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Backlink Services In Your Agent OS: Audit, Prospect And Draft Outreach Before You Hire Anyone

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Backlink services start with research your Agent OS can do for you: auditing the links you already have, finding relevant sites, and drafting outreach for a person to check.

Do that groundwork yourself and you will brief any provider far better, or skip one entirely for the easy wins.

Below is a quick start, five copy-paste prompts and a clear point at which to hand the job to a pro.

If you would like that point judged for you, book a free strategy session with Julian's team.

Quick Start: Set Up A Link Workspace In Ten Minutes

1. Create a folder called link-building in your Agent OS workspace.
2. Export your referring domains from Search Console's Links report and save it as links.csv.
3. Add pages.md listing the five pages you most want other sites to cite.
4. Add business.md with your exact name, location, services and what makes you different.
5. Save Google's link spam section and Bing's link scheme section as rules.md.
6. Set the agent to ask before any send, submit or publish action.

That final setting is the important one: every prompt below produces drafts and lists, never live emails.

The Rules Your Agent Works From

Google's spam policies define link spam as links built primarily to manipulate rankings, and list buying links, link swaps, automated link creation and low-quality directories as examples.

The same page allows paid links when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

Google's outbound link guide prefers sponsored for paid placements and ugc for comments and forum posts.

Bing's Webmaster Guidelines call link buying, link spamming and private networks link schemes.

Put those rules in rules.md so the agent checks every idea against them.

The Service Types Your Agent Should Recognise

PBNs and bulk link packages are not on the list, because both fall outside Google's and Bing's rules.

Prompt 1: Audit Your Current Backlink Profile

Read links.csv and rules.md.
For each referring domain, label it: editorial, directory, forum, partner, paid, or unknown.
Flag: sitewide footer links, repeated exact-match anchors, clusters of near-identical sites,
and any paid or sponsored placement whose link lacks rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
Output a table sorted by risk, with one line of reasoning per flag.
Do not contact anyone. Draft only.

Review the flags yourself, because the agent can only see what the export shows.

Start with the high-risk rows: a mislabelled paid link is usually a quick fix, often just an email asking the site owner to add rel="sponsored".

Log every fix with the date so you can show the history later.

Prompt 2: Research Relevant Link Prospects

Using business.md and pages.md, find 40 websites that publish on my topic
and would plausibly link to one of my pages because it helps their readers.
Prefer: industry blogs, resource pages, local news, trade associations, suppliers.
Exclude: sites that sell links openly, link farms, sites with no topic focus.
For each: URL, page that could link, which of my pages fits, and why in one line.
Save to prospects.md. Research only, no outreach.

Small-business example: a dog groomer in a market town would get local vets, pet charities, breed clubs and the town's what's-on blog back as prospects.

📞 Want a team to check your prospect list?

Bring your Agent OS audit and prospect list, and Julian's team will sort the strong targets from the weak ones. Or Book a free SEO strategy session straight from the calendar.

→ Book your free strategy session

Prompt 3: Draft Personalised Outreach Emails

For the top 10 prospects in prospects.md, read each site's most recent relevant article.
Draft a short email (under 120 words) to the editor that:
- mentions one specific point from their article,
- offers the matching page from pages.md as a resource for their readers,
- makes no payment offer and asks for nothing in return.
Save each draft to outreach/drafts/. Do NOT send. Draft only.

Send each one yourself, edited in your own voice.

Google names "using automated programs or services to create links" as link spam, so a human stays on every send.

Prompt 4: Check Every Live Placement

Read placements.csv (columns: live_url, target_url, paid_yes_no).
For each row, fetch live_url and find the anchor pointing to target_url.
Report: found or missing, anchor text, rel attribute, and whether the page is indexable.
Flag any row where paid_yes_no is yes and rel is not sponsored or nofollow.
Read-only. Do not edit any site.

Run this monthly and keep the old reports so you can spot lost links.

Prompt 5: Vet A Provider's Proposal

Read proposal.pdf and rules.md.
List every link method the proposal mentions and map each one to: earned, labelled paid, or link scheme.
Flag any guarantee of rankings or metrics, any private network, and any unlabelled paid link.
Then write 8 questions I should ask this provider, based on Google's hiring guide.
Draft only.

Google's hiring guide says nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking and warns against link popularity schemes, so those two flags matter most.

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A Weekly Workflow That Fits Around A Business

• Monday: run Prompt 2 for one page and review the list.
• Tuesday: run Prompt 3 and send five edited emails yourself.
• Thursday: reply to responses and agree any edits.
• Month end: run Prompt 4 and update the placement sheet.

Anchor text stays descriptive, as Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends: the page title or brand name, not a stuffed keyword.

What The Agent Will Get Wrong

Agents are quick, but they guess when the data runs out.

A prospect list can include sites that look relevant yet openly sell links, so open each one before you pitch it.

Outreach drafts can sound generic, so add one line only you could write, such as a local detail or a real customer question.

The profile audit only sees what the export holds, and Search Console's Links report is a sample, not every link on the web.

Treat each output as a first pass that saves you research time, not as a decision.

Keep Records A Pro Can Pick Up

Good records make any later handover quick.

Keep prospects.md, the sent emails, every reply and placements.csv in the same folder.

Mark which links came from outreach, which from PR and which, if any, were paid.

When a specialist takes over, they can see what has been tried, which editors replied and which pages earn links.

That history is often worth more than the links themselves, because it shows which of your pages people actually want to cite.

The AI Profit Boardroom trainings show how to set up workspaces like this one.

A Second Small-Business Example

A family-run café wants links from local food writers and event pages.

1. Add a page listing its suppliers, with a short story on each farm or bakery.
2. Run Prompt 2 to find the suppliers' own sites, local food blogs and the council's events listings.
3. Run Prompt 3 to draft notes to each supplier, suggesting they list the café as a stockist.
4. Send the notes in person or by email, then run Prompt 4 a month later.

Suppliers linking to a stockist is exactly the kind of editorial link that needs no payment and no label.

When To Hand It To A Pro

The agent handles research and drafts well, but outreach at scale is a relationship job.

Bring in a specialist when you need steady placements every month, when digital PR needs real journalist contacts, or when your audit turns up a messy history of paid links.

Goldie Agency describes its link building as "Manual outreach, no PBNs", with research, personalised outreach, publisher-specific content, a quality check and a live-link report.

Julian Goldie, who founded it, wrote the Amazon best-seller SEO Link Building Mastery, and his about page reports more than a thousand campaigns delivered.

For the agency side, see choosing a link building agency.

Want to keep the skills in-house instead? The AI Profit Boardroom is where you learn AI SEO yourself.

📞 Free SEO strategy session

Share your audit and outreach results and Julian's team will plan the next placements with you. Book a free SEO strategy session in the calendar.

→ Book your free strategy session

Not ready yet? Book a free SEO strategy session later, once your first month of drafts is done.

🎁 Two free resources for your link workspace

Grab the 200+ AI SEO Prompts and the free link building book to extend these prompts.

→ Get the 200+ AI SEO Prompts

FAQ

Can my Agent OS build backlinks for me?

It can audit your links, research prospects and draft outreach, but you should send every email yourself. Google lists automated link creation as link spam.

What should go in the rules file?

Google's link spam section and its guidance on rel="sponsored", plus Bing's link scheme section. The agent then checks every idea against them.

How often should I check my placements?

Monthly is enough for most small sites. Keep each report so you can see which links have gone missing.

When should I hire a link building team?

When you need steady placements every month, real journalist contacts for digital PR, or help cleaning up old paid links.

Final word on Backlink Services In Your Agent OS

Run the five prompts, keep a human on every send, and when you want a team for the outreach, book a free strategy session about backlink services for your site.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Link Building Agency Groundwork: 5 Prompts In Your Agent OS

→ White Label Link Building Groundwork In Your Agent OS

→ Outsource SEO Services: Do the Groundwork In Your Agent OS

→ Hire SEO Agency Prep: Do The Groundwork In Your Agent OS

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