7 Things to Prepare Before You Start Building Backlinks

I moderate a link building community, and every week the same question shows up in the queue: “I just bought a domain, what do I do first?” The person usually has a fresh WordPress install, a handful of half-written posts, and a browser tab open to some backlink vendor they found at 1 a.m. They want to start buying links today. That is the moment where most first-timers quietly waste their first few hundred dollars.

So here is the answer I keep posting, reformatted as a numbered list, because the same seven items come up every single time. If you are doing this for the first time, work through them in order. If you are already partway in and something feels off, scan the list and find the step you skipped — it is almost always step three or step five.

One note before we start: if you would rather hand the whole thing to a team that already does this daily, seoboost is the kind of service I point people toward when they want DR, DA and TF backlinks handled by someone who does it constantly. But even if you outsource, you still need the groundwork below. Vendors can place links; they cannot fix a site that is not ready to receive them.

1. Get Your Site Ready Before Anyone Links to It

Imagine a stranger clicks a link to your site from a well-known blog. What do they see? If the answer is a half-finished homepage, a broken menu, and a “coming soon” banner, the link is wasted. Worse, the editor who placed it may notice and never work with you again.

Before you buy or request a single link, make sure these are true:

The homepage clearly states what the site is about within the first screen. There is a working contact page and an about page. At least five to ten substantive articles are published, not placeholder text. Navigation works on mobile. There are no obvious broken links in the main menu. Page speed is not embarrassing — run a quick test and fix anything that takes more than a few seconds to load.

This step feels slow and unglamorous, and it is the one people skip most often. It is also the one that determines whether your later links actually move rankings or just sit there looking pretty in a spreadsheet.

2. Decide What Authority Metrics You Actually Care About

New site owners hear “domain authority” and assume there is one number that matters. There are three you will run into constantly, and they measure different things.

Ahrefs DR estimates the strength of a site’s backlink profile on a 0–100 scale. Moz DA does something similar with a different index and a different formula. Majestic TF measures how close a page is to trusted seed sites, which is a different question entirely. A site can have a high DA and a mediocre TF, or the reverse. None of them are Google metrics, and none of them are ranking factors in themselves.

For a first project, pick one as your primary yardstick and use the others as a sanity check. If a site claims DR 60 but its TF is 3 and its traffic graph is flat, something is off. If all three are reasonably consistent and the site has real content, you are probably looking at a legitimate placement.

Write your target numbers down before you shop. “I want referring domains from sites with DR 30 or higher, TF 15 or higher, and evidence of organic traffic” is a rule you can apply consistently. “I want good links” is not.

3. Audit Your Existing Profile So You Know Your Starting Point

Pull your current backlink profile into a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic and export it. Then answer four questions:

How many referring domains do you have right now? What is the average authority of those domains? Are there any spammy or toxic links pointing at you? Which pages on your site are earning links naturally, and which have none?

This matters because link building is not a flat activity. If you already have forty referring domains from low-quality directories, adding ten good ones will feel like pushing a boulder uphill. If you have a clean profile and three solid links, ten more good ones can move things noticeably.

It also tells you what to avoid. If your profile is already full of directory submissions and comment links, do not add more of the same. Go the other direction.

Mark the pages that have zero links. Those are your priority targets, because a link to a page with no authority is doing more work than a link to a page that already ranks.

4. Choose Your Link Types Before You Choose Your Vendors

There is no single best link type. There is only the right mix for your situation. Here is how I explain the main options to people who are new to this.

Guest posting means writing an article that gets published on someone else’s site, with a link back to yours in the body or author bio. It is the slowest option and the most defensible, because the link sits inside real editorial content on a site with its own audience. If you can write, this should be the backbone of your plan.

PBN backlinks come from private networks of sites built specifically to pass authority. They work quickly and they carry real risk if the network is poorly maintained or obviously footprinted. Some agencies run clean, well-managed networks; others do not. If you go this route, treat it as a supplement, not a foundation.

Niche edits and link insertions place your link inside existing articles that already have age and authority. They tend to be faster than guest posts and more natural-looking than a brand-new page, provided the host page is relevant to your topic.

For a first campaign, a reasonable split is roughly 60% guest posts, 25% niche edits, and 15% PBN or other supplementary links. Adjust based on your risk tolerance and how competitive your niche is, but do not put everything in one bucket.

5. Set a Budget and a Timeline That Match Reality

The single most common mistake I see is expecting results in two weeks. Links take time to be crawled, indexed, and factored into rankings. A guest post you place today may not show any measurable effect for four to eight weeks, and sometimes longer.

Here is a realistic first-campaign timeline for a new site:

Weeks 1–2: groundwork, outreach, and content preparation. Weeks 3–6: links go live and start getting indexed. Weeks 7–12: early ranking movement on low-competition terms. Months 4–6: meaningful movement on mid-competition terms, assuming consistent link velocity.

Budget-wise, a first campaign of ten to fifteen quality links is a reasonable starting point. Ten good links beat fifty cheap ones every time, and the cheap ones often cost more to clean up later than they saved you upfront.

Set a monthly number and stick to it. Sporadic bursts of twenty links followed by three months of nothing look unnatural. Steady, moderate link velocity looks like a site that is genuinely growing.

6. Prepare Your Assets: Content, Anchors, and Target Pages

Before outreach starts, have these ready:

A list of target URLs — specific pages, not just your homepage. A homepage-only link profile looks lazy. Spread links across service pages, blog posts, and category pages.

A set of anchor text variations. Exact-match anchors like “best blue widgets” should be a small minority. Most of your anchors should be branded, natural phrases, or the page title itself. If every link uses the same commercial anchor, that pattern is easy to spot.

A short pitch template for outreach, plus two or three topic ideas you can offer a host site. Editors respond to pitches that include a concrete article idea, not “I would love to contribute.”

A simple tracking sheet with columns for the target URL, the host site, the anchor used, the date placed, and the current status. You will thank yourself for this in three months when you cannot remember which site you already pitched.

7. Know How You Will Measure Whether It Is Working

Before you start, open a rank tracker and record your current positions for ten to twenty keywords. Then record your referring domain count and your three authority metrics. Save all of it.

Check in monthly. Look at three things: referring domains gained, ranking movement on your tracked keywords, and organic traffic trend. Do not panic if one month looks flat — link building is lumpy, and a single month is noise. Look at the three-month trend instead.

If after three months you have added ten to fifteen quality links and nothing has moved at all, the problem is usually not the links. It is more often thin content, technical issues, or targeting keywords that are simply too competitive for your current authority. Diagnose before you buy more.

And if you would rather not run this whole process yourself, this is exactly the kind of work a specialist agency handles end to end — from profile audit through placement and reporting — so you can focus on the content and the business instead of the spreadsheets.

The short version for anyone skimming: get the site ready, pick your metrics, audit what you have, choose your link types, set a realistic budget and timeline, prepare your assets, and decide how you will measure success. Do those seven things and your first campaign will be calmer, cheaper, and far more likely to actually move your rankings.