site is relevant enough to pursue.
What the backlink view helps you answer
- Which domains link to competitors but not to us?
- Which competitor pages earn the most authority?
- Which of our pages need links to compete?
- Which lost links should we recover?
- Which domains belong in an outreach queue?
A raw backlink export is not the goal. The goal is a smaller list of domains, pages, anchors, and actions your team can work.
What Inbound Link Fit helps you answer
- Is this site actually relevant to our project?
- Which topics does it publish about?
- Does it rank for anything close to our market?
- Which of our pages could sensibly receive a link?
- Is the offer worth pursuing, maybe useful for only a few pages, not relevant, or risky?
The decision should be one of four states:
| Decision | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Good fit | The site is relevant, has useful overlap, and a placement would make sense. |
| Maybe, only for these pages | The site has narrow overlap. Pursue only if the placement matches the listed pages. |
| Not relevant | The site does not cover the market closely enough to justify the work. |
| Risky or spammy | The site has weak quality, broad unrelated topics, or signals that make the link a liability. |
Recommended workflow for inbound offers
- Open Link Research.
- Choose Inbound Link Fit.
- Paste the domain from the outreach email.
- Scan articles first. This is free and tells you what the site actually publishes.
- Run the keyword fit check when the article set looks plausible.
- Read the recommended pages and overlap notes.
- Save the result to the queue only when the decision is worth acting on.
What to send back to the person pitching you
A useful reply is specific:
- "This is relevant to our LinkedIn automation and content operations pages."
- "We would only consider a placement on your article about agency reporting."
- "We are not a fit because your site is mostly consumer tech and our project is B2B SEO workflows."
Specificity saves time and filters out low-quality link sellers quickly.
How credits work
Article scanning can be free when it reads public pages and cached data. Fresh backlink lookups, competitor link research, and keyword fit checks can spend credits. Saved link reports, old research, and queue views reopen for 0 credits.
Common mistakes
Accepting a link because the DR is high. Authority without topical fit is often noise.
Ignoring the target page. A decent site can still be a bad fit if the only possible target page is unrelated.
Treating every offer as a yes/no decision. "Maybe, only for these pages" is often the most accurate answer.
Letting link research stay in exports. Good findings should become outreach prospects, page refreshes, content tasks, or report proof.
Next
- Using Market Map to understand a site's market
- What each section of the app is for