My Site Has 8,000 Pages and Zero Real Backlinks. Here's the Claude Skill I Built to Fix That.

Eight thousand pages. Twelve languages. Two and a half years of data. And Google has indexed exactly 1,335 of them.

I spent weeks debugging the problem — thin content, crawl budget, hreflang issues. Fixed them all. Then Bing Webmaster Tools told me the real answer in three words: not enough inbound links.

No backlinks. Zero. Not one domain pointing at StockVS with any authority. Google doesn't trust a site nobody else trusts. It's that simple, and that brutal.

The fix is obvious: build backlinks. The execution is where everyone stalls.

---

Why Link Building Dies on the To-Do List

I know the playbook. Find guest post opportunities. Research resource pages. Spot broken links. Draft personalized outreach. Follow up. Repeat.

I also know why it never gets done.

To find 10 good link-building targets, you need to:

1. Google "write for us" + your niche across 20 variations
2. Check each site's DA, traffic, and editorial quality
3. Confirm they're still accepting submissions (half these pages are dead)
4. Find the right contact — editor email, submission form, Twitter DM
5. Write a personalized pitch that doesn't sound like every other cold email they ignore
6. Do this for 10 targets minimum before you see any response

That's 4–6 hours of manual work for a pipeline that may produce one accepted pitch. Most people do it once, get discouraged, and go back to writing more content that still won't rank.

I did it too. I set up a scheduled task that ran twice a week to research targets and draft pitches. It worked — I've now got 27 targets identified and several pitches ready to send. But it took weeks to tune, and the logic was buried in a custom agent prompt that nobody else could reuse.

So I packaged it.

---

What the Backlink Prospector & Outreach Drafter Does

The Backlink Prospector & Outreach Drafter is a Claude Skill that turns the entire link-building research-and-outreach workflow into a 10-minute session instead of a 4-hour grind.

Here's what it actually does when you run it:

1. Niche-Targeted Opportunity Research

You give it your domain, your niche, and your target audience. It runs structured searches across the high-value opportunity types that actually move the needle:

• Guest post targets — blogs and publications accepting contributor content in your space
• Resource page links — curated lists that link to tools, guides, and data sites like yours
• Broken link reclamation — pages linking to dead content you could replace
• Directory submissions — niche and general-purpose directories with real DA

For each target it finds, it evaluates:

• Domain authority / trust signals
• Whether submissions are currently open (not just a zombie "write for us" page)
• The right contact method (form, email, Twitter — whatever's live)
• Whether your content genuinely fits their audience

You get a prioritized list, not a dump of 50 targets you'd need to manually vet.

2. Personalized Outreach Drafts — Not Templates

This is the part that usually takes the most time. Generic cold pitches go straight to the trash. The skill drafts outreach that's specific to each target:

• References a recent article or topic they published (shows you actually read the site)
• Proposes a specific angle that fits their audience — not just "I'd love to write for you"
• Matches the tone of the publication (technical blogs get technical pitches; indie hacker communities get builder-to-builder framing)
• Includes your credentials in context — what makes you qualified to write this piece for their audience

Here's a real example from my StockVS outreach campaign. Instead of sending:

"Hi, I'd love to contribute a guest post about SEO to your blog..."

The skill drafted something like:

"Hi — I noticed your recent piece on programmatic content strategies. I'm building StockVS, an 8,000-page stock data platform in 12 languages, and I've been documenting the indexing and crawl budget challenges at scale. Happy to write a detailed piece on multilingual hreflang implementation for large sites — it's a gap in your existing content and something your readers building content sites would find immediately useful."

The second pitch gets responses. The first one doesn't.

3. A Tracker You'll Actually Use

Every session outputs a clean prospect tracker — status (researched / pitched / accepted / published), DA, contact info, angle proposed, and a follow-up date. It appends to a running outreach file so you never lose track of where each pitch stands.

---

Real Numbers From My StockVS Campaign

Since I've been running the underlying workflow for a few weeks, here's what the numbers actually look like:

• 27 targets identified across guest posts, resource pages, and directories
• 5 pitches submitted (freeCodeCamp, SitePoint, GrowthHackers, Envato Tuts+, Smashing Magazine)
• 6 outreach drafts ready to send
• 1 HackerNoon article drafted (DA 82 — with direct deep-links to StockVS pages)
• Time per research session: ~15 minutes with the skill vs. 3–4 hours manually

Zero accepted links yet — link building is a long game and most pipelines take 4–6 weeks to produce results. But the pipeline is built. Without the skill, I'd still be on target #3.

---

Who This Is For

If any of these describe you, this skill will save you real hours:

• Indie site builders — you have content, you need authority, you hate cold outreach
• SEO professionals — you're doing this for clients and need to 10x your prospecting volume
• Solopreneurs — you know link building matters but it always falls to the bottom of the list
• Small agencies — you can't justify $99/mo for Ahrefs just for prospecting; this does the research layer for $19 one-time

The skill works best for content sites, SaaS tools, developer tools, and any niche where guest posts and resource pages are the primary link-building vector.

---

What You Get

Paid version ($19):

• Full opportunity research across all 4 target types (guest posts, resource pages, broken links, directories)
• Personalized pitch drafts with site-specific research baked in
• Prioritized prospect scoring (DA, fit, effort-to-reward)
• Running outreach tracker with follow-up dates
• Pitch templates for cold email, Twitter DM, and web forms

Free lite version (GitHub):

• Guest post prospecting only (1 of 4 target types)
• Basic outreach template (not personalized)
• Good for testing the workflow before committing

---

The Math

A single accepted guest post on a DA 70+ site can move your domain rating by 3–5 points. A few of those and Google starts trusting your site enough to crawl deeper. With 8,000 pages sitting in "Discovered - not indexed," that crawl trust is the only thing standing between me and actual search traffic.

The skill doesn't guarantee placements — nothing does. But it removes the friction that makes link building the task that never gets started.

Get the full version: apexstack.gumroad.com/l/backlink-prospector — $19, one-time

Try the free lite first: github.com/apex-stack-ai/backlink-prospector-lite

---

Building StockVS in public — follow along on Dev.to for weekly updates on what's working and what isn't.