backlink-mcp

Full docs & install guide → sellonllm.com/backlink-mcp.html

Automate backlink research, unlinked mention hunting, and outreach prep inside your AI assistant. Free, no API keys required.

Connect to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant and let it find backlink opportunities, discover unlinked mentions, research prospects, and extract contact info for outreach — all for free.

Part of the SellOnLLM SEO MCP suite — a hub of free MCP servers for SEO and AI visibility.

Why this exists

Tools like Ahrefs and Moz cost hundreds of dollars a month. This MCP gives you backlink research capabilities directly inside your AI assistant at zero cost, using:

• DuckDuckGo — mention discovery and prospect finding

• Wayback Machine CDX API — historical link data

• httpx + BeautifulSoup — page scraping and link verification

Related MCP server: crawlgraph-mcp

Tools

Quickstart

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/vipul510-web/mcp-backlink-for-seo.git
cd mcp-backlink-for-seo
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install "mcp[cli]>=1.0.0" "ddgs>=9.0.0" httpx beautifulsoup4 lxml

2. Connect to Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Mac) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "backlink-mcp": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/backlink-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/backlink-mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The backlink tools will appear automatically.

3. Connect to Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (per project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "backlink-mcp": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/backlink-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/backlink-mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

4. Connect to any MCP-compatible client

.venv/bin/python server.py

The server communicates over stdio, compatible with any MCP client.

Usage examples

Once connected, just talk to your AI assistant:

Find unlinked mentions (outreach opportunities):

Find unlinked mentions of mybrand.com

Discover guest post opportunities:

Find guest post opportunities in the personal finance niche

Research a competitor's backlinks:

Who links to competitor.com? Find me 20 results.

Verify and enrich a prospect:

Check if techblog.com/article links to mybrand.com and find their contact email

Full link building workflow:

1. Find prospects in the SaaS marketing niche
2. Verify which ones don't already link to mysaas.com
3. Extract contact info for the top 5
4. Draft an outreach email for each

Typical workflow

find_prospects / find_mentions / find_competitor_link_sources
                    ↓
              verify_page_links
          (linked or unlinked? contact info?)
                    ↓
           extract_contact_info
              (email, socials)
                    ↓
          outreach via Gmail MCP

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

• No API keys needed

• No paid subscriptions

Limitations

• DuckDuckGo returns a sample of results, not a complete link graph

• Rate limiting: built-in 1.5s delay between searches to avoid blocks

• The Wayback CDX endpoint can occasionally return 503 or time out; check_page_history retries automatically

• Common Crawl graph data (full inbound link index) is not yet integrated — contributions welcome

Changelog (recent)

• 0.1.1 — Switched search from deprecated duckduckgo-search to the maintained ddgs package (same DuckDuckGo backend; fixes empty search results). Hardened Wayback CDX with HTTPS, longer timeouts, and retries.

Contributing

PRs welcome. High-impact areas:

• Common Crawl graph API integration for true inbound link discovery

• Broken link detection (find dead pages on prospect sites)

• Bulk processing (run across a list of URLs)

• Output to CSV / Google Sheets

Part of SellOnLLM

This MCP is part of the SellOnLLM SEO MCP suite — free, open-source MCP servers for SEO and AI visibility built for Claude and Cursor.

• Backlink MCP — this tool

• GA4 + Search Console MCP — query your traffic and rankings from your AI assistant

• AI Visibility MCP — check if your site is cited by AI tools like Perplexity

License

MIT