Guest Post & Link-Swap Pipeline

The problem this kills

You pitch a dozen sites for guest posts and link swaps. One says yes to a do-follow link with a specific anchor by a specific date. Another agrees to a reciprocal link. Three weeks later you have no idea which deals are still alive, which terms you promised, which posts actually went live, and whether the link you were promised is even there - or pointing at the wrong page with the wrong anchor text.

The terms live in your head, in email threads, and in a spreadsheet that nobody trusts. Deals go "agreed but never published" and quietly die. You re-pitch a site a teammate already pitched last month. And when a placement finally goes live, nobody checks that the link is real, do-follow, and using the agreed anchor before counting it as a win.

This tool puts every deal on rails - from prospect to verified-live - and refuses to let a promised link slip through the cracks.

What you'll build

A private web app for your SEO, content, or partner-ops team that tracks the whole link-building pipeline:

• Import your target sites from a CSV (site, contact, domain authority, topic fit) - or add them by hand.
• Move each deal through clear stages: Prospect -> Pitched -> Agreed -> Drafted -> Published -> Verified Live.
• Record the agreed terms per deal: the destination link, the anchor text, do-follow vs. no-follow, and the promised publish date - so nothing is promised and forgotten.
• A manager approval gate on the agreed terms and again on the published placement marked "verified live" (link present, correct anchor) before it counts.
• Stale-deal flags so "agreed but never published" deals get surfaced instead of dying quietly.
• A duplicate guard so the same site + topic can't be pitched twice in parallel.
• A clean CSV export of your backlinks and statuses for reporting.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

The plan is a step-by-step runbook you paste straight into an AI coding agent (Claude Code). You don't write code - you paste prompts and answer questions.

The best part: the plan opens by interviewing you about your actual link-building process - your stages, your terms vocabulary, the columns in your target-sites spreadsheet, your domain-authority thresholds, who approves what, and your messy edge cases (reciprocal swaps, paid placements, no-follow links, broken promises). It reflects a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up before building anything. You get a tool shaped around how your team actually works - not a generic template.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

This isn't a toy spreadsheet. The plan builds in real controls from the start:

• Login so only your team can see the pipeline.
• Row-level security so you only ever see your own organization's deals.
• A complete audit trail - who changed a stage, who edited terms, who approved, and when.
• A hard human-in-the-loop approval gate - the tool drafts and proposes, but a manager must approve the agreed terms and the verified-live placement before anything counts.
• Duplicate guards - the same site domain + topic can't enter the pipeline twice in parallel.

Who it's for

SEO, content, and partner-ops pros running off-site content and link building - anyone juggling guest posts and link swaps across many sites who is tired of losing track of promised links. If you can fill in a spreadsheet, you can build and run this.

You've got this - paste the first prompt.