Link Building Prospects & Guest Post Finder (Google, AI)

Guest-post and resource-page sites for your keywords, with a checked e-mail and a first line.

⚡ First 25 prospects free · 💵 $0.006 per qualified prospect · 🤖 $0.018 with AI + ≈ $0.005 tokens, on plans with model access or your key · ⏱️ demo in seconds; ≈ 4–6 min for 5 keywords with AI (estimate)

Try it in 30 seconds. Click Try it — the pre-filled free demo turns 8 Google results into 4 link building prospects, nothing charged. Then paste the page you want links to and press Start. Your first 25 qualified prospects are free. → What a run costs · What the AI adds · Run it weekly

⚡ At a glance

What you get	one row per site: opportunity type, checked best e-mail, authority, fit score, opener, dead links to pitch
You provide	the page you want links to — keywords and a pitch are optional (read from the page)
Never delivered	directories, giants, PDFs, your own and ignored domains, sites you already received
Output	a ranked sheet (Excel / CSV / Google Sheets), an e-mail digest — or straight into Lemlist / Instantly
Typical run	5 keywords → 30 Google searches → ≈ 300 results → ≈ 45 qualified (estimate)
Cost of that run	$0.41 rules only · $1.17 with the AI — Google search on your account included
Keys / setup	Plan with Apify model access: no key · other plans: your first 5 real prospects get live AI verdicts on us, then your own key — a free Gemini / Groq key = 1–3 AI verdicts per run, a paid key = every prospect
Which plan	Free demo and your own list (list mode, template): any plan · live search: a plan that runs Store Actors
Agencies	up to 25 websites in one run and one schedule — 10 of them weekly ≈ $35 a month with AI (estimate)

🎯 What this Actor does for link building

It runs the searches link builders type by hand, then does the spreadsheet work; we charge only per prospect that passes your filters:

• The kind of opportunity — guest post, resource page, listicle, review, forum, news, unlinked or competitor mention.
• A way in you can trust — e-mails, contact and write-for-us pages from the site, MX-checked, the best one picked.
• Authority on every row — a 0–100 score per site and a minimum-authority filter.
• The pitch that gets replies — dead links on resource pages and listicles, named in the opener.
• Straight into your campaign — new prospects land in Lemlist or Instantly, no CSV step.

🔗 Backlink prospecting with footprint searches

Keywords × opportunity types become the searches you would type ("remote work" "write for us", intitle:resources). Only have a URL? Leave the keywords empty — they and the pitch are read from your page.

✍️ Guest post finder: write-for-us pages and their rules

The guidelines page plus accepts guest posts, sponsored posts, the link policy and (AI) the topics accepted.

📚 Resource page link building and broken links

Link pages and "best X tools" roundups get their dead outbound links checked, and the opener becomes the broken-link pitch: "The link to estimatelab.example/ranges on it no longer works — my guide could replace it."

📬 Blogger outreach and domain authority

E-mails, contact page and social links from the site (robots.txt honoured), the best address picked — a named person before info@ — and a 0–100 authority score from the Tranco rank or Open PageRank.

🏷️ Brand mentions, competitor mentions and agencies

Pages naming your brand are dropped or kept as unlinked mentions; competitor names find pages that cover them but not you. Agencies put every client in one run — own search, memory, digest and campaign each (agency preset).

🚀 How to use it

1. Click Try it — the free demo is pre-filled and works as is.
2. Paste your page into "Page you want links to" (keywords and pitch optional) — it replaces the sample and starts the live Google search on your Apify account, capped by "Max Google search spend". Leave "AI assessment" on: your first 5 prospects get live AI verdicts on any plan, all 25 free ones with Apify model access or a paid own key.
3. Press Start and open the dataset — prospects land best-first, or in your Lemlist / Instantly campaign.
4. Schedule it weekly with your address in "E-mail me the new prospects" — only new sites are delivered and charged.

📦 Already scraping Google? Qualify your Google search scraper data

Paste the dataset ID of your last Google Search Results Scraper run into Dataset — no second scrape, you pay only for the qualified prospects (chained-run recipe).

📚 Learn more: Step-by-step tutorial — how to find link building prospects with this Actor

🆚 Why this instead of running Google Search Results Scraper yourself?

	Google Search Results Scraper (apify/google-search-scraper)	This Actor
Price	$0.0045 per SERP page + $0.001 per run · 19,055 users / 30 days	from $0.006 per qualified prospect, first 25 free
What you pay for	every SERP page, directories and giants included	here only qualified prospects — filtered sites cost $0 here
Same 100 prospects, all in	≈ $15.66 (67 SERP pages + website content + 100 add-on leads)	≈ $0.90 rules only · $2.60 with AI, the 67 SERP pages included
Contact	$0.10 per lead	MX-checked best e-mail, contact and guidelines page — free
Your time per 100 prospects	≈ 6–8 h opening results, finding contacts, writing first lines	≈ 0 h — ranked, contact found, opener written
Repeat runs	the same domains again next week	cross-run memory — only new sites are charged

vs other link prospecting Actors

Next to us in a search for "link building prospects" (their Store cards, 2026-09-26):

	This Actor	santhej/link-prospect-finder	scrapeai/backlink-opportunity-finder
Price	$0.006 per qualified prospect, no start fee	$0.004 per prospect + $0.001 per run	$0.00249 per result + platform usage
You pay for	prospects that pass your filters	every unique domain	every result row
Contact, authority, opener	yes	— (domain lists)	—
Your time per 100 prospects	≈ 0 h	≈ 5 h finding contacts	≈ 6 h vetting rows and contacts
Repeat runs	only new sites charged	—	—

💵 Pricing — what a run really costs

Pay per result: one event per qualified prospect, nothing else. No start fee.

Event	When it is charged	Price
free-tier	your first 25 qualified prospects on this Actor, in any mode	$0.00
qualified-prospect-basic	AI off — type, rule score, authority, contact route, dead links, template opener	$0.006
qualified-prospect-ai	AI on — plus AI type, fit score with quotes, opener, pitch angle, submission rules	$0.018

This Actor never charges for the demo's sample rows, filtered or already-seen sites, or the contact, e-mail, authority and dead-link checks. The Google search is not ours to waive: a live search bills your Apify account per Google page — capped by "Max Google search spend".

How that compares — $0.006 is 1.5× one raw row at the $0.004 median of the Actors next to this one in Store search, but one qualified prospect replaces 7 raw Google results you would research by hand ($0.028 of raw rows).

Worked example (estimate) — 30 Google pages ≈ 300 results → ≈ 45 qualified: $0.136 Google on your account + 45 × $0.006 = $0.41, $0.009 per prospect; AI on: + 45 × $0.018 + ≈ $0.225 tokens = $1.17, $0.026 per prospect.

At volume — agency, 10 clients × that run with AI, weekly: ≈ $35 a month (estimate) — vs a link-prospecting suite at $24–200+ per seat a month.

AI tier, all in: ≈ $0.023 per prospect with tokens ($0.018 + ≈ $0.005 at anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 rates, measured in a local run — not yet measured on the platform), plus the Google pages of a live search.

🤖 What the AI tier adds

The same demo prospect, AI off:

{"rootDomain": "remotecrewjournal.example", "opportunityType": "guest_post", "ruleScore": 95, "fitScore": null,
 "outreachOpener": "Hi — I read \"Write for Us\" while researching remote work. Could I pitch you a guest post on remote work, built around a free 2,500-word guide to async stand-ups for remote teams?",
 "pitchAngle": null, "topicsAccepted": [], "aiModel": null, "assessedBy": "rules"}

AI on (run of INPUT.ai.json with a free own Gemini key and the default own-key model, 2026-10-16):

{"rootDomain": "remotecrewjournal.example", "opportunityType": "guest_post", "ruleScore": 95, "fitScore": 95,
 "fitReasons": ["We accept guest posts on remote work, async collaboration and distributed teams."],
 "outreachOpener": "I read \"Write for Us – Remote Work Guest Posts | Remote Crew Journal\" and would love to contribute a comprehensive, practical guide on async stand-ups for remote teams.",
 "pitchAngle": "Contribute a comprehensive guest post on async stand-ups with ready-to-use templates.",
 "topicsAccepted": ["remote work", "async collaboration", "meetings", "distributed hiring"],
 "aiModel": "google:gemini-3.5-flash-lite", "assessedBy": "ai"}

What it saves: ≈ 4 minutes of reading guidelines and writing a first line per prospect (our estimate on the 4 demo prospects), for ≈ $0.017 more, tokens included. writeSequence: true adds a follow-up and a break-up e-mail in the same call.

⚙️ Input

The form's first screen (it starts on the free demo):

Field	Type	Default	What it does
keywords	string[]	—	Topics; each becomes the footprint searches. Empty = read from targetUrl
targetUrl	string	—	The page you want links to — enough on its own to start a live search
senderPitch	string	—	One line on what you offer
preset	select	custom	A ready niche search in one click
minScore	0–100	60	Decides what you pay: below this = not delivered, not charged
maxQualified	integer	50	Hard cap on output and spend — per client in agency mode
maxDiscoveryChargeUsd	number	0.5	Caps the Google search cost on your account — the same over the API
enableAi	boolean	true	On = $0.018 per prospect + tokens; off = $0.006
notifyEmail	string	—	The digest of every run with new prospects, by e-mail

📤 Output

One item per qualified prospect (one per site), best first. Sort by score; ruleScore is the rule part and fitScore the AI's — trend across runs on ruleScore; assessedBy says which scale score is on.

Upsert key: dedupeKey (domain:<root domain>, the cross-run memory's key) — one row per site; prospectId / itemId = a hash of the page URL. Demo sites use the reserved .example domain with precomputed authority and MX values.

Views: Overview, Outreach sheet, Outreach import (Lemlist / Instantly), Submission rules, Google & evidence, By client. Next to OUTPUT sit a Slack / e-mail-ready DIGEST and a client-ready REPORT page (OUTPUT.reportUrl).

🔁 Run it weekly

1. A successful live run saves its search as a Task and links it in the status: open it → Schedule, with your address in notifyEmail — every run with new prospects e-mails the digest and what changed since the last run.
2. Add your Lemlist or Instantly key + campaign ID: each new prospect lands in the campaign — nothing to export. No outreach tool? Use the ready tracker sheet (dedupeKey first to upsert on).
3. Keep dedupeAcrossRuns on — next week only new sites are delivered and charged.

Weekly cost is the new prospects only: 8 keywords (≈ $0.18 Google) and ≈ 30 new prospects ≈ $0.87 a week with AI, $0.36 basic (estimate) — per client, all in one agency run.

🎯 Try it for your niche

Pick it in Start from a ready niche search and press Start — it fills the fields you left empty:

Niche	What it looks for	Preset
SaaS content marketing	guest posts and listicles, contact route required	saas-guest-posts
Digital PR	listicles, reviews, brand and competitor mentions of the last year	digital-pr
SEO agency, all clients weekly	resource pages and guest posts per client, one schedule	agency-roster

🔌 Integrations, automation and API

After every Google Search Results Scraper run: in apify/google-search-scraper's Integrations tab add "Run succeeded → start this Actor" with sourceMode: dataset, datasetId = resource.defaultDatasetId and enableAi: false — every search you already pay for becomes prospects, rules only until you switch AI on.

• Lemlist / Instantly — direct push with the API key + campaign ID; a rejected key never fails the run.
• Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat, Telegram, any webhook — paste the URL into sendAlertsTo. The webhook gets each prospect as JSON (retried once; failed keys in OUTPUT.webhook.failedKeys, not re-sent); webhookSecret signs every POST (X-Signature: sha256=<HMAC of the body>).
• HubSpot / Pipedrive — a Make / Zapier "create or update" step: contact = bestEmail + firstName + website, note = outreachOpener + pitchAngle, upsert on dedupeKey.
• AI agents / MCP — every input is a plain typed field; {} runs the free demo. Add https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=rich_minds/link-building-prospects-ai to your MCP client.

Minimal agent input: {"keywords": ["remote work"], "targetUrl": "https://www.yoursite.com/guide", "maxQualified": 20, "maxDiscoveryChargeUsd": 0.5, "dedupeAcrossRuns": false}

List-mode rows — what a pasted record needs

sourceMode: "list" runs on any plan: paste URLs or rows (an Ahrefs / Semrush / SERP export) into itemsList — start from the ready template.

👥 Who is it for — SEO outreach and link building teams

You are…	You run it to…	Start with
SEO / link-building agency	new sites for every client every week	the agency-roster preset + your Lemlist key
In-house SEO / content marketer	blogs that would link to one article	the article's targetUrl
Digital-PR team	roundups that cover your competitors but not you	the digital-pr preset
Blogger outreach freelancer	an Ahrefs / Semrush export → typed prospects with a checked e-mail	list mode with the URLs
AI agent (MCP)	"find 30 guest-post sites about X" as one tool call	the minimal agent input

🧠 How the AI works

• One call per prospect, best rule score first (up to aiCandidateMultiplier × maxQualified): type, fit score, opener, pitch angle and submission rules from your inputs, the title, snippet, page text and its dead links.
• Grounded, checked in code — reasons only as verbatim quotes; an opener that cites neither the page nor a dead link is replaced by the template. Default anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 via Apify's model access.
• No key where your Apify plan includes model access — otherwise your own Gemini / Groq key. If the model is unreachable the prospect keeps its rule score.

🔒 Data, compliance and limits

• Public data only: Google results, ≤ 2 pages per site (robots.txt honoured), one HEAD request per checked link, public DNS and the Tranco ranking. Keep outreach within anti-spam law (GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CCPA).
• Limits: JavaScript-only sites may show no e-mail; no mailbox probe; ≤ 15 outbound links checked per page.

❓ FAQ

How much will one run cost me? 5 keywords: ≈ $0.41 for 45 prospects, or ≈ $1.17 with AI — Google search on your account included. The first 25 prospects are free.

What will my first real search cost? The form's 4 keywords × 3 types = 24 Google searches ≈ $0.11 on your account (capped) — ≈ 34 qualified prospects: 25 free, ≈ 9 at $0.006.

Do I have to think up keywords? No — paste your page and leave the keywords empty; they are read from its title and headings (OUTPUT.derivedBrief).

Can I use it for SEO outreach at an agency with several clients? Yes — one run, one schedule, a memory, digest and campaign per client.

Which Apify plan do I need? Any plan runs the demo and list mode; the live search needs a plan that runs Store Actors — see At a glance. A refused search charges nothing.

🧩 More Actors from the same developer

For SEO teams and agencies — the same pay-per-qualified-result model:

• Google Reviews Insights — turn a local SEO client's Google reviews into a reputation report to resell next to the links
• Local Business Lead — local businesses on Google Maps whose websites need the SEO work your agency sells
• Website Change Monitor — every real change on the competitor pages you build links against, explained weekly
• Trending Keywords for Your Niche — rising searches in your niche, to write the next linkable article about

🆘 Support

Something missing or wrong? Open an issue on the Actor's page — requests from buyers are shipped first.

📝 Changelog

One line per published build, newest first — /actor-publish adds it with the commit subject.

• 0.3.4 (2026-10-16) — Type your keywords or paste your page next to the sample and press Start: the live search runs at once (spend-capped), and three ready niche searches — SaaS guest posts, digital PR, an agency with two example clients — are one click in the form; The AI tier on every plan: your first 5 real prospects get live AI verdicts even without Apify model access, the free demo shows labelled sample verdicts, and a free Gemini key now works as your own key without picking a model; New prospects can go to Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat or Telegram from one "Send alerts to" field; each digest says what changed since the last run, and a plan that cannot run the Google search ends with a clear next step instead of a failed run.
• 0.3.3 (2026-10-04) — Bring your own data: send rows in itemsList or a dataset ID in datasetId and the Actor picks the mode itself, starts no source Actor and charges only for the analysis.