How to find competitor backlinks

Understanding your competitors’ backlink strategies is essential for developing your own SEO and building strategy. By identifying the sources of a competitor’s backlinks, you can discover opportunities to boost your own website’s authority and search engine rankings.

Competitor backlink analysis is done by almost every business’s SEO team, and is crucial to building an effective link building strategy.

What are backlinks and why are they important?

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from one website to another. Search engines, such as Google, use backlinks as a key ranking factor as they indicate a website’s credibility and trustworthiness.

High-quality backlinks from authoritative websites can significantly improve your website’s ranking in search results. Therefore, regardless of your business’s sector, it’s vital you have a strategic and robust link building strategy.

It is a good idea to regularly undertake competitor backlink analysis. Doing so ensures you can stay competitive in the search engine results pages (SERPs), as well as giving you a good indication of their business focuses.

The benefits of analysing competitors’ backlinks:

• Identify link-building opportunities
• Understand your competitors’ SEO strategies
• Uncover high-authority sites linking to your competitors
• Improve your content by seeing what resonates in your industry
• Build relationships with relevant websites in your niche

How do I find competitor backlinks?

There are several methods and tools available for identifying competitors’ backlinks.

Step one: Identify your competitors

Before you start analysing backlinks, you need to identify your top competitors. These competitors might be a mix of:

• Direct competitors: Businesses offering similar products or services.
• SEO competitors: Websites ranking for the same keywords as you.
• Content competitors: Sites publishing content on similar topics within your industry.

Step two: Use competitor backlink analysis tools

It may seem like a daunting tasks, but competitor link analysis isn’t as time consuming as you may think – thanks to the SEO tools at our disposal.

There are a number of tools available that can help you uncover your competitors’ backlinks:

• Ahrefs: Provides a comprehensive backlink profile for any website.
• SEMrush: Offers in-depth analysis of competitor backlinks and anchor text.
• Moz Link Explorer: Allows you to explore competitor link profiles and domain authority.
• Majestic: Focuses on providing detailed trust flow and citation flow metrics.

Most of these tools have largely similar analysis tools inside them to identify any gaps in your backlink profile, so it’s usually down to personal preference as to which you prefer. It’s also worth noting that they are paid-for platforms, but some do offer free trials.

You can also use Google – or other search engines – to find places where your competitors have been mentioned and linked from.

Step three: Analyse competitor backlink data

Once you’ve gathered backlink data using one or more tools, it’s time to analyse the results. When doing this, you will need to look at:

• Link quality: Evaluate competitor backlinks based on domain authority, trust flow, and relevancy.
• Link patterns: Look for recurring websites across competitors or specific types of content that earn backlinks – such as tools.
• Anchor text: Analyse the anchor text used in competitor backlinks to identify keyword trends.

Step four: Discover link-building opportunities

With your competitor’s backlink profile in hand, you can now uncover opportunities to build into your own link building strategy:

• PR and media coverage: Track down press mentions and news coverage linked to your competitors and reach out to these outlets with your own stories that are relevant to their audience and your brand.
• Resource pages: Discover industry-specific resource pages that link to your competitors and create similar pages using your expertise before reaching out to suggest your website as an additional resource.
• Broken link building: Look for broken links on high-authority sites that point to competitor content and offer a replacement link to your own quality content.
• Guest posts: Identify websites that publish guest posts from your competitors and pitch your own content.

What are the types of backlinks?

There is no sure fire way to get backlinks fast. But the earlier you start link building, the earlier you will see results.

It’s important to understand that when outreaching, you will not get success every

There are two types of backlinks you will be interested in from an SEO perspective – on top of brand mentions (also known as citations).

These are:

• Follow links: These are direct signals to search engines that they should trust your website
• No Follow links: These are more of a hint to search engines that they should trust your website

You may also see Sponsored links when analysing competitor backlinks. These are links that have been paid for.

Every website will have a mix of links in its backlink profile.

What is the best SEO tool for competitor site analysis?

There are lots of tools available to help you search for competitor backlinks – some of which are mentioned above.

Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Link Explorer, and Majestic, are some of the most well-known. The majority of these tools are very similar, with slight differences between them in terms of how they rank websites and their other SEO capabilities. So it is personal preference and opting for a tool that will do everything you need it to.

How can I use competitor backlink analysis to my advantage?

Regular monitoring

SEO isn’t a quick fix. You search engine optimisation is something that needs constant attention. So regularly monitoring competitor backlinks will give you invaluable insight by keeping you updated on their strategies and new link sources.

Focus on quality over quantity

Not all backlinks are created equal and it’s not only about the number of referring domains pointing to your website. Quality over quantity is becoming more important than ever. Therefore, be sure to prioritise high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant sites instead of chasing high volume, low-quality, links.

Diversify your link profile

While it can be tempting to only target websites with a high domain authority, it’s important to build a diverse backlink profile across all kinds of relevant media. This can look like national, regional, international, industry, and niche media.

Leverage competitive gaps

While you may think your competitors have tapped every resource for backlinks, that is rarely the case. It’s worth spending time cross referencing their backlinks with a list of target media where you may have an opportunity to build a relationship and earn coverage and a backlink. This might include niche websites, local directories, or emerging blogs in your industry.

Understand what is adding value for your website

What works for your competitors may not necessarily work for you. So while using your competitors’ backlinks as a guide, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on what these earned links are doing for your bottom line.

For instance, you can use Google Analytics to see where referral traffic is coming from, as well as use SEO tools to measure the impact of your link building strategy on your keywords.

How can I implement insights from competitor backlink research?

After conducting your competitor backlink analysis, it’s important to put these insights into action an build your own link building strategy.

Create a content strategy

• Identify content gaps: Create content that addresses topics your competitors haven’t covered to increase your chances of earning backlinks.
• Replicate successful formats: If certain content formats (for example listicles, guides, tools) are earning links for your competitors, incorporate similar formats into your content strategy.

Outreach and relationship building

• Cold outreach: Create a tailored list of websites that link to your competitors and offer valuable content or insights as an alternative.
• Partnerships: Build relationships with sites that consistently link to industry-relevant content to increase your chances of being included in future articles. Journalists and writers are often looking for new voices and opinions, so even new brands can earn coverage by giving them something valuable and different.

Link-building campaigns

• Targeted campaigns: Use competitor insights to design targeted link-building campaigns focused on high-quality websites relevant to your niche.
• Promotional efforts: Promote your best content to the same audiences your competitors are targeting to attract similar backlinks.

Competitor backlink analysis is a powerful tool for improving your own SEO and link building strategies. While it shouldn’t be your only tactic, understanding your key competitors’ backlink profiles and using them to influence your own allows you to build a stronger backlink profile that drives more traffic and improves your search engine rankings for key search terms.