Free Link Prospecting Template [2026]
A complete link building pipeline in one spreadsheet: find prospects, score them out of 80 before you spend outreach on them, track every touch, and log the links you actually win. Includes six outreach email templates and a conversion dashboard.
Download Free Template
Get instant access - no signup required
8-tab Excel workbook with a scoring model, outreach tracker, and pipeline dashboard
Free to use. No signup required. Attribution appreciated but not required.
What's Included
8 organized worksheets
📋 Instructions Tab: How to run the pipeline and what order to work in
⚙️ Campaign Setup Tab: Target pages, link goals, budget, sending limits, and your offer
🔎 Prospect Database Tab: 120 rows with domain, contact, metrics, and discovery method
📊 Qualification Scorecard Tab: Score 7 factors out of 10 with automatic totals and verdicts
📧 Outreach Tracker Tab: Every touch from first send through two follow-ups to outcome
✉️ Email Templates Tab: Six outreach angles — broken link, resource page, data, mentions, quotes, guest posts
🔗 Link Placement Log Tab: Links won, with anchor, cost, and 30/90-day live checks
📈 Pipeline Dashboard Tab: Conversion rate at each stage against benchmarks, plus cost per link
Use Cases
How SEO professionals use this template
Key Features
Template Preview
Excel Worksheet Tabs (8 Tabs Total)
🔎 Prospect Database
Prospects with discovery method
This is a preview. Download the full template for every row across all 8 tabs.
📊 Template by PikaSEO.com
How to Use This Template
Define the campaign and the offer
Fill the Campaign Setup tab first. If you cannot articulate why a stranger would link to your asset in one sentence, the outreach will not work no matter how good the prospect list is.
Build the prospect list
Populate the Prospect Database from competitor backlink gaps, resource pages, broken links, unlinked mentions, and roundups. Record the discovery method — it is the only way to learn which source is actually producing links.
Score before you send
Run every prospect through the Qualification Scorecard. Contact the 60+ scores first. A 30-prospect list qualified to 80+ beats a 500-prospect blast, and it protects your sending domain from being flagged.
Track every touch, then measure the leak
Log sends and follow-ups in the Outreach Tracker, placements in the Link Placement Log, and read the Pipeline Dashboard to find the leaking stage. Healthy replies but few placements means the problem is your asset, not your outreach.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Link Prospecting Template
What is link prospecting?
Link prospecting is the process of finding and qualifying websites that could realistically link to you, before any outreach happens. It covers discovery (competitor backlink gaps, resource pages, broken links, unlinked mentions, journalist queries) and qualification (deciding which of those prospects are worth spending an email on). It is deliberately separate from outreach: prospecting decides who to contact, outreach decides what to say.
How do I qualify a link prospect?
This template scores seven factors out of 10 each, for a total out of 80: topical relevance, domain authority, organic traffic, the link context you would get, editorial quality, outbound link hygiene, and whether a real contact is findable. Score 60 or above means contact now, 40 to 59 is a backup, and below 40 is not worth the send. The scorecard calculates the total and the verdict automatically.
Is Domain Rating the most important factor when prospecting?
No, and treating it that way is the most common prospecting mistake. A DR 35 site in your exact niche, linking from body copy, passes more useful signal than a DR 80 general news site linking from a footer. This template weights relevance and link context equally with authority for that reason. High DR with poor outbound link hygiene — sites selling links or publishing 100+ outbound links per page — is often worth less than the number suggests.
What is a good response rate for link building outreach?
For cold outreach, 8 to 15 percent reply rate is good and 2 to 5 percent placement rate is normal. Open rates of 40 to 60 percent are typical. The Pipeline Dashboard in this template lists these benchmarks next to your actuals so you can find the leaking stage. Healthy opens with poor replies means the pitch is wrong; healthy replies with poor placements usually means the asset is not compelling enough to link to.
How many prospects do I need to get one link?
At a 3 percent placement rate you need roughly 33 contacted prospects per link, which after qualification typically means sourcing 80 to 120 raw prospects. This is why the qualification step matters so much: improving your placement rate from 2 to 5 percent more than halves the prospecting work needed for the same number of links.
How do I find link prospects?
The highest-yield methods are competitor backlink gap analysis (sites linking to two competitors but not you), resource page searches, broken link building, unlinked brand mentions, journalist request platforms, and existing roundups or listicles in your niche. The Prospect Database has a Discovery Method column precisely so you can compare which of these is producing links for your niche rather than guessing.
Should I send follow-up emails?
Yes, but cap it at two. The Outreach Tracker has exactly two follow-up columns for that reason. A single follow-up typically adds meaningfully to reply rates; a second adds a little; a third mostly generates spam complaints. Track sends per domain rather than per contact — two people at the same publication comparing your emails is the fastest way to lose that relationship permanently.
Why should I recheck links after 90 days?
Because editorial links disappear more often than most teams assume. Site redesigns, content refreshes, CMS migrations, and editor turnover all remove links quietly. The Link Placement Log has 30-day and 90-day live-check columns, and if fewer than 80 percent of your links survive to 90 days you are effectively buying churn rather than building authority.
What should I put in a link building outreach email?
A specific reason you are writing to that person, evidence you read their work, and a clear single ask. The six templates in this workbook follow that structure for the broken link, resource page, original data, unlinked mention, expert quote, and guest contribution angles. Every template has bracketed placeholders that must be replaced — templates sent unedited are the main reason outreach fails.
How do I calculate cost per link?
Total campaign spend divided by links placed, where spend includes tooling, content and asset production, and any placement fees — not just outreach time. The Pipeline Dashboard calculates this automatically. The useful comparison is against what equivalent placements would cost to buy, and against the trend over time: a rising average DR with a stable cost per link means your qualification is working.
Can I use this template for digital PR campaigns?
Yes. Digital PR uses the same pipeline with a different offer — the Campaign Setup tab has an Asset section for original data, studies, or tools, and the Email Templates tab includes an original-data angle built for journalist outreach. The main difference in practice is that PR campaigns concentrate placements into a short window, so the 30-day and 90-day link checks matter more than usual.
Is this link prospecting template free?
Yes. The Excel file downloads immediately with no signup or email required. All formulas are unlocked so you can reweight the scorecard for your niche, and the PikaSEO branding row can be deleted if you want to white-label it for client work.