Find out what sites are linking to your competitors by following these steps.
The main goal of nearly any link building strategy is to outrank your competitors, as you'd most likely prefer for users to go to your site instead of theirs. Sometimes outranking your competitors can seem impossible, but thankfully, you can find out how they got their ranking by finding their backlinks.
Finding one of your competitor's backlinks can give you a huge advantage, as this can indicate how they achieved their ranking on Google, and you can employ similar tactics to achieve similar results.
Here at Link City, we will walk you through how to access your competitor backlinks so your website can start climbing the rankings.
Different Types Of Competitors
The internet is already vastly populated with websites, which means that regardless of the niche that your site falls in, you will have at least some form of competition.
There are, however, different types of competitors that you will deal with when implementing a backlink strategy, so you'll need to be aware of them and how to find their backlinks, as this can help with your link building tactics.
Domain-level competitors
Domain-level competitors are websites that compete with you on search engines' results pages for nearly all of the target keywords that apply to your own site.
If you want to find your domain-level competitors, you can use an SEO tool like ahrefs.com. This tool will allow you to enter your domain and present you with a list of competing domains ranked according to the number of common keywords that your sites share.
If you operate a product or service business, these competitors won't necessarily be your "real world" competitors. You may not be competing with them directly for business, as they will only be competing with you for similar keywords.
Page-level competitors
Page-level competitors are generally less of a threat than domain-level competitors, as you will typically only be competing with them for specific keywords that apply to your site.
They are still competitors; however, they could outrank you for these specific terms, meaning they might just be drawing traffic away from your website.
If you want to find your page-level competitors, use a backlink analysis tool like ahrefs.com.
When using this tool, go onto the keyword explorer and paste the main keyword you are trying to rank for. Ahrefs will present you with a list of pages competing with you for that specific term.
How To Find Your Competitors' Backlinks
Now that you have figured out how to find out who your competitors are, you will likely want to know how to find competitors' backlinks, as this can help you determine how they achieved their ranking and, in turn, help you improve your ranking. Getting a better picture of how your backlink profile compares to those of others in your field is a good place to start.
Identify the main keywords of your site
As we have mentioned above, if you want to find competitor backlinks, you will first need to find out who your competitors are. To do this, you will need to find every keyword that plays a role in your search engine visibility.
Use a keyword tool, as other keywords may contribute to your visibility that you may need to be aware of. Entering these terms into search engines will likely bring up your main competitors in the search engine rankings, after which you can begin your competitor backlink analysis.
Research your competitor's homepage links
While using an SEO tool, you should check the anchor report for your domain. Once you do this, you'll likely realize that many backlinks use branded anchors because a significant number of websites link to the homepage of other websites when they build backlinks.
This will help you figure out which websites mention your competitors. You can then enter the URL of this competitor and find all the links pointing to their homepage. You can then contact the owners of these sites and attempt to get them to add your site's link to their page, which will help increase your ranking.
Write guest posts for the same sites as your competitors
Guest posting is still one of the best ways to make your backlink profile more robust, as few websites would turn down the opportunity to host some valuable content on their site in exchange for a link back to yours.
There are quite a few ways to find your competitor's guest posts; however, the most straightforward way would be to use a tool, such as Ahrefs Content Explorer tool, to find content written by a particular author.
This will, however, require you to find some of the authors that contribute to your competitor's website - fortunately, it shouldn't be hard if you dig around.
Once you find some of the sites that your competitors have been writing guest posts for, they likely will be open to letting you create some guest posts for them in exchange for links.
Look for sites linking to more than one of your competitors
Another great way to find link opportunities from your competitors is by finding sites to which multiple competitors are linked.
You can do this by using a link intersect tool, which should help you find sites linking to or more than one of your competitors. These sites will likely be open to the idea of you creating a guest post for them or offering you an opportunity for niche edits if they have already done so for your competitors.
While some of these sites may not have all that much in the way of domain authority, if they are linking to many of your competitors, then you should also want to throw your hat in the ring, as it may be a great place to pick up some extra organic traffic.
Keep track of your competitors' new backlinks
While you may think that your competitors getting new inbound links would be a problem, you can quickly turn it into an opportunity to gain more backlinks for your own site.
As the saying goes, "If you can't beat them, join them." This can be applied to create an effective link building strategy as, firstly, it shows you that there are websites in your niche willing to provide other sites with backlink opportunities. It can also allow you to get these websites to link back to your site.
Once again, many tools at your disposal can notify you when your competitor sets up a backlink.
However, this can sometimes give you hundreds of alerts every day if you compete with a highly popular website with great search engine optimization.
This is why it usually is best only to set these alerts to your page-level competitors, as it will likely be much easier to get loot backlinks from a site that is closer to your level.
Why Should You Consider Link City?
If you are worried that your closest competitors are obtaining many high-quality backlinks every day, you shouldn't worry about getting a piece of the same pies as them.
If you use our services at Link City, your website could become the one your competitors envy. We offer guest posting and niche editing services that will provide your site with many high-quality links that can improve your ranking.
Don't take our word for it, though; you can see what our clients have had to say about us on Trustpilot.
FAQs
Should you research your competitor backlinks?
Researching your competitors' backlinks can give you a good idea of how your competitors achieved their ranking, which can help you find other sites to approach who can link back to you.
How can I check my backlinks for free?
There are many free tools available online that enable you to check your backlinks. The Google Search Console is a great backlink checker that is entirely free, but there are also many other free backlink checkers available that won't be difficult to find if you do some research.
What is the fastest way to increase domain authority?
There are many ways to increase your website's domain authority, such as creating high-quality content and obtaining backlinks from other sites with high domain authority.
