Backlink Outreach

A backlink is a link from someone else’s website to yours. Google treats each one as a vote of confidence, and so do AI assistants when they decide which brands to name. Backlink Outreach replaces the usual pile of spreadsheets and scraper tools with one place: SnowSEO finds the sites worth asking, finds the right person there, helps you write the email, sends it from your own address, and tells you when the link goes live.

New to link building? The more good sites link to you, the more traffic you earn - and the more often AI assistants mention you when someone asks about your category. It compounds slowly, so a few links a month beats a burst once a year.

The Backlink Outreach workspace (Execution → Backlink Outreach) has two views: Prospects (the sites worth asking, as a list or a board) and Outreach (where you write, send, and read replies).

The full run: filtering prospects by Mentions, opening the people found at a site, then picking a template and generating the draft with AI

The whole run, end to end: narrow the list to Mentions, open the people found at a site, then pick a template and let Generate with AI write the first draft.

Before You Start

First, make sure your brand name and website are filled in under Settings → Brand Book. SnowSEO searches for pages that mention your brand, and uses your website to leave your own pages out, so Find prospects will not run without them. Then three things need to be in place before you can send. If any are missing, the Outreach screen shows a short checklist telling you which one - and it disappears once you’re set.

1. Connect a mailbox

Outreach sends from your address, not ours. Connect it in Settings → Integrations → Sending Accounts.

2. Find a prospect with an address

Find people at a site, then choose whose address to look up before you can write to them.

3. Write a template

Save a reusable starting point in Templates. Every new draft begins from one.

The more SnowSEO knows about you, the better the sites it finds. Your tracked keywords, topic clusters, and competitor list all feed the search - a brand with ten tracked keywords and three clusters gets a far sharper list than one with none.

Prospects
Kanban
Outreach
Your Mailbox

Finding Sites Worth Asking

A prospect is one website that could link to you, together with the exact page the link would go on. The page matters more than the site: “semrush.com” tells you nothing, but “the roundup of 12 tools you’re missing from” is a decision you can make in two seconds.

The Prospects list showing the page to pitch, Domain Rating, the opportunity, odds of landing, and contact counts

Your first list is free. The first time your team opens Prospects, SnowSEO runs one search at no cost, and rows appear as they are found.After that, open the Add prospect menu and choose Find prospects for a new batch. Each search looks for genuinely new ground, so it will not sell you the same sites twice.A new row may say Checking site… for a little while. SnowSEO is reading the site’s pages to see whether it already links to you, so you can find people there once that is done.

If SnowSEO says there are no new angles right now, it isn’t broken - every search it would run has been run recently and would return the same sites. Track a few more keywords or add a topic cluster, then try again. You’re never charged for a search that would come back empty.

Know sites already? Open Add prospect → Bulk import and paste them in, one per line. If you know the exact page you want the link on, paste the full page URL rather than just the domain - that page becomes the one your email is about. To pitch a different page later, open the prospect and choose Pitch this on the page you want.

Reading the Table

Column	What it tells you
Page to pitch	The exact page your link would live on, with the site underneath
DR	Domain Rating, 0-100. How much authority the site has - higher is a better link
Opportunity	What you’d actually be asking for, with the evidence underneath
Odds	How likely the ask is to work: Likely, Possible, or Long shot
Contacts	How many people SnowSEO found at the site. Open the people panel to choose someone and use Find email there.

DR and Odds measure different things. DR is how good the link would be. Odds is how likely you are to actually get it. They often disagree, and that’s the point - a direct rival with DR 85 is a brilliant link you’ll never be given, while a DR 40 blog that already mentions you by name is nearly a sure thing.

The Tabs Across the Top

These group your list by what you’d actually do, and the counts show where the easy work is.

Tab	What these are	What you do
Listings	Directories, review sites, launch boards	Add yourself - no email needed
Broken links	Their link to you is dead	Tell them, you’re doing them a favour
Mentions	They named you but never linked	Ask for the link
Comparisons	”X vs Y” and “alternatives” pages	Ask to be included
Listicles	”Best tools for…” roundups	Ask to be added
Threads	Reddit, Quora, forum discussions	Join the conversation yourself
Others	Reviews, guides, articles, videos	Read it and decide
Competitors	Direct rivals	Nothing - they’re here so you can see them

The small icons beside a prospect show How we found it. Opportunity labels such as Offer an option and Add your link describe the practical route SnowSEO found for earning that link.

Start with Mentions and Broken links. Someone who already wrote your name is far more likely to say yes than a stranger, and telling a publisher one of their links is dead is a genuine favour before it’s ever a request.

Use Filter to narrow by any of these, plus the kind of page, the odds, or how the site was found. The search box finds a specific site.

Not Every Link Needs an Email

Some of the best links aren’t something you ask for. Emailing hi@medium.com about somebody else’s article gets you nowhere. So each site tells you what actually earns the link:

Reach out

Blogs, magazines, roundups. Someone there decides what goes on the page, so you write to them. This is the classic case.

Reach the author

A YouTube video, a Medium post, or a Substack. The platform hosts it but the author owns it, so SnowSEO points you at the author instead of the platform’s support inbox.

Do it yourself

Directories, review sites, profile pages. The link is a field on a page you control - claim the listing, add your website, done. Open the row for the exact steps.

Join the thread

Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange. Nobody grants you a link here - you answer the question properly and link where it genuinely helps.

On those last three you’ll see step-by-step instructions instead of a Find people button. That’s on purpose - there’s no inbox worth writing to, and the steps get you the link faster.

Quick Tips

Work the warm asks first. Broken links and unlinked mentions convert far better than cold pitches.
Sort by Odds when you want wins, by DR when you want trophies. Both are useful, just not at the same time.
Don’t chase everything. Twenty good sites worked properly beats two hundred sitting untouched.
Remove what you do not want. Remove from this list clears a site for now, but a later search can find it again. Block it instead and it never comes back.

The Board View

Switch between List and Kanban with the toggle on the left. The same sites and filters appear in either view; the board arranges them by progress so you can see whether you are short of sites, contacts, or follow-up.

The Kanban board with one column per stage: Prospects, Has people, Has contacts, Contacted, Negotiating, and Won

The Six Columns

Column	What’s in it	What to do next
Prospects	Nobody found at this site yet	Go and look up who works there
Has people	You know the names, no addresses yet	Pick who’s worth writing to
Has contacts	Someone has an address	Write the email
Contacted	Email sent, no reply yet	Wait
Negotiating	They replied	Answer them
Won	The link is live	Nothing - enjoy it

Each card shows the page, the site, and its Domain Rating, so you can decide without opening anything.

Moving a Card

Dragging does real work here, not just relabelling:

Drop into Has people and SnowSEO goes and finds who works at that site.
Drop into Has contacts and it opens the list of people so you can pick who to get an address for.
Drop into Contacted or Negotiating to record progress that happened elsewhere.
Drop into Won to run a paid link re-check. The card moves to Won only when SnowSEO finds a live link.

Finding people and addresses costs credits and confirms the price before anything happens. A re-check uses page crawls rather than credits. Cards move themselves when the work finishes.

Most columns follow what actually happened - people found, an address resolved, an email sent - so dragging a card back would just be undone. Contacted and Negotiating are the two you can set by hand, and a card you moved shows a small Manual chip you can click to hand control back to SnowSEO.

A board that’s all Prospects means you need contacts, not more sites. A board stacking up in Contacted means your emails aren’t landing - try a warmer angle before searching for more sites.

Finding Who to Ask

Click Find people on a site and SnowSEO looks up people who work there: names, job titles, and seniority. It costs 5 credits per site, is refunded when nothing new is found, and is not available for sites that already link to you. Choose at least three job titles to search, and SnowSEO can return up to 100 people.Then click Find email in the people panel for the person you want. SnowSEO looks up and checks their address. Find all emails shows the total before you confirm, so filter the list down first.

The People panel for a site, listing each person with their job title, seniority, employer and location, and the cost to look up each address

Read the job title, not the seniority badge. For a link on a blog post, a content editor will answer you far more reliably than the CEO.

Each address gets a plain verdict on whether it’s safe to send:

Label	What it means
Confirmed	Their mail server confirmed the inbox is real. Send.
Might bounce	Their server couldn’t confirm this exact inbox. Often fine, but it may bounce.
Bad address	Rejected outright. Don’t send - it will bounce.
Not checked	Their server couldn’t be reached. Your call.

Skip Bad address rows. Bounces damage your sending reputation, and once that’s hurt, even your good emails start landing in spam.

Writing the Email

Every draft starts from a saved template. Open Templates and either write your own or start from one of seven built-in examples: Fit Alongside Others, Unlinked Brand Mention, Broken Link Pitch, Get Listed, Guest Post Pitch, Resource Suggestion, and Collaboration Idea.

The template picker open in the composer

Templates can carry placeholders that fill themselves in for each person:

Placeholder	Fills in with
`{{first_name}}`	The contact’s first name
`{{contact_name}}`	The contact’s full name
`{{contact_role}}`	The contact’s job title
`{{target_site_name}}`	Their site name
`{{prospect_domain}}`	Their domain
`{{target_page_title}}`	The page you are pitching about
`{{target_page_url}}`	The page URL you are pitching about
`{{broken_link_url}}`	Their dead link to your site, when present
`{{anchor_text}}`	Their link text, when present
`{{competitors_on_page}}`	Competitors named on the page
`{{display_name}}`	The sending mailbox’s display name
`{{your_brand}}`	Your brand name
`{{your_domain}}`	Your website domain

Add placeholders from the template editor. When you open a draft for a site they’re already filled in, so you always read the words that will actually be sent.Click Generate with AI and SnowSEO writes a first draft using what it already knows about that page - what it is, whether it mentioned you, whether it covers other products like yours. It replaces whatever is in the editor, and it never sends anything on its own.To write to several sites at once, tick them in Ready. You write one email, each copy fills in its own placeholders, and Preview shows how it reads once filled in.

What gets a reply:

Say something true about that page. A line that would work for any website is a wasted line.
Skip “I love your blog!” - it reads as a form letter, because it is one.
One ask, stated plainly, near the end. Give them the exact link you want.
Make it easy. “It’s a one-word edit” beats “would you consider featuring us”.

Sending and Replies

The Outreach screen has four tabs, which are really one email’s life story:

Ready

Sites with an address and nothing sent yet. Pick one, write, queue it.

Queued

Written and waiting to go out. Edit it, send it now, or unqueue it back into a draft while it is still queued.

Sent

Gone. Each row is the full conversation.

Replied

Someone answered. Read and reply straight from here.

The Outreach screen: the four tabs and the queue on the left, the draft in the middle, and why this site is worth pitching on the right

The panel on the right is the case for that site: its Domain Rating, whether it already links to you, the exact page you are pitching, and why it came up. Queue & next adds the email to the queue and opens the next site. Send now sends it straight away when your mailbox has room today, and otherwise it waits in the queue.

Why emails don’t all go out at once. Each mailbox can only send so many emails a day, and a new one starts with just a few (see the Your Mailbox tab). Queued mail goes out spread across the day, and anything over today’s allowance simply waits for tomorrow. The counter in the header shows how many emails went out in the last 24 hours against your allowance - if nothing seems to be sending, that’s usually why.

A queued email can be edited, sent now, or unqueued. Unqueue keeps it as a draft. Once a row is already sending or sent, it cannot be pulled back.

Drafts save automatically, so you can leave a half-written email and come back to it. Replies land in the Replied tab, where you can answer them yourself or have SnowSEO draft a reply for 1 credit.

Checking the Link Went Live

Winning a link is not the end - pages get rebuilt and links get removed. Use Re-check for a link on a site and SnowSEO crawls its pages to tell you whether the link is there, whether they mention you without linking, or whether it is now dead. It uses page crawls rather than credits. When a link is confirmed, the site moves to Won on its own.To have this happen on a schedule, turn on Auto re-check links in Settings → Automation → Backlinks and pick how often. Every 7 days suits most people.

Mailbox Pacing and Health

Outreach sends from your own address. To connect a mailbox, including Gmail app passwords and settings for each provider, see Sending Accounts.A brand-new address that suddenly sends a hundred cold emails looks, to every email provider, exactly like a hacked account. So SnowSEO eases each new mailbox in and builds it up over four weeks:

When	Emails a day
Day 1	2
Around day 7	About 10
Around day 14	About 20
Day 28 onwards	30

You don’t have to manage any of this. It happens on its own, and anything over today’s allowance waits for tomorrow. A mailbox that has been quiet for a week eases back in the same way.

SnowSEO protects your domain if emails start bouncing. It spots bounces through the “delivery failed” emails that come back to your mailbox, so keep Also read replies on. If too many bounce, the mailbox sends at most 10 a day until things settle, rather than stopping. Your domain’s email records matter too: if they’re missing, the mailbox is also capped at 10 a day. Turning pacing off in the mailbox settings removes both caps. Both are explained in Sending Accounts.

Need to send more than 30 a day? Connect another mailbox and pick All mailboxes in the Outreach header - each email goes out from whichever mailbox has the most room left. Picking one mailbox sends only from that address.If a mailbox shows Needs attention, its login stopped working - open it in Sending Accounts and click Reconfigure to enter the details again.

What It Costs

Action	Cost
Your first search	Free, once per team
Find prospects	25 credits per search
Find people at a site	5 credits per site
Find email for a person	10 credits, refunded if no address is found
Generate with AI	1 credit per draft
Re-check for a link	1 page crawl per page
Sending, templates, replies	Free

Anything that costs credits or page crawls shows you the price before you confirm.

Exporting Your Data

Open the ⋮ menu on the Prospects screen to export prospects, contacts, people, pages, or email history. Only Prospects and Contacts exports use the filters currently applied to the list.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until backlinks help my rankings?

Usually 3-6 weeks after the link goes live, once Google has recrawled the page. One link rarely moves anything on its own - link building compounds, so ten decent links over three months does far more than one great link in week one.Watch it in Rank Tracking: look at the trend for the page being linked to, not your site overall.

Where do these sites come from?

Four places, and the How we found it icons on each row show which: pages found by searching for the kind of content that links out (“best X tools”, “write for us”), sites already ranking for keywords you track, pages that AI assistants cite about your category, and anything you added yourself.Your competitor list is used to leave rivals out, and to spot pages that cover them and not you - one of the best openings there is.

A site I know is great shows 'Long shot'. Is that wrong?

Probably not. Odds measures how likely they are to say yes, not how good the link would be. A site that sells something similar to you, has no visible contact route, or never links out to anyone is a long shot however much you’d like the link. Hover the Odds cell to see why, including the nofollow note where it applies, and pitch it anyway if you disagree.

Some sites have no 'Find people' button. Why?

Because emailing wouldn’t work there. A YouTube video or a Reddit thread isn’t controlled by the site’s support inbox - it belongs to the creator or the community. Those rows show you the actual route to the link instead. Directory and review-site rows work the same way: the link is a field on a profile you can claim yourself.

Will this hurt my email address or my domain?

Not if you let the pacing do its job. SnowSEO starts new mailboxes slowly, builds up over about four weeks, spreads messages through the day, and caps a mailbox at 10 emails a day if its bounces get too high (as long as Also read replies is on, since that’s how bounces are spotted), rather than stopping sending completely. You can also turn off pacing in mailbox settings if you want to send at full pace immediately.If you’d rather keep cold outreach separate from your normal mail, use a dedicated address - a second mailbox on your domain works fine.

Gmail keeps rejecting my password.

Google doesn’t accept normal passwords here. Turn on 2-Step Verification in your Google Account, then create an app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and paste that in instead.If that page won’t open, either 2-Step Verification isn’t on yet, or you’re on a Workspace account whose admin has blocked app passwords. This walkthrough covers both cases.

My replies aren't showing up.

Also read replies is on by default when you connect a Custom SMTP mailbox. It needs working IMAP settings; without them, mail can still send but replies stay in your normal email app. Review the reading settings in Settings → Integrations → Sending Accounts.If reply sync is on and you are still waiting, use Check for replies rather than waiting for the next automatic check.

Can I unsend an email?

No. Once an email is sending or has left the mailbox, it is gone. While it is still Queued, you can edit it, send it now, or unqueue it. Unqueue keeps the writing as a draft so you can return to it later.

An address says 'Might bounce'. Should I send?

Often yes, if it’s the right person. Their server couldn’t confirm this specific inbox, which is common on company domains and no sign the person isn’t there, but some of these do bounce. If you have a Confirmed address at the same site, use that one. Never send to Bad address: that’s a confirmed rejection.

I sent an email but it still says 'Contacted'.

That’s right until something changes. Negotiating appears when they reply, and Won when the link is confirmed live. If they’ve told you the link is in, run Re-check for a link and SnowSEO will move it.

What if I run out of credits halfway through?

Nothing breaks and nothing is half-charged. Anything that can’t be paid for is refused before it runs, and work that found nothing - a search with no new results, a person with no findable address - is refunded automatically.

What's the difference between a dofollow and nofollow link?

A dofollow link passes ranking authority to your site; a nofollow one doesn’t. Most blog posts, news articles, and roundups are dofollow. Social profiles, forum posts, and most video descriptions are nofollow.Nofollow links are still worth having - they bring real visitors and AI assistants cite them. Just do not count them as ranking wins. Where a route only produces nofollow links, SnowSEO notes it in the Odds hover.

Can my whole team use this?

Yes. Everyone on the brand sees the same sites, templates, and conversations, and mailboxes are connected per brand rather than per person - so outreach doesn’t stop when someone’s away.

Getting Started

Analysis

Planning

Execution

Tools

Others

Backlink Outreach

Before You Start

1. Connect a mailbox

2. Find a prospect with an address

3. Write a template