AI Link building agency onboarding — Inputs needed: goals, pages, personas, constraints.

The most dangerous moment in any SEO (keresőoptimalizálás) campaign is not when a Google Update hits. It is Day One.

The onboarding phase is the genetic coding of your campaign. In traditional manual link building, a vague briefing might result in a few weeks of slow progress while the team figures things out. In AI-driven link building, where agents operate at 10x speed and scale, a vague briefing results in disaster.

If you feed an AI imprecise goals, it will execute the wrong strategy with terrifying efficiency. It will burn through your total addressable market (TAM) of prospects in days, build links to the wrong pages, and potentially damage your brand reputation with off-key outreach.

For a client, the onboarding document is not just a form to fill out; it is the control logic for the machine you have just hired. This article details the specific inputs—Goals, Pages, Personas, and Constraints—that you must provide to an AI Link Building Agency to ensure the "machine" prints money, not liability.

Part 1: The Philosophy of AI Onboarding (Garbage In, Disaster Out)

Before listing the inputs, we must understand the shift in dynamic.

• Old Way: You hire an agency. They guess your needs. They try a few emails. They adjust.

• New Way (AI): You program the agency. The AI scans your site, builds a vector database of your topics, generates 5,000 leads, and drafts 15 variations of copy.

If the "Seed Data" is wrong, the "Harvest" is toxic. AI models (LLMs) are incredibly literal. If you tell them to "Get links for accounting software," they might solicit links from a "How to commit tax fraud" blog because semantic relevance was not constrained.

Your job during onboarding is to provide the Context Window that the AI lacks.

Part 2: Defining the North Star (Goals & KPIs)

"I want higher rankings" is not a goal. It is a wish. To calibrate an AI strategy, you must be specific about the type of movement you need.

1. Revenue vs. Authority Goals

You need to clarify what the primary driver is.

• Authority Play (The "Rising Tide"): You want to increase the overall Domain Rating (DR) of the site to make all pages rank better.

  • Input needed: "Focus on links to the Homepage and broad 'About' pages to drive sitewide equity."

• Revenue Play (The "Sniper Shot"): You need to sell a specific product now.

  • Input needed: "Focus 80% of the budget on the '/best-crm-software' URL to move it from position #6 to #3."

2. The Velocity Target

AI can build 5 links a month or 500. You must define the pace.

• The Risk: If you have a new site (DR 5) and you suddenly build 100 links in Month 1, Google’s "Sandbox" algorithms will flag this as manipulation.

• The Input: "Current velocity is 2 links/month. We want to ramp up to 10 links/month over a 90-day period."

3. The Competitor Benchmark

AI tools are excellent at gap analysis. Give the agency your top 3 search competitors (not necessarily your business competitors).

• Business Competitor: The giant corporation you hate. (They might have DR 90 and are untouchable).

• Search Competitor: The affiliate blog ranking #1 for your keyword. (They have DR 40 and are beatable).

• Why this matters: The agency will train the AI to analyze their backlink profiles and reverse-engineer their winning strategy.

Part 3: The Asset Library (Target Pages & Keywords)

This is the tactical map. You cannot simply say "link to my blog." You must map specific URLs to specific Keyword Clusters.

1. The "Money Page" Selection

Not all pages are link-worthy. It is very hard to get a blogger to link naturally to a "Checkout" page or a "Pricing" page.

• The Input: Provide a spreadsheet with three columns:

  • Priority URL: (e.g., domain.com/features/analytics)

  • Primary Keyword: (e.g., "marketing analytics tools")

  • Secondary Keywords: (e.g., "data visualization," "reporting dashboard")

2. The "Bridge Content" (Linkable Assets)

Since "Money Pages" are hard to link to, you need "Bridge Pages." These are high-value informational assets (guides, calculators, studies) that naturally attract links.

• The Input: Identify your best content. "We have a '2025 Industry Report' at this URL."

• The Strategy: The AI agency will build links to the Report (Bridge Page) and you will internally link from the Report to your Product Page (Money Page). This passes the "link juice" safely.

3. The Anchor Text Distribution Profile

This is the most technical input. You must define the risk tolerance for anchor text.

• Conservative Input: "Use 70% Branded Anchors ('BrandName'), 20% URL Anchors ('Brand.com'), and only 10% Exact Match."

• Aggressive Input: "We are stuck on page 2. We authorize 30% Exact Match anchors for this quarter to try and break through."

• Why this matters: If you don't specify this, the AI might default to optimizing for the exact keyword every time, triggering a Penguin penalty.

Part 4: The Ghost in the Machine (Outreach Personas)

Who is sending the emails? In an AI agency, the "sender" is often a constructed identity. You must define who this identity is to ensure brand safety.

1. The "Sender" Identity

• Option A: The Internal Expert (Recommended): You give the agency access to marketing@yourdomain.com or create an alias editorial@yourdomain.com.

  • Input: You must provide the name, headshot, and LinkedIn URL of a real person on your team.

  • Pros: Higher conversion rates, builds real relationships.

  • Cons: If the agency messes up, your employee's reputation takes the hit.

• Option B: The Agency Proxy: The agency uses their own outreach specialist.

  • Input: "Please conduct outreach as 'Agency Name' on behalf of 'Client Name'."

• Option C: The AI Persona (Risky): The agency creates a fake person.

  • Input: Strictly forbid this. (See previous articles on Compliance). "We do not authorize the use of non-existent personas representing our brand."

2. The Voice and Tone Guidelines

The AI will write thousands of outreach emails and guest post drafts. They need to sound like you.

• The Input: Upload your "Brand Voice Guidelines" PDF.

• Specific Prompts:

  • Formality: "We are a B2B legal firm. Tone must be professional, authoritative, no emojis, no slang."

  • Or: "We are a Gen-Z lifestyle app. Tone should be witty, casual, use current slang, and be punchy."

• The "Anti-Persona": Tell the AI what you represent. "We are the premium option, not the cheap option. Never mention 'discounts' or 'cheap solutions' in our content."

Part 5: The Guardrails (Constraints & Blacklists)

This section is about preventing the AI from making embarrassing or damaging mistakes. You must set the boundaries of the playground.

1. The "Do Not Contact" (DNC) List

AI scrapers are relentless. They will find every email associated with a keyword.

• The Input: A CSV file of domains you must never pitch.

  • Current Partners: You don't want to pitch a guest post to a site you already have a partnership with; it looks uncoordinated.

  • Competitors: You don't want to accidentally ask your direct competitor for a link.

  • Journalists: Specific high-tier journalists who have blocked you or covered you negatively in the past.

2. The "Bad Neighborhood" Definitions

You must define what constitutes a "toxic" site for your brand.

• Standard Constraints: Gambling, Adult, Pharma, Hate Speech.

• Niche Constraints:

  • Example: If you are a "Halal Food Brand," you might add "Alcohol" and "Pork" recipes to the negative constraint list.

  • Example: If you are a "Vegan Brand," you blacklist "Hunting" or "Leather" blogs.

• Metric Constraints: "Do not build links on any site with DR < 20 or Organic Traffic < 500."

3. The Content Constraints

What can the AI not say?

• Regulatory: "We are a FinTech. The AI cannot use the words 'Guaranteed Return' or 'No Risk'."

• Competitive: "Never mention Competitor X by name in our articles."

Part 6: The Technical Setup (Access & Validation)

Onboarding also involves handing over the keys to the car. Without technical access, the agency is flying blind.

1. Email Infrastructure (The SMTP Handshake)

If the agency is sending emails from your domain (e.g., name@outreach.yourdomain.com), you need to configure the DNS.

• Action: The agency will give you CNAME records. Your IT team must add them.

• Compliance: Ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are set up. If these are missing, your outreach lands in Spam, and the campaign fails before it starts.

2. Analytics Access

The agency needs to see the results.

• Google Search Console (GSC): Essential. They need to see which keywords are driving impressions to prioritize link building efforts.

• Google Analytics (GA4): Optional, but helpful to prove that the referral traffic from their links is engaging (low bounce rate).

Part 7: The Feedback Loop (The "tuning" Phase)

Onboarding is not a "fire and forget" event. The first 30 days are a calibration period. You must agree on how feedback is handled.

1. The "First Batch" Approval

• The Agreement: "For the first month, the Client will manually review 100% of the Prospect List and 100% of the Content Drafts."

• Why: This trains the AI. When you reject a prospect, the agency tags it as "Negative Sample." The AI analyzes why you rejected it (e.g., "Too messy," "Too many ads") and improves the next batch.

2. The "Subject Line" A/B Test

• The Input: Share what has worked for you in the past. "We found that subject lines with questions work best."

• The Test: Ask the agency to run 4 variations of AI-generated subject lines in the first week to find the winner for your specific niche.

Part 8: The "Onboarding Questionnaire" (Template)

To make this actionable, here is a template structure you should fill out before your kickoff call.

Section A: Strategic Alignment

1. Primary Goal: [Rankings / Traffic / Brand Awareness / DR Increase]

2. Top 3 Priority URLs: [List URLs]

3. Top 3 Target Keywords: [List Keywords]

4. Top 3 Competitors: [List Domains]

Section B: Brand Identity

1. Brand Tone: [Formal/Casual/Witty/Academic]

2. Target Audience: [C-Suite/Developers/Moms/Gen-Z]

3. Value Proposition: [One sentence describing why you are better]

Section C: Constraints

1. Minimum DR: [e.g., 30]

2. Minimum Traffic: [e.g., 1000/mo]

3. Restricted Topics: [List sensitive topics]

4. Blacklisted Domains: [Link to CSV]

Section D: Logistics

1. Outreach Sender: [Name of person]

2. Email Address: [Address to be used]

3. Reporting Frequency: [Bi-weekly/Monthly]

Conclusion: Specificity is Speed

In the world of AI SEO (keresőoptimalizálás), ambiguity is the enemy.

If you tell a human agency, "Get me some good links," they will use their common sense and experience to figure out what "good" means for your industry. If you tell an AI agency, "Get me some good links" without defining the parameters, their software will default to the path of least resistance—which often means high-metric, low-relevance spam.

The time you invest in filling out the "Goal," "Persona," and "Constraint" documents is not administrative work. It is Prompt Engineering. You are effectively writing the system prompt for the entire campaign.

A detailed onboarding inputs document saves you months of wasted budget and protects your domain from algorithmic penalties. Do not skip the details.