Competitive backlink research is one of the first steps in building your own link building strategy or understanding what it takes to achieve organic rankings for your competitors.
Links are certainly not the only ranking signal, but they are still one of the most powerful factors (if not). of most powerful).
When choosing competitors to analyze, you might choose competitors that rank particularly well in your target query. This makes sense because you want to know what has worked for your competitors.
There is one important point to note here. peer (site directly in your vertical or niche). In other words, stay away from large websites (major retailers, Wikipedia, etc.) that are active in various fields but happen to rank high.
For example, there’s not much to learn from Amazon’s backlink profile.
Likewise, there’s little to learn from your oldest competitors, except starting early (and gaining all those age and trust signals over time) is certainly a good idea. .
Instead, look for sites that have seen a recent rise in rankings and set your sights on the tactics that work. These are the types of sites you can learn the best from and this is what makes your competitive research. viablethat is, it helps you build and implement your own strategies.
Once you have 2-4 competitors to analyze, the first thing you want to do is eliminate any red flags you want to avoid. In other words, start with what you don’t want to do. We filter out links that are often of low quality and high risk to help you find the best common links among your industry peers.
Step 1: Eliminate red flags
When it comes to link building, too many questionable tactics can be harmful, but let’s get a little more specific.
Exact match anchor text
Do you have a lot of backlinks that repeat the same (or almost the same) anchor text over and over? This is always poor and outdated link building that can (or is) getting your competitors into trouble is a sign of
When you see a backlink profile full of clearly SEO-driven links, you’ll often find that your site loses visibility at some point. toolset.
Since we don’t have access to their disavow files, we may be gradually reviving our rankings by encouraging Google to discount these low-quality links. But if those links aren’t causing your rankings to drop, they may end up doing so.
But it doesn’t have to be a manual penalty. Google may have already discounted these links, so there is no impact on organic visibility at this time.
In either case, these are not the type of links you want.
Outdated Link Building Tactics
There are still quite a few outdated link building patterns found in many backlink profiles.
These include:
- directory link
- Links from blog networks
- Article directory link
- Content syndication (press releases or other)
- Low quality guest post links
Beware of links from websites that encourage you to post articles or “sponsored content.” Be wary of thin content that is clearly created to link to competitors. More importantly, try out the obvious patterns behind these backlinks. The same link building tactics show up again and again throughout your backlink profile.
These links are also probably discounted by Google. None of these link types are worth the effort or investment.
Step 2: Learn from their success
Now that you know what to avoid, let’s focus on what you can learn from your competitors’ backlink profiles.
Choose your competitors wisely based on organic visibility and you’ll learn more than avoid them. After all, if these sites are ranking high, Google clearly likes that backlink his profile, or at least is doing something right.
So what can we learn from our competitors’ backlink profiles?
1. Competitor Content Marketing Tactics
What content do you think your competitors will do well in terms of generating links? What content is being linked to the most? Have you ever been picked up by something? Can you do better?
Obviously, we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes to achieve these links, but it’s usually obvious when a particular content asset has done very well to generate solid backlinks.
It’s usually easy to identify content that has gone viral and generated hundreds of links, or resource pages cited by highly trustworthy websites such as universities or government agencies.
Can you recreate these types of assets for your website to bring them up to date and improve?
It’s also a good idea to identify your competitor’s top content. Bloggers and journalists use Google to find sources, so content that ranks highly on Google naturally tends to lead to links. Ranking articles is also a link acquisition strategy that continuously brings organic links his equity without the need to actively build links through traditional outreach.
- Find competitors’ articles that rank higher for searchable keywords.
- Check backlinks in those articles and see if it works.
- Earn these rankings by creating better content.
Focus on high-level tactics that bring in competitor rankings and links. What type of content are you delivering topical links to? Often these are:
- Glossary and knowledge base.
- Detailed how-to content.
- Statistical surveys and survey results (these tend to be dominant), etc.
2. Competitor Outreach Tactics
Who are your competitors reaching out to when trying to build links?
It’s usually easy to determine by the type of link you’re getting.
- Links from news outlets come as a result of journalism outreach
- Trusted links from educators (university professors, teachers, etc.) require targeted and trusted decoy content and outreach.
- Links from blogs are built through blogger outreach, often creating viral assets such as free tools and infographics.
Which of these links seem to dominate your competitors’ backlink profiles? Knowing the answer can inspire your own link acquisition strategy and help you make more informed decisions. It helps to do
3. Competitor influencer marketing tactics
What are your competitors’ content amplifiers? In other words, who are the people (authors, niche experts, etc.) behind the links they are getting?
Influencer marketing is a great way to generate backlinks on many levels.
- Many niche influencers have sites or blogs they can link to
- Influencers (if chosen wisely) can promote organic links simply by sharing content or mentioning it in newsletters.
- You may be able to actively engage with influencers in your niche through interviews, podcasts, Q&A, etc.
Influencer-based tactics can be difficult to track in your competitors’ backlink profiles. Without knowing the root cause of the spike, it’s often difficult to attribute a backlink spike to a competitor’s site.
This is where well-organized social media research and listening can help with competitive backlink analysis. Search for your competitor’s brand name on Twitter or Instagram to find out who is talking about them and who they are. See what kind of audience is involved in listening to your message. Tools like Keyhole (a social media analytics platform) and Milled (a newsletter archive) can help you identify these sources of influence and match them against your competitors’ backlink profiles.
Conclusion
Competitive backlink research is often enlightening if you know what to look for.
But it’s no use chasing after every good link they have. Instead, take a higher level approach. What are they doing to generate links and how can we do the same better?
Trying to stay ahead of the competition means that Google has no reason to rank your site higher. You should always strive to create better things: better content, better outreach, better promotional tools. There is often a lot of “heavy lifting” done in-house to get this right. Many companies choose to hire a better link building company to do it right. Whichever way you go, staying high above your competitors (and your own backlinks) will help you gain and maintain top rankings over time.
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About the author
Internet Marketing Ninjas is a leading digital agency specializing in SEO strategy, link building, content marketing and site speed optimization. Since 1999, his 50-person team at IMN, led by industry veteran Jim Boykin, has been based in Upstate New York and has helped clients improve their search rankings and increase his organic traffic from Google. brings together nearly 400 years of experience.
