How we use Ranking Raccoon as marketers (and why we love it)

‍One of the most frustrating parts of SEO is link building. Over 50% of professionals share this opinion, saying building backlinks is the hardest aspect of their work.

We at UX studio also experienced it: creating endless spreadsheets full of promising prospects, sending hundreds of outreach emails, and writing awkward follow-ups that rarely gained any results. By the end of the month you’d sit before your computer ghosted, left on unread, and with one contextually irrelevant backlink in your hands.

We just had to put a stop to all this disappointment. That’s how Ranking Raccoon was born, out of frustration and a conviction that link building can be better. 

From SEO pain points to our own solution

At UX studio, we’ve always believed that great digital products are born from real problems—and link building gave us plenty of those. We needed backlinks to grow our websites, yet the traditional way of doing it was inefficient.

So we asked ourselves a simple question: What if link building didn’t have to be painful?

That question led to us building Ranking Raccoon, a community-driven platform where SEO specialists, agencies, in-house marketers, and business owners can connect and exchange backlinks in an authentic, transparent way. The core idea behind it is genuine, mutually beneficial partnerships built around shared topics and trust.

Today, Ranking Raccoon helps hundreds of professionals tackle one of SEO’s toughest challenges by approaching link building differently. Rather than transactions, we empower authentic collaboration. We don’t believe in paid links and stay away from link schemes. As marketers ourselves, we rely on Ranking Raccoon every day for ethical link exchanges with trustworthy partners. 

If you’re interested, you can learn more about the story behind Ranking Raccoon here.

My outreach workflow with Ranking Raccoon

When I first started using Ranking Raccoon, what surprised me most was how quickly it simplified a process I used to dread: outreach. What used to take days of research and cold email anxiety now fits neatly into one smooth workflow. Here’s how I use Raccoon step by step, from finding prospects to seeing my links go live.

1. Prospecting made easy

I usually start my link-building journey with Ranking Raccoon’s AI-assisted prospecting. The tool automatically pre-filters websites that are relevant to my topics, so I can focus only on opportunities with sufficient topical overlap.

Sometimes, I also sort by Domain Rating (DR), depending on the authority of the page I’m building links to. For example, if I’m working on a site with a DR of 80, I’ll look for partners with a similarly strong DR range to ensure balance and credibility.

When I’ve gone through the main recommendations, I like to check the Recently Added section, which shows the newest members who just joined the community, and it’s often the best place to find “fresh meat” before everyone else does.

If I already have a specific article I want to build links to, I prefer using the Pages feature. It allows me to search for other content by keyword. For instance, when I wrote a piece about SaaS link building, I searched for the keyword “SaaS marketing” and immediately found perfect potential partners to connect with.

2. No more cold emails

One of the best parts about Ranking Raccoon is that I no longer have to send desperate pitches to random info@ addresses, crossing my fingers and hoping someone will read them. Everything happens within the platform, so I can directly message the right person. 

In the built-in chat, I can send a detailed request specifying which article I’d like the link to appear in, what the anchor text should be, and from which site I can reciprocate the link.

And if I’m not in the mood to write a perfect pitch, the AI message generator can create a friendly, professional draft for me. This dissolves blank-screen anxiety, and the overthinking of every sentence.

3. The waiting game and getting my link live

Once I send the request, I just wait. The system automatically notifies the other user by email that they’ve received a message, so replies usually come in quickly. Sometimes I need to give a gentle nudge, but it’s nothing like sending the same follow-up email three times in a row.

From there, we can easily discuss details in chat, and once the link is live, Raccoon verifies it and even checks whether the link is do-follow, so I don’t have to manually track anything.

What used to be one of the most frustrating parts of SEO has now become one of the most efficient and nearly enjoyable parts of my marketing routine.

My favorite features (and why they matter for marketers)

I’ll be honest, narrowing this list down wasn’t easy. I use Ranking Raccoon every day, and there are a lot of features that make my link-building life smoother. (Okay, I might be a little biased.) 

Still, here’s my shortlist of favorite features—the ones that make the Raccoon experience complete for me as a marketer.

Anti-ghosting features

Let’s start with my absolute favorite. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting ghosted in the middle of a conversation.

Ranking Raccoon takes ghosting seriously. The platform automatically detects inactive users, sends them email reminders, and if they ignore several notifications, their accounts get temporarily restricted until they respond.

Users can also report ghosting directly to moderators, keeping the community active and reliable. I’ll admit, I’ve been on the guilty side too; sometimes life gets busy. Thankfully, Raccoon’s friendly reminders always nudge me when I have unread messages.

Even better: you can set an Out of Office status, so others immediately see that you’re not ignoring them, just taking a (well-earned) break. This feature might sound small, or even irrelevant, but it keeps the entire ecosystem trustworthy and human. 

On-site content search

When I find a website I’d like to collaborate with, I don’t have to leave the platform to dig through their content. Raccoon’s built-in search lets me look through the site’s articles right on the platform and filter them by keyword to find the most relevant ones.

For example, if I want to build a link to a blog post about UX case studies, I can quickly check whether the target site has articles on UX consulting or digital design trends. That way, I can tailor my request to fit their content perfectly. It’s fast, precise, and saves me from sending vague outreach messages.

Activity indicator

A small but incredibly helpful detail: Raccoon shows when someone was last active on the platform. That means no more guessing games about whether your message disappeared into a void. I can set realistic expectations about response times and focus on chatting with users who are clearly active and engaged. It’s a little thing, but it makes the whole experience smoother and more human-centered.

Partner sites option

This one’s especially useful for agencies or marketers managing multiple domains. Besides my own website, I can list additional sites I manage, which means I can both offer and build links from different sources.

A small badge on my profile shows that I’m open to “ABC exchanges” (three-way swaps), which makes collaboration easier and more transparent. For anyone juggling multiple clients or brands, this feature is a game-changer.

Link tracker

Reporting is usually where most SEO tools get too complex, but Raccoon keeps it refreshingly simple. The Link Tracker provides a downloadable summary of all the backlinks I’ve built, including the target site’s Domain Rating, traffic, link placement date, and the contact person who helped make it happen. It’s perfect for end-of-month reporting and keeping track of my progress without extra spreadsheets. For marketers, it’s one of those “why didn’t anyone think of this earlier?” features. 

Why do these features matter?

All these details add up to something bigger than convenience. They make link building feel human again: less about cold data and more about connection, collaboration, and trust. As marketers, we spend so much time trying to build visibility online. Ranking Raccoon reminds me that the best results come not from automation alone, but from meaningful relationships, powered by smart design and a community that actually cares.

How other marketers at UX studio use Ranking Raccoon: Interview with Dorka, Copyfolio’s marketing manager

I’m not the only one at UX studio who swears by Raccoon: my coworker, Dorka, also has her own favorite ways to use it.

1. How would you describe Ranking Raccoon to someone who’s never used it before?

I’d describe Ranking Raccoon as a tool that will make all the painful parts of link building sooo much faster and easier. It’s a platform where you can connect with people and find potential link placements super easily. Then chat about the details and even confirm when their link is live and do-follow.

‍2. How often do you use Ranking Raccoon?

I typically open it every day or every other day just to make sure that if I have a message I get back to it. I know I get the email notifications anyway, but I like to check in almost daily.

3. What has changed in your link building strategy since you started using Ranking Raccoon?

I think it’s just the fact that I’m spending less time prospecting and looking for contact information, so I can focus more on finding the perfect placements within a page. So it kind of changes the process to a quality over quantity approach. 

I feel like without the Raccoon, link building is more like you go for the quantity to make sure you at least get a few responses, but thanks to the guaranteed high response rate in Ranking Raccoon, you can afford to focus on the quality instead.

4. How much time would you say Raccoon saves you compared to your previous link-building workflow?

I would just say so much, I couldn’t even put it into numbers. It really doesn’t even compare. I just love how the Raccoon saves me time, not just in one, but multiple points throughout the process. It saves me time with the prospecting, with finding the contact information, with finding the perfect pages and placements. It even saves me time by checking if the link they added for me is live and do-follow. So when you add all of those up it’s almost immeasurable.

5. Can you share an example of a successful collaboration or backlink you built through the platform?

I have a partner on Ranking Raccoon with whom I’ve already built 3 links. I’d say the fact that I have partners with whom I can regularly build quality links with is the biggest success for me. 

‍6. How many backlinks do you think you’ve built since joining Raccoon? 

I can actually count, give me a second… 24 in the past 10 months.

7. What’s your favorite feature and why?

My favorite feature is the little search icon next to the website’s name. So when I’ve already found a website whose topic feels relevant to us, I can click on the search icon and write my target keyword, and the Raccoon will list all the pages on that website that have that phrase. It shows a short snippet where the phrase appears, with the keyword highlighted in bold, and I can very easily open the page and see it myself. It saves me so much time finding relevant pages within websites where my link could fit.

That is a very annoying part when you are trying to build links outside of the Raccoon and I love that feature.

‍8. Is there a small feature or detail that you think people often overlook but you love?

The confetti I get when a link goes live. I love the confetti.

‍9. Is there a feature you’d like to see added in the future or is there something that is missing from Raccoon right now?

It would be nice to find an easy way to see if a site that I found outside of the Raccoon is already on the Raccoon. So let’s say I do a Google search and I see a site from where I’d want to get a link, it would be nice to have an easy search bar for checking if the site is already on the Raccoon. I know I can use Ctrl+F (or Command+F) on the Sites page, but the filters can interfere with that. 

‍10. What would you miss most if Raccoon suddenly disappeared from the digital world?

Having easy access to quality sites and their administrators or their contact info. Because it’s really so painful how you have to spend so much time finding the sites and then finding the people. So I feel like having access to sites that are not spammy and already vetted by a team and also to the people who can add links to the site right away without searching is incredible. I’d miss that very-very much.

‍11. What advice would you give to someone who is just trying out Ranking Raccoon?

I’m not sure how many people check that, but make sure you have your own linking guidelines written down. You can have them in your Raccoon profile or you can just have them in a note, so you can paste it. People usually ask about guidelines for your site, so it will save you time if you have them ready.

Also, explore the different sorting options on the page that lists the sites you can build links with. I found that at different stages in my link building journey, different sorting options would work better. I feel like at first I started with the most relevant sites, then later I was looking at the highest DR sites to try to find spots. And then at last I ended up with the most recent options, so I can see the newest sites that are getting added, so I can easily find options that I haven’t reached out to yet. 

How it changed our link building strategy

Before we had the option to use Ranking Raccoon, our link building success depended on manual outreach and cold emails. When you rely on cold outreach, your focus is on volume, since reply rates are very low in this area. 

So the core strategy was reaching out to as many relevant sites as possible in the hopes of getting at least a few positive responses. But an approach like this required endless research in the background. Finding just a few good potential link placements could take hours—and the next day, you had to pick up where you left off and start prospecting all over again.

Since we started using Ranking Raccoon, it’s hard to put into words, but our mindset has completely shifted. Instead of compromising on contextual relevance just to get at least a few links, now we can allow ourselves to prioritize getting the truly high-quality links, and maintaining long-term partnerships with fellow marketers. 

Overall the platform helps us identify high-quality opportunities faster, communicate more efficiently, and track every collaboration in one place. As a result, our backlink profile has become stronger, more consistent, and far more organic.

Tips for marketers trying Ranking Raccoon

If you’re new to Ranking Raccoon (or if you just got curious to try it out), my biggest piece of advice is: treat it like a community, not a database. The magic of the platform lies in its people—marketers, SEO specialists, and site owners who genuinely want to help each other grow. The more you interact, the more valuable your experience becomes.

Here are a few tips to make the most of it:

1. Don’t just collect links—build relationships.
When you reach out, personalize your message and show genuine interest in the other person’s content. A thoughtful exchange often leads to multiple collaborations down the line.

2. Use topic relevancy as your compass.
Focus on websites that truly connect with your niche. It’s not just better for SEO, it also makes your partnerships more authentic and natural.

3.  Stay active and easy to reach.
Keep your site’s profile up to date and reply to messages promptly. Being responsive and easy to reach helps you build trust and attract more collaboration opportunities.

4. Track your wins.
Use the built-in Link Tracker to monitor your bacElklinks and keep a clear record of your progress. It’s satisfying to see how your network (and your traffic) grows over time.

5. Be patient: good partnerships take time.
Just like in real-life networking, not every request will turn into a collaboration. But with consistency and an open mindset, your efforts will start to compound.

Conclusion: SEO made human

At its core, what is SEO for? It’s about connecting the right people through relevant content. Making it easier to find what you’re looking for. Maybe it’s a pair of warm boots for the winter season, a bookkeeping service for your business, or some guidance on how to make your digital product more user-friendly. SEO is the bridge between content and target audience. 

Link building, as an essential part of SEO, shares this very element. It’s not just about exchanging links or boosting metrics, but building connections between people, brands, and ideas. Ranking Raccoon reminds us that behind every backlink, there’s another marketer, a business, and something valuable that deserves to be discovered. 

By making collaboration simple, transparent, and genuinely human, it turns a once frustrating process into something meaningful. Data and human connection work hand in hand to help great content get discovered.

In the end, Ranking Raccoon didn’t just change how we do link building—it changed how we thought about it.