Are you curious about how competitors maintain their lead in search results? Examining their backlink profile is one of the greatest methods. Backlinks are essentially endorsements from other websites, and competitors may have some strong ones that give them an advantage.
In this blog we’ll demonstrate how to locate, examine, and even duplicate those beneficial backlinks for your own website.
Let’s get started if you’re prepared to improve your rankings and gain insight from the competition!
Why Are Competitors’ Backlinks Important?
Competitors backlinks are important because they provide insights of their SEO strategies. Moreover, this technique gives you an idea of where your competitors are gaining backlinks. Get in touch with these high authority websites and get backlinks for your website.
The question arises there what the benefit is to get a link from a high authority website. Firstly, you can get organic traffic towards your website as your competitors are already getting. Also, link insertion to high authority websites tell Google that your content is unique, trustworthy and addresses the audience pain points.
5 Simple Steps to Find and Analyze Your Competitor’s Backlinks
You can use the simple five steps outlined below to find and analyze backlinks from competitors.
Step 1: Identifying Your Competitors
To begin researching backlinks, you must first identify your competitors. These are websites that are in the same industry as you or rank for the same keywords. Although your list of direct competitors is probably already complete, a few tools might assist you in finding those you might not have thought of.
Here are a few strategies for spotting your competition.
- Google Search Results: Just check the websites that show up on the first page after searching for the primary keyword you want to target.
- SEO Tools: Tools that allow you to locate competitive domains based on term overlap include Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush.
- Social media and industry forums: Look for discussions about your subject and note the websites that people are mentioning.
Step 2: Discovering Competitors’ Backlinks
Examining your competitors’ backlink profiles is the next step. Fortunately, several SEO tools simplify this procedure. You can create a list of possible websites for your outreach by using these tools, which let you identify exactly where their links are coming from.
SEO Tools for Backlink Discovery
These are some of the top resources for finding backlinks from competing websites.
- Ahref: One of the most thorough tools for backlink analysis is Ahrefs, which offers information on the domain authority of each link source, anchor text usage, and backlink origins.
- SEMrush: Similar services are provided by SEMrush, which also provides a thorough analysis of the kinds of backlinks your rivals are receiving (such as do-follow and no-follow).
- Ubersuggest: It’s a free tool that helps you find backlink opportunities and shows where your competitors are getting their backlinks.
Step 3: Analyzing Competitors’ Backlinks
Analyzing the backlinks is the next step after finding them. Not all backlinks are the same; some might not help your competitor much, while others are really boosting their rankings. Here’s how to check the quality of a competitor’s backlinks.
Note: Must consider these points while analyzing competitor backlinks.
Domain Authority
Does the backlink originate from a domain authority (DA)-rich website? The more DA a backlink has, the more SEO value it is likely to provide.
Relevance
Does the website you’re connecting to fit into your niche? Backlinks from websites related to your field or industry are typically more powerful.
For example, a backlink from a health blog or a gym’s website is far more beneficial than one from a random culinary blog if your website is about fitness.
Link Type
There are two kinds of backlinks: do-follow and no-follow. The way the two impact your SEO is where they differ.
- Do-follow URLs Direct search engines to provide SEO value (also known as “link juice”) to the website they are linking to. Links like these have the direct potential to raise your rankings.
- Conversely, No-follow links don’t transfer SEO value in the same manner. They can still be beneficial, though, if they increase website traffic or brand recognition.
Anchor Text
What kind of text does the link use? Keywords in anchor text can improve rankings and assist search engines in comprehending the purpose of the linked material.
You can concentrate your efforts on reproducing the backlinks that are actually important by eliminating backlinks that are of poor quality or irrelevant.
Step 4: Finding Opportunities to Replicate Competitors’ Backlinks
It’s time to obtain the backlinks when you’ve examined them. Here’s how to use the data you’ve collected to obtain backlinks that are comparable to or superior to those of your competitors.
1. Guest Blogging
It may be a great chance for you if you observe that your competitors are receiving backlinks from guest posts. Suggest your own guest blog ideas to the same websites. To improve your chances of being published, make sure your writing presents unique ideas or insights.
2. Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique involves finding high-performing content that your competitor has created, and then making something better. This could mean adding more data, insights, or visuals to an article, and then reaching out to the same sites linking to your competitor, offering your superior content as a replacement.
3. Resource Pages
You can also target resource pages (lists of connections to useful articles or websites) if your competitors are receiving backlinks from them. To ensure that the owner of the website views your content as a valuable contribution, make sure it is of good quality.
4. Unlinked Mentions
A website can sometimes make reference to a competitor without providing a link to them. We call this an unlinked mention. You can look for these mentions and recommend that the website replace them with a link to your content. You can uncover these possibilities with the aid of tools like Mention or Google Alerts.
5. Press Releases and Media Coverage
It might be worthwhile to spend money on your own PR strategy if your competitors are obtaining backlinks from press releases or media mentions. Publicizing significant developments or accomplishments through press releases can increase brand authority and draw in backlinks from reliable sites.
Step 5: Reaching Out for Backlink Opportunities
Outreach is the last phase. Now that you have a list of websites that link to your competitor’s website, it’s time to get in touch with the editors or owners of these websites. Be careful to be professional, and kind, and explain the importance of linking to your material when you get in touch.
The following advice will help you increase your success rate.
- Customize Your Emails: Generic emails are disliked by all. Name the business owner of the website and mention a particular aspect of it.
- Provide Value: Describe the worth of your content and how it will help their audience.
- Be succinct: website owners have a lot going on. Provide information that is straightforward and succinct and goes right to the point.
- Follow Up: It’s acceptable to send a courteous follow-up email if you don’t hear from them in a week or two. A little reminder can be helpful when emails are misplaced.
Wrap Up
Discovering and analyzing competitors is the best way to get high authority backlinks. You may think that it’s a very hectic task to find and analyze competitors one by one. The answer is a big NO! As it’s an era of technology which makes every process smooth and simple.
There are various tools which you can utilize to get all data in just a few clicks. Then use these insights to improve your business SEO. To get high visibility as compared to your competitors you have to audit their sites and do better in a smart way.
