By Andrew Linksmith, Head of Link Acquisition · Update:
How to Run a Link Building Campaign
A link building campaign is a sequence with a defined target, a fixed set of pages to strengthen, an agreed anchor plan and a measurement framework. What distinguishes it from buying links is that the number of placements is an output of the plan rather than the plan itself.
Stage 1 Gap analysis
Stage 2 Target pages
Stage 3 Anchor plan
Stage 4 Prospecting
Stage 5 Outreach
Stage 6 Reporting
Most link buying skips the first three stages, which is why most link buying produces links that do not move anything. The order matters more than the tooling, and the tactics that fill stages four and five are catalogued in the main link building guide.
Step 1: competitor gap analysis
The tactics that fill stages four and five are catalogued in the main link building guide. The purpose here is to replace "we should build more links" with a specific number, a specific list and a specific pace. Roughly four hours of work, and it determines everything downstream.
Identify the three URLs actually ranking for your target term — Page-level, not domain-level. You are competing against a page, and its referring domain count is what matters — not its site's.
Export referring domains for each of those URLs — Deduplicate to domain level. Note the count for each. This is the gap you are closing.
Run the link intersect — Domains linking to two or more competitors but not to you. These publishers have demonstrated both topical interest and willingness to link within your subject. Highest-conversion prospect list available.
Chart their monthly referring domain growth — Twelve months. The pace they sustain tells you the pace you need, which is a far better budget input than any absolute target.
Map their strongest links to their landing pages — Are they pointing authority at commercial URLs directly, or routing it through content? Copy whichever is working.
Look for PR fingerprints — Clusters of media links appearing within the same fortnight indicate a campaign. Find the asset behind them and you have learned what earns coverage in your market.
Output of stage 1 | What it feeds |
Referring domain gap (number) | Campaign length and budget |
Intersect list (domains) | Prospecting priority order |
Competitor monthly pace | Your target acquisition rate |
Their anchor distribution | Your anchor plan benchmark |
Their target page pattern | Your target page allocation |
Step 2: choosing target pages
The recurring failure is pointing links at pages that either cannot hold them or do not need them. Two rules cover most cases.
Link to URLs that will still exist in three years. Discontinued products, seasonal pages and campaign landing pages become 404s or redirects, and authority erodes through redirect chains. Point external links at durable URLs and pass value onward internally.
Commercial pages rarely earn links directly, so route through content. External links land on a guide or resource; that page links contextually to the category or product page; the product page receives what it needs without anyone having to want to link to it. Mechanics in how authority flows between pages.
Page type | Share of link budget | Why |
Homepage and brand | 15–20% | Absorbs branded anchors naturally; distributes internally |
Content hubs and guides | 35–45% | The only pages people link to voluntarily |
Category or service pages | 25–30% | Where commercial rankings are won |
Individual products or sub-services | 5–15% | Unstable URLs; use sparingly and only for durable ones |
Step 3: anchor text planning
There is no universal correct distribution, and any page that gives you one without reference to your market is guessing. The benchmark is the median distribution across the three competitor URLs from stage 1.
Branded — ~50%
Naked URL — ~18%
Generic — ~14%
Partial match — ~12%
Exact match — ~6%
These figures are illustrative. Replace every one of them with your own competitor median before briefing anybody.
Two operational rules. Front-load branded and naked anchors in the first months of a campaign — a new profile that opens with commercial anchors looks nothing like one that accumulated. And build the plan as a running total rather than a per-link rule, so that a single exact-match placement on a strong publisher does not break the distribution. Full method in anchor text optimization.
Step 4: prospecting and outreach
400 candidate domains identified
160 pass quality vetting (40%)
95 with a findable contact (59%)
14 reply (15%)
8 links live (8.4% of vetted)
The tooling that makes this volume manageable is compared in twelve tools by the job they do. Those are the conversion rates from our own campaigns and they are the numbers nobody publishes. The headline: roughly fifty vetted prospects per placement. If you are planning eight links a month, you need to be qualifying four hundred domains a month, which is what makes the labour cost of genuine outreach what it is — and explains the gap between a $72 placement and a $475 one.
Stage | Rejection reason | Share rejected |
Quality vetting | No organic traffic on the domain | ~34% |
Quality vetting | Excessive commercial outbound links | ~18% |
Quality vetting | Topical mismatch at article level | ~8% |
Contact discovery | No findable editor or author | ~41% of vetted |
Outreach | No reply after one follow-up | ~85% of contacted |
Note that the largest single rejection category is domains with no organic traffic — consistent with Ahrefs' finding that fewer than one site in ten in its index receives any. Most of what a prospecting tool returns is not usable, and a vendor whose delivered placements all have real audiences is doing this filtering somewhere.
Step 5: reporting and metrics
Monthly report — the seven columns
Live URL | Published | DR | Publisher traffic | Anchor used | Target page | Indexed? |
tradepublication.com/article-slug | 2026-07-14 | 52 | 18,400 | brand name | /guides/topic/ | Yes |
industryblog.com/post-title | 2026-07-22 | 38 | 4,100 | naked URL | / | Yes |
sectornews.com/feature | 2026-07-29 | 61 | 31,900 | partial match | /services/x/ | Pending d14 |
Most vendor reports show the URL and the domain rating and stop, because those two columns flatter the vendor. The fourth and seventh columns are the ones that tell you whether you bought something functional: a publisher with no audience is a number rather than an asset, and an unindexed placement passes nothing at all.
Campaign metric | Cadence | Common trap |
Referring domains gained | Monthly | Reporting backlinks instead — inflated by sitewide links |
Share of placements with 500+ organic traffic | Monthly | Not tracking it at all |
Indexation rate at day 30 | Monthly | Assuming publication equals indexation |
Anchor distribution vs benchmark | Quarterly | Drifting toward commercial anchors unnoticed |
Position movement on target terms | Monthly | Expecting it before month three |
Cost per surviving indexed link | Quarterly | Comparing headline prices instead |
Timelines: what to expect month by month
Month 1 — Gap analysis, target pages and anchor plan complete. First placements commissioned. Nothing measurable happens and that is correct.
Month 2 — First links live and indexed. Possible movement on long-tail terms with low competition. Do not read anything into it either way.
Month 3 — Referring domain count visibly up. Long-tail positions firming. This is the earliest point at which the campaign is telling you anything real.
Months 4–5 — Mid-competition terms start moving. Anchor distribution should be reviewed against benchmark for the first time.
Month 6 — Meaningful organic traffic change typically appears here. The standard evaluation point for whether the programme is working.
Months 7–12 — Compounding. Links built in month one are still working; the profile shape matters more than the monthly count.
Months 12–24 — Competitive head terms come into range, if pace has been sustained. Holding position takes materially longer than reaching it.
Two constraints on pace, both worth setting expectations against at the start. Acquisition should stay around 20% of your current referring domain count per month, which means small profiles are capped by their size rather than their budget. And the second half of that timeline is the part clients are least prepared for — reaching page one is faster than holding it, because everyone above you is also still building.
Conversion rates, rejection reasons and timelines reflect campaigns run by our team across US markets, 2024–2026, and will vary by niche and publisher availability. Andrew Linksmith sells link building services and runs the process documented here. Organic traffic distribution figures: Ahrefs. Google's link guidance is published in its spam policies.