Links from other sites are still one of the strongest signals Google uses, and lesson 5.4 showed they're also how AI crawlers find you. But a backlink count on its own can mislead you badly. Ours did.

Step 1: Check your own profile first

Open Backlinks, type your domain under Check a domain and click Check. It uses one research lookup, and the result is kept for 30 days.

ieltsbandlift.com came back with:

887 backlinks from 878 referring domains, domain rank 50
No estimated organic traffic, and no ranking keywords in the data

887 links and no traffic? Look at Top referring domains: onvaxs.com, m98ufa.com, bulkbacklinkmaker.space, buybacklinksonline.store… Every anchor reads like "High Quality Dofollow Backlinks DA 50 PA 40 Premium PBN Network Service ieltsbandlift.com… Buy Backlinks Online Cheap".

None of these are real links. They're link-farm sites that list thousands of domains automatically to advertise backlink selling. We never bought links. This kind of spam points at almost every site eventually.

What to do about spam links like these: usually nothing. Google says it ignores links like these, and that its disavow tool is for sites that bought links or got a manual action, not for random spam. Don't spend a day on it. Just don't believe the count.

SEODojo's own suggestion was right, too: "Despite having backlinks, this domain isn't ranking… the issue is likely on-page, not off-page." That's exactly what Module 5 found.

Step 2: Check a competitor for comparison

We checked ieltsliz.com: domain rank 298, 15,928 backlinks from 4,160 domains, about 23,000 estimated organic visits a month. Its top referring domains are real: Magoosh's help centre, an English-learners Stack Exchange, note.com, buymeacoffee. That's what an earned link profile looks like. Thousands of real people, over years, linking to useful pages.

The report also found 10 broken backlinks on ieltsliz.com: links pointing at pages that no longer exist. Those are an opening for us (Step 3).

Step 3: Find prospects

Scroll to Outreach opportunities. There are four ways to find sites likely to link to you:

Sites linking to a competitor: they've linked to a site like yours before.
Broken links to a competitor: pages linking to a competitor page that's gone. Offer yours as the replacement.
List & resource pages for a topic: "best IELTS resources" pages that collect links.
Pages AI cites without you: the list articles from lesson 7.2, with no lookup used.

We ran Sites linking to a competitor for ieltsliz.com, in a campaign called "IELTS Liz linkers". One lookup, 50 prospects, every one labelled "good fit".

Step 4: Filter harder than the tool does

"Good fit" means the page is on your topic. It doesn't mean it will link to you. Reading our 50:

Many are competitors: IELTS schools and apps in Vietnam, Iran and Nepal. A coaching centre won't link to another coaching product.
Many pages aren't in English: Persian, Vietnamese and Chinese. Their readers may well be our customers, but an English-only pitch to a Persian-language blog rarely lands.
Some are gold. ieltspeaking.com has a page called "IELTSpeaking vs IELTS Liz". A site that publishes comparisons might publish one with us. Independent English-language guides, like englishlanguagestudies.com's "IELTS Writing Task 2 Tips: How to Score Band 8+", are the right kind of target.

Use Dismiss on the ones that will never work, and sort by Highest rank to start with the strongest of the rest.

Step 5: Draft, then rewrite, the email

Click Draft email on a prospect. SEODojo finds who to write to and drafts the email. It never sends anything. You copy it, or open it in your email client, and send it yourself.

Here's what it drafted for englishlanguagestudies.com:

Suggested resource for your IELTS writing topics article
Hi educator78, I noticed your article "Essential Topics for Success in IELTS Writing" links to IELTS Liz. We offer a range of targeted vocabulary and grammar resources that may complement your content… our vocabulary guide focusing on language learning might be a useful addition… Would you consider adding a link to this page as an extra resource?

Two problems before this goes anywhere:

The article name doesn't match. The prospect list said the linking page was "IELTS Writing Task 2 Tips: How to Score Band 8+". The email names a different article. Open the page and check which one actually links to ieltsliz.com. Getting their own article wrong ends the conversation.
"We offer a range of resources" is what every link request says. Make it about their page: "Your Task 2 guide links to IELTS Liz for sample essays. Our page on the five Task 2 essay types might fit next to it. It shows how each type is scored against the band descriptors."

Then sign it with your real name.

Tip: Send ten good emails, not fifty generic ones. A specific email to the right person gets replies. A template sent to everyone gets you marked as spam.

Step 6: Track it

After sending, click Mark as sent. The outreach list tracks every prospect: to contact, drafted, sent and waiting, won. SEODojo drafts follow-ups, and Check for new links looks for the links you've won. Once a link is won, it's checked monthly, and you're warned if it disappears.

Done when

You've checked your own backlinks and looked at who's actually linking
You've ignored spam links instead of panicking about them
You've found prospects and dismissed the competitors and the impossible ones
You've rewritten one drafted email so it's specific to their page, with the article name checked
It's sent from your own email, and marked as sent