What is link prospecting?
Link prospecting is finding and qualifying the sites worth pitching, before any outreach happens. It is the highest-leverage stage of link building and the one most often rushed — a great pitch to a badly chosen list still fails, while an average pitch to a well-chosen list works.
What makes a good link prospect
Four things: it is topically relevant to the page you want linked, it has a real audience, it already links out to sites like yours, and there is a person you can actually reach. Domain authority is a tiebreaker between prospects that pass those four, not a substitute for them.
Backlink opportunities and linkable assets hiding in plain sight
Unlinked brand mentions, competitors' backlink profiles, resource pages in your niche, and broken pages that used to serve the topic you cover. All four are warmer than a cold list because the editorial fit is already demonstrated.