Link Prospector

Summary#

Link Prospector finds websites that already link to your closest backlink competitors but not to you. Every prospect is a real domain from the provider's backlink index, carries a real authority score, and arrives with a priority tier and a ready-to-send outreach opener grounded in which competitor it links to.

Purpose#

Cold link building fails because the list is wrong, not because the email is bad. A site that has never linked to anything in your category will not start with you. A site that already links to your competitor has proved three things: it publishes in your niche, it links out, and it is reachable. This tool builds your list from that proof, so outreach starts from "relevant" rather than "cold".

Overview#

Enter a domain. Metric Vault asks the provider's backlink index which domains compete with it for links, takes the strongest of those competitors, and pulls the domains referring to them, ordered by authority. Anything already linking to your own domain is filtered out. What remains is a deduplicated, authority-sorted list of up to 25 proven, reachable link targets.

Each prospect is then scored. The priority score weights domain authority at 70% and the size of the prospect's own backlink pool at 30%, then buckets the result into tiers: A+ at 75 or above, A at 60, B at 45, C at 30 and D below that. Each row also gets a one-line reason and an outreach opener naming the competitor it already links to.

Unlike most tools here, Link Prospector is never served from the shared data cache and makes no cached provider calls. Every run reads the live backlink index.

Benefits#

• The prospect list is evidence-based: every domain has already linked to a rival.
• Real authority figures from the backlink index, not guesses.
• A priority tier tells you the order to work the list in.
• Each prospect arrives with a written opener that references the specific competitor link, so the first email is not generic.
• Always live — no cached prospect lists.

Use Cases#

• Starting a link campaign. You need a first list of 20 or so credible targets and a reason to contact each one.
• Competitor gap. A rival's rankings jumped; seeing who links to them shows where the authority came from.
• Prioritizing a stalled campaign. You have a long list already but no order to work it in; the tiers give you one.
• Digital PR shortlisting. The high-authority highlights are the handful of sites worth a bespoke pitch rather than a template.
• Client reporting. The prospect count and average authority make a defensible scope for a link-building proposal.

Requirements#

• A signed-in Metric Vault account.
• A paid plan. The Free plan covers the zero-credit technical tools only.
• One credit available. See How credits work.
• A domain that has a backlink profile in the provider's index. Brand-new sites with no links usually return nothing.

Permissions#

Plan decides access; team role does not.

Cost#

1 credit per run, printed on the button as Find Prospects · 1 report.

It is a light tool: recorded in your usage, never blocked by the monthly premium allowance, subject to the 100 light-tool calls per hour fair-use limit.

Because Link Prospector is not part of the shared data cache, there is no cheaper cached path — every run is a live lookup and costs the credit. Reopening a saved result from the Library or from the "You already ran this" prompt is still free. See How credits work and Result caching and freshness.

Navigation Path#

Dashboard → Competitors & Backlinks → Link Prospector

Inputs#

Step-by-Step Guide#

1. Open Dashboard → Competitors & Backlinks → Link Prospector.
2. Optional: press See example to view a real stored report at no cost.
3. Type the domain you want prospects for into the main input.
4. Click Find Prospects · 1 report, or press Enter in the input field.
5. If you have run this domain before, choose Open saved result (free) or Run fresh (1 credits).
6. Wait about 15 seconds — 12 to 25 seconds is typical.
7. Work down the prospect table by tier, starting at A+.
8. Use Export Prospects to take the list into a spreadsheet, or Generate Outreach to build the emails.

Reading the Results#

The header carries the domain favicon, the name, a Live DataForSEO backlinks badge, the combined backlink reach of the prospect pool, and an estimated monthly value figure. Two buttons sit beside it: Export Prospects and Generate Outreach.

The four KPI tiles.

• Total Prospects — the curated link targets found, up to 25. Fewer than five usually means the domain has too thin a backlink profile for the competitor lookup to work; run Backlink Profile to confirm.
• Avg Domain Authority — the mean authority of the pool, tagged Strong at 50 or above and Mixed below. A mixed pool is still workable; it just means the top of the list matters more.
• High-DA (60+) — how many prospects clear authority 60, labelled pitch these first. These are the links that move rankings.
• A+ Tier — how many scored 75 or above on the priority score, labelled priority 75+. This is your week-one list.

What This Means states the findings in plain sentences with tone chips: how many proven targets were found, how many are high authority, and the reminder that every domain here already links to a competitor.

Quick Actions gives the export and outreach shortcuts.

High-DA Highlights pulls out up to six prospects at authority 60 or above with the reason each is a fit. Treat these as bespoke-pitch candidates rather than template recipients.

Domain Authority Distribution buckets the pool into 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79 and 80-100. A pool weighted to the left is a volume campaign; one weighted right is a relationship campaign. Both are valid, but they need different amounts of time per prospect.

Prospects by Competitor Source shows which of your backlink competitors each group of prospects came from, and how many came from each. The competitor contributing the most prospects is the one whose link profile is closest to the one you want — study their content, not just their links.

Top Prospects by Backlink Reach ranks prospects by the size of their own backlink pool. A site with high reach passes more than its authority score alone suggests, because it is itself well cited.

Competitor Anchor Cloud summarizes the competitor sources behind the pool.

All Prospects is the working table:

Four columns — type, relevance, contact method and traffic — are deliberately left empty. There is no real data source behind them, so Metric Vault leaves them blank rather than filling them in with a guess. Find the contact route on the prospect's own site.

Recommended Outreach Plan closes the report with the working order: start with the highest-authority prospects, find the exact page linking to your competitor, lead with what is in it for them, and plan volume around a 5–10% conversion rate. The recommendation panel below can expand this into a full plan; see Get Recommendations.

Examples#

Screenshots#

Tips#

• Run it on a competitor's domain as well as your own. The prospect pool changes completely and often surfaces publications you had not considered.
• Sort by priority score rather than DA. A DA 55 site with a huge backlink pool frequently outranks a DA 62 site with almost none.
• Open the competitor's linking page before you write. The pitch is far stronger when it names the exact article.
• Export early. The list is not cached, so a re-run tomorrow can return a slightly different pool.

Best Practices#

• Work in tier order and stop when the tier stops converting. Chasing D-tier rows costs more time than the links are worth.
• Personalise the generated opener. It is a grounded starting point with a <name> placeholder, not a send-ready email.
• Pair with Backlink Hygiene Toolkit before a campaign so you are not building on top of a toxic profile.
• Re-run quarterly. Competitors gain links continuously, and new referring domains appear in the pool.

Common Mistakes#

• Entering a topic. The placeholder reads e.g. email marketing, but the engine looks up backlink competitors of a domain. A topic returns the empty card.
• Judging a prospect on DA alone. The priority score exists because reach matters too.
• Sending the generated pitch unedited. It contains a <name> placeholder and no specific page reference.
• Expecting contact details. Contact method is intentionally blank; find it on the prospect's site.
• Assuming the list is exhaustive. It is capped at 25 of the strongest candidates, drawn from your two closest backlink competitors.

Limitations#

• Up to 25 prospects per run.
• Prospects are drawn from the referring domains of your top two backlink competitors, out of the six competitors identified.
• Up to 40 referring domains are read per competitor, ordered by authority, before deduplication.
• Type, relevance, contact method and prospect traffic are blank by design — no verified source exists for them.
• Authority is derived from the provider's own rank metric, so it will not match a third-party toolbar score exactly.
• The tool needs an existing backlink profile to work; a brand-new domain returns nothing.
• Results are never cached, so two runs on consecutive days can differ slightly.

Troubleshooting#

FAQs#

How is this different from Backlink Profile? Backlink Profile analyses the links a domain already has, for 5 credits. Link Prospector finds links it does not have yet, for 1 credit. Run the profile to understand your position, then the prospector to grow it.

Do these sites definitely accept links? No tool can promise that. What is proved is that they publish in your niche and have linked to a competitor, which is the strongest available signal short of asking.

Where does the domain authority number come from? It is derived from the provider's backlink rank metric for each referring domain, scaled to 0–100. It will differ from other vendors' scores because the underlying index differs.

Why is contact method empty? Because there is no verified source for it. Metric Vault leaves fields blank rather than filling them with plausible guesses.

Does it cost anything to re-open the result later? No. Saved results are free to reopen for 90 days. Only a fresh run costs a credit.

Can I run it on the Free plan? No. Any paid plan unlocks it, and it keeps working after your monthly premium allowance is spent because it costs fewer than 3 credits.