In this article, you will learn how to discover backlinks of competitors in 6 easy steps.
To discover backlinks of competitors and steal them is a great way to get your audience to see your content. Why? You need to reach the coveted number one spot in Google search results.
85% of all traffic comes to this number one spot. The other search results compete for the remaining 15% of traffic.
While marketers generally understand the importance of leveraging SEO (search engine optimization) content marketing to achieve this goal, many forget the importance of backlinking - a fatal mistake.
Backlinking is just as important as content marketing.
Backlinking and content marketing are the two most important factors in search engine rankings, but they both carry equal weight.
Despite this, 95% of websites have no backlinks.
Build your backlink strategy by determining which referral sites your competitors are using to reach search rankings, and steal them.
Want to know how to discover backlinks of competitors to build a solid backlink strategy?
Read on for a step-by-step guide to discover the backlinks of competitors and evaluate their usefulness to your SEO strategy.
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What Are Competitor Backlinks?
Backlinking is one of the most effective SEO tactics to help you reach the top search result on Google.
But how do you make sure you're outranking your competitors?
You research their link building strategy and turn it on its head. This is called competitor backlinks building.
Competitive backlinking is an SEO strategy that involves analyzing the backlinks of competing websites to understand the benchmarks for the types, quality, and a number of backlinks you need.
This helps you develop a stronger and more effective link building strategy for your own website.
Let's take backlink outreach as an example. Reaching out to potential referring websites is the number one method of link building.
By analyzing your competitors' backlinks, you'll get a better idea of which referral sites are most effective, so you can contact them for your own link building strategy.
When analyzing your competitors to determine their backlink building strategy, you must conduct a two-pronged attack:
- Domain authority competitors
- Page authority competitors
Domain authority competitors
Domain authority competitors compete with your website as a whole.
These sites are in the same industry as yours or offer similar information. In fact, they target the same audience you are trying to reach.
These competitors are trying to rank high for many of the same keywords as you, and are therefore competing across their entire domain.
For example, our website offers backlinking services. So our domain authority competitors include SEO companies, backlink services, and digital marketing companies. These sites also use backlink related topics to increase their visibility in search engines.
Page authority competitors
Page authority competitors refer to individual pages that are competitively ranked for the same target keyword as one of your pages.
These sites do not necessarily offer similar services and may not be trying to target the same audience as you overall. Rather, it is these individual pages that are competing, not the entire site.
For example, check out this article from our website.
It's called "How to Increase Domain Authority Score Fast" and the main keyword is "How to Increase Domain Authority".
This article ferociously competes with an article called “A Guide To Domain Authority And How To Boost It” by Forbes.
As a company, Forbes doesn’t compete with our website Amin Educate. Instead, it provides business management solutions.
Also, Forbes’s blog doesn’t have any other articles that compete with our website content.
Despite this, as the article uses the same keyword as one of Amin Educate’s top-performing blogs, it’s a prime competitor that needs backlink analysis.
How to Discover Backlinks of Competitors: A Step-by-Step Guide
Discovering the backlinks of competitors is an effective way to reinforce a successful link building strategy. After all, if it works for them, it will probably work for you.
Perform a thorough link analysis to discover the backlinks of your competitors by following these simple steps.
1. Identify your main keywords
If you want to know who your competitors are, you need to know how they compete.
When it comes to climbing the ranks of a search engine, target keywords are essential to a solid SEO strategy. Your main competitors are those whose backlink profile is similar to yours.
To discover these direct competitors, you need to know every target keyword that contributes to your visibility in search engines.
If you know the keywords you have actively listed in your SEO strategy, it's also a good idea to use a keyword research tool to understand what other keywords are most common on your site.
Use a tool like Ubersuggest, Spyfu, or Morningscore to conduct a keyword analysis on your website.
2. Identify your main competitors
Now you need to identify your main competitors. These are the top performing companies that compete with you on Google for your target keywords.
First, do a "related" search on Google.
This will show you all the websites whose topics are related to yours.
Type this into the search bar:
related: [your website URL]
The websites returned by a related search are some of your domain authority competitors.
3. Analyze domain authority competitors with a backlink checker
A backlink checker tool allows you to examine in detail the linking domains that lead to your domain authority competitors.
Since these are your closest rivals, you'll want to learn which backlink websites are the most effective and then steal them.
While plenty of tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush are good, you'll have to pay to access their backlink analysis tool.
Although Moz Link Explorer has a paid option, you can analyze your competitors' backlinks for free. Since you are really only concerned with the top-performing backlinks, this backlink tool is a great place to start.
4. Study page authority competitors with a backlink analysis tool.
While page authority competitors don't compete with your website as a whole, these individual articles can knock you out of the top spot and grab 90% of organic traffic.
Neil Patel's Ubersuggest is one of the best free quality backlink analysis tools for analyzing your page authority competitors' link profiles.
5. Analyze semantically similar keywords
Once you've reviewed all of your main keywords, you'll want to dive into semantically similar keywords. After all, some competitors will have a slightly different SEO strategy than you do, so they may not show up when you search for your top specific keywords.
Use the same SEO tool as above and do a search for each of your top keywords. This will give you the top pages that use semantically similar keywords.
6. Identify the most referral websites
Now that you've gathered all your data, it's time to perform a thorough backlink analysis to identify the most valuable referring domains.
As we discussed above, you should look for sites with a high domain authority score and pages with a high page authority score.
A site's domain authority or page authority score indicates the likelihood that it will rank well on Google. More visitors see sites and pages that rank well in Google, which means more clicks for you.
Remember to stay away from pages with high spam scores. These sites and pages don't look good to Google and won't rank as well.
Look for sites that have attracted visitors recently. Just because a site was once a major backlink resource doesn't mean it is now.
Blogs, products, and thought leaders are going out of style and their audience is shrinking. Or a brand new MasterClass course goes live and overtakes them in the SERPs. When this happens, their referring links no longer carry the same weight. Look for backlink opportunities that are topical.
Discover backlink opportunities on sites that gain high organic traffic. The more people that link to a website, the more likely they are to click on your backlink.
Finally, look for popular referrers in your industry. Competitors who are targeting the same target audience as you will have backlinks on the same sites as others in your industry.
It's easier to spot duplicates when you put all your backlink data into a spreadsheet and filter it by A-Z.
If you create different spreadsheets for each target keyword, you'll start to see the most popular referrers for each different topic you cover.
How to Evaluate Competitor Backlinks
Not all backlinks are created equal.
To add real value to your link building strategy, you need high-quality backlinks from reputable sources.
Likewise, to get the most out of your own link building tactics, you need to make sure you're using backlink opportunities in the right way.
Here are some quick tips on how to analyze your competitor's backlinks.
Backlink Quality
While quantity is important, high quality backlinks will be more effective for you.
Not only do high quality backlinks often have more organic traffic, but they also tend to have higher domain authority. This means that these sites will appear higher on Google, which will increase your search engine ranking.
When looking for backlinks from your competitors, avoid polluting forums and blogs.
Look for well-known media sources, influential thought leaders, and popular industry-related blogs.
Identify referrers with high domain authority and page authority scores, lots of organic traffic, and fresh content.
It's also wise to choose referrer pages that have a lot of their own backlinks. The more backlinks to your referral page, the more clicks for you.
Placement of backlinks
Keep track of where backlinks are placed in each article.
Think about it logically. When you read an article, which links are you most likely to click on?
Some links are super prominent, appearing above the fold or next to compelling content. Others drag their feet in the footer or at the bottom of the article.
If you're looking for potential link opportunities but the site wants your anchor text buried in content or surrounded by other links, look for another opportunity - this one sucks.
Backlink Relevance
Many sites try to increase the number of backlinks by paying for links on referral sites, regardless of the site's topic.
Your best backlinks will be on sites that have relevant content, as your audience is much more likely to click on a useful link.
Discover backlink opportunities when your content or product can provide additional support to the article the visitor is reading. If a reader thinks they can learn more by clicking on a link, they will click.
How to Discover Backlinks Summary
Now that you have a better idea of how to discover the backlinks of competitors, you need to start devising a plan to integrate these backlinks into your own SEO strategy.
Keep in mind, however, that not all backlinks are good opportunities.
Carefully analyze each backlink to ensure that you are choosing referral sites that are relevant to your product or service while demonstrating your expertise and authority to your audience. You don't want to spend a lot of time on weak links.
If it's just an ad for an unwanted product disguised as an anchor link, you won't get any clicks.
