On Page SEO

How to Find Your Competitors Backlinks: A Step-by-Step Guide

How to Find Your Competitors Backlinks: A Step-by-Step Guide
By Nishant Desai
19 Nov 2024
714 views

The digital industry is tough, and reaching the top 10 spot in the SERP pages takes work. But there’s a secret strategy you need to know—it’s the Competitor Backlink Analysis.

This strategy can give you a headstart in the competitive nature of digital marketing. By learning to find competitor backlinks and analyzing them, you can gain an advantage over your competitors and formulate a solution that can put your website on top of the game!

Competitor’s backlink analysis can help you in these ways: 

  • Identifies high-quality backlink opportunities to enhance SEO strategy.
  • Identify what competitors are promoting and their strategies.
  • Builds a more robust, more competitive link-building campaign.

In this article, you will learn how to implement an effective competitor backlink analysis, which can give you an edge. 

Backlinks are one indicator of how your website will rank. So, having a glimpse of your competitor’s backlinks can give you an idea of what they are doing to rank in the SERPs. 

In return, this will give you insight into how to build a strategy that will work against your competitors! 

Here are the reasons why competitor backlinks matter: 

By studying competitor backlinks, you can identify gaps in your backlink profile and find valuable sources for outreach. 

Competitor backlink analysis is about “reverse engineering” your competitor’s link strategy. By knowing their link profile, you’ll understand how to strategize for your backlink acquisition to get an advantage over your competitors. 

So, when you check competitor backlinks, you’ll learn how to improve your strategy for better link performance. 

  • You Can Discover untapped backlink opportunities by Finding websites and content that link to your competitors but not to you.
  • You Can Analyze the link-building strategies of top-ranking competitors. Gain insights into how top-ranking competitors acquire their backlinks, such as through guest posts, content marketing, or social media shares.
  • You Can Evaluate the Quality of Competitors’ Backlinks. Assess the quality of backlinks your competitors have, helping you prioritize efforts to acquire higher-quality links for your site.

Here are some tools you can make to analyze and see competitors backlinks conveniently: 

Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Overview: Ahrefs is one of the most powerful SEO tools for backlink analysis.

Features: Includes backlink analysis, link intersect tools, and link growth trend analysis.

  1. Input the competitor’s URL into Ahrefs.
  2. Navigate to the “Backlink Profile” section.
  3. Export the list of backlinks to analyze them further.

Guide for how to use Ahrefs backlink checker tool to find valuable backlink insight

2. SEMrush

SEMrush backlink analytics tool

Overview: SEMrush provides an in-depth backlink analytics platform with features like competitor comparison and backlink audits.

Features: Backlink audit, competitor comparison, link-building opportunities.

  1. Input the competitor’s URL into SEMrush.
  2. Go to the “Backlink Analytics” section.
  3. Review the competitor’s backlinks and export the results.

Guide for how to use semrush backlink analytics tool

Moz Link Explorer

Overview: Moz offers a user-friendly backlink checker that emphasizes Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA).

Features: Includes DA/PA metrics and link quality indicators.

  1. Enter the competitor’s domain into Moz Link Explorer.
  2. Review the backlink profile.
  3. Filter and export the results for further analysis.

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest tool for backlink analysis

Overview: Ubersuggest is an accessible, beginner-friendly tool for backlink analysis.

  1. Enter the competitor’s URL into Ubersuggest.
  2. Click on the “Backlinks” section.
  3. Export the backlink data.

5. SE Ranking

SE Ranking tool for backlink analysis

Overview: SE Ranking provides a comprehensive backlink checker with toxic link detection.

Features: Backlink audits, competitor comparisons, link toxicity analysis.

  1. Enter the competitor domain into SE Ranking.
  2. Access the “Backlink Monitor” feature.
  3. Analyze and filter the backlinks.

6. Majestic

Majestic backlink analytics

Overview: Majestic is known for its in-depth metrics, such as Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

  1. Enter the competitor domain into Majestic’s Site Explorer.
  2. View the detailed backlink profile.
  3. Filter results based on relevance or quality.

If you want to view competitors backlinks in a more convenient way, you can use backlink analysis tools to extract detailed backlink profiles. This will give you an overview of their link profile and how their links perform in the digital landscape. 

To give you an overview of how to determine backlinks, here’s a step-by-step process: 

2. Manual Search via Google

If you don’t have any tools, you can also do a manual search via Google to determine backlinks from your competitors.  In doing so, you’ll be able to get an overview of how their links work and where they usually acquire their links. 

So, here’s how you can use Google’s search operators to find backlinks:

  • You can type “competitor.com” -site:competitor.com on your search engine and see the results for the backlinks. (Example: link:competitor.com or competitor.com backlinks.)
  • After this, you can analyze sites linking to competitors through Google results.

This is a good option if you’re not using SEO tools, but it would still be recommendable to use an SEO tool to analyze links. 

3. Reviewing Competitor’s Content

Now that you’ve gathered information about where they get their links, it’s also important to review your competitors’ content to learn how they get their links. You can inspect different content types, such as guest posts, blog posts, press releases, infographics, etc. 

After this, identify how and where they gain links using these contents. This information would make your strategy more effective in the competitive backlinking field. 

4. Checking Competitor’s Social Media

Another way to find competitors’ backlinks is to check their social media profiles. Check their profiles to see which content they share and link to. As such, you’ll be able to identify what you can do to attract more links through your content. 

You can also use social media metrics for backlink sources. For example, find which content has the most likes, shares, comments, and engagements to determine which has the most potential. 

5. Analyzing Top-Performing Content

You can also use SEO tools to know which web pages or contents get the most backlinks! In doing so, you can pattern your strategy on how they create these contents for link building. 

For example, You can find content on their website with many backlinks and create similar, high-quality content.

You can set up alerts using your competitor backlink analysis tools to monitor new backlinks that competitors acquire.  For this reason, you can use this information to track new opportunities that can help you gain quality backlinks. 

When doing your competitor backlink analysis, it’s also important to evaluate the quality of the links to know whether they are effective.  Here are some metrics you need to consider: 

Focus on obtaining high-quality backlinks (relevant, authoritative websites) rather than simply collecting links. The Google March Core Update also supported this trend by updating the search engine’s policy. 

Google prefers quality over quantity. This means that 10 quality links are much better than 50 links from low-authority websites. 

👉 Important Metrics to Consider

When you find competitor backlinks, it’s also important to consider some important metrics, such as: 

  • Domain Authority (DA): Higher DA indicates a more authoritative site.
  • Page Authority (PA): Authority of the specific page linking to your competitor.
  • Trust Flow & Citation Flow (Majestic): Metrics that measure link trust and volume.
  • Relevance: Backlinks from sites within the same industry or niche are more valuable.

It’s important to identify toxic backlinks that could harm your SEO efforts. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can help spot and remove low-quality or spammy links. It’s best to ignore toxic links and focus on high-quality links to improve your website. 

Link Intersect Tool - Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Link Intersect tool identifies sites that link to multiple competitors but not to your website. This provides valuable outreach opportunities and can help you find websites where you can acquire your backlinks. It can be a helpful step when you find your backlinks that can help your website improve. 

Pro Tip: These actionable insights can be used to formulate your strategy in link acquisition and help you build effective link building ideas for the future. 

👉 Guest Posts and Niche Blogs

Competitors often earn backlinks through guest posts. By identifying where they are guest posting, you can target those same opportunities for your own content. They can also help you think of a topic that will help you stand out in the search engine. Think of more unique issues that are different from your competitors to give your readers a new perspective. 

Pro Tip: Add relevant information and trendy topics to make your content more relatable. 

Check for broken or lost links to your competitors’ content. You can use this information to reclaim broken or unlinked mentions of your brand. Link reclamation is also an excellent opportunity to turn broken links into new opportunities! So, make sure to include link reclamation in your strategy when doing competitor backlink analysis. 

Pro Tip: Only focus on high-quality links when doing link reclamation to keep your link profile healthy. 

Once you’ve identified valuable backlink sources, reach out with personalized emails. Pitch your content as a helpful resource for their site. So, if you want to know how to find new backlinks, you can reach out to backlink sources like webmasters, online events, conferences, and even infographics.

If you’re sending an email, remember to craft personalized and compelling outreach emails to make it look professional. 

👉 Creating High-Value Content

Develop superior content that provides more value than your competitors’ content. This could be through case studies, white papers, infographics, or in-depth research reports.

High-value content is also preferable by search engines because it follows the E-E-A-T content. E-E-A-T means Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. So, when creating a content, always remember the E-E-A-T guidelines.  

👉 Leveraging Influencers and Industry Leaders

Engage with influencers in your industry who are linking to competitors. Build relationships and create content that appeals to them. 

Nowadays, influencer marketing is one of the most effective strategies for gaining the trust of your followers.  So, if you leverage influencers and industry leaders, you will be able to resonate with your followers. 

As a result, this can be an excellent opportunity to gain more high-quality links! 

Tracking and Analyzing Your Progress

Finally, it’s essential to track and analyze your progress to know whether your competitor backlink analysis is effective. 

There are two ways to monitor your backlinks. Here are they:

It’s more convenient to use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs and Moz to track backlinks because it streamlines the process when you’re checking for backlinks. 

It can also help you monitor whether the links are working properly or it helps your website achieve its SEO goals. Also, remember to consider the key metrics when monitoring your new backlinks. 

👉 Assessing SEO Performance Post-Link Building

Monitor changes in search rankings, organic traffic, and overall backlink profile. Tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush are useful for ongoing performance tracking.

This can also give you an insight into which areas you need to improve to make your link-building more effective. 

To give you a summary, here’s how you can do a competitor backlink analysis: 

  • Using backlink analysis tools, manually searching Google, and reviewing competitors’ content and social media.
  • Focusing on high-quality, relevant backlinks.
  • Outreach and content creation strategies to build a stronger backlink profile.

Regular Backlink Analysis is essential because it can help you stay ahead of your competitors by continuously analyzing and improving your backlink profile. This can also help you adapt your strategy and improve your link acquisition. 

Nonetheless, if you need a guide, you can use this article as a reference to help you with link acquisition in the digital industry. 

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