The quality of a link building campaign is decided before the first outreach email. Here is what to put in the brief.
The quality of a link building campaign is often decided before a single publisher is contacted. A clear brief tells the people doing the work which pages matter, which markets to focus on and what a good placement looks like. A vague brief leaves those decisions to chance, and the results usually show it.
Whether the work is done in-house or by an outside partner, the same elements make a brief effective. The steps below cover what to include and why each part matters.
Start with the target pages, not the publishers. List the pages that turn visitors into players or commission: landing pages, review pages, comparison pages and bonus pages. Rank them by commercial importance, and note where each currently ranks for its main terms.
This list shapes everything that follows. It decides where links point, which anchors make sense and which publishers are relevant. A brief that only says "build links to the site" invites a campaign that piles links onto the homepage while the pages that earn revenue stay where they are.
List every market the campaign covers and put them in order of importance. Each country needs its own publishers, its own writers and often its own pricing, so spreading a budget evenly across many markets rarely moves rankings in any of them.
Effective link building for casino sites concentrates effort where it matters commercially, builds a solid base there and expands from that position. The brief should make clear which markets come first and roughly what share of placements each should receive.
Spell out the standard every publisher must meet. That usually includes relevance to the brand's audience, real traffic from the target market, a history of editorial content rather than endless guest posts, and an outbound link profile that does not point mainly at other paid placements.
Be clear about exclusions too. If certain site types, such as general link farms, sites in unrelated niches or publishers already linking to direct competitors, are off limits, say so. A clear standard saves time on proposals that would have been rejected anyway.
Decide the balance of anchor types before the campaign starts. Most healthy profiles lean heavily on branded and descriptive anchors, with a smaller share of partial-match phrases and very few exact-match commercial terms.
Include the current state of the profile in the brief. If existing links already lean on exact-match anchors, the new campaign should correct that balance rather than add to it. Listing the main phrases for each target page also helps writers place anchors that fit the page they point to.
State what kind of content each placement should be. The best briefs ask for articles that a publisher's own readers would value, written natively for each market, with the link placed inside a sentence that would make sense without it.
It helps to include examples of content angles that suit the brand: sports coverage for a sportsbook, strategy for a poker brand, industry analysis for business publications. Note any topics the brand wants to avoid, and any tone or style requirements.
Set a monthly volume that the budget can sustain. A steady flow of placements, month after month, usually beats a large burst followed by a long pause, both for rankings and for the natural look of the profile.
Where seasonality matters, build it into the plan. For sportsbooks, that might mean heavier activity before major tournaments and season openers. For casino brands, it might mean steady volume year-round with extra focus around product launches or new market entries.
Decide what reporting looks like before work begins. At minimum, every placement should be listed with its publisher, URL, target page, anchor and price. Each link should then be checked on a regular schedule to confirm it is still live, dofollow and indexed.
Agree what happens when a link fails within the agreed term. A clear replacement policy protects the budget and gives both sides a shared definition of a delivered link.
A complete brief usually fits on a page or two: target pages ranked by importance, markets in priority order, publisher standards, anchor mix, content standard, volume and pace, and reporting rules. It does not need to be long, but every section should be specific enough to guide decisions.
The time spent writing it pays back quickly. Proposals arrive closer to what the brand wants, fewer placements are rejected, and results are easier to measure because everyone agreed in advance what success looks like.
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