Backlinks are an important factor to rank well in the SERP. And this is the reason why your competitors are doing well and you are not. If you are tanking in visibility over search results, chances are, you are “not that authoritative in your niche” & “don’t have enough backlinks to prove your credibility” to Google bots & target users.
If your potential competitors are linking to your competitors, then you have 2 options to loot your links from them:
By making more original, compelling & user-centric content
Analyze competitor's backlinks & replicate them (ethically, of course).
But Why Check/Analyze Competitors Backlinks?
Backlinking gives you a great advantage in terms of achieving the top ranking in Google's SERP. If a website is getting the most backlinks from multiple authors or co-creators, it seems that the linked website is authoritative & has accurate knowledge in the market that could serve readers best in their interest. So Google has started giving such websites more preference while ranking the pages.
Most websites use this spying (ethical) technique to gauge their competitors' backlinking game and winning good opportunities to replicate healthy links from there.
Backlinks are important because:
Google bots while crawling a web page, analyzes the content & checks its internal links & external sources that are linking to that page. The higher the linking juice Google bot observes, the faster & higher it places that page on top of SERP.
When you receive more backlinks, it increases your domain & page authority as well. Domain Page Authority is a score that explains your website’s relevance in the search engine, especially in your niche/area, so the higher the score, the higher will be your ranking. Whereas, page authority is a score that explains how your particular page for a particular topic is doing in search results.
Other than these, Backlinks helps to bring the desired traffic, which could eventually land up on qualified leads & ultimate conversion opportunities.
In this article, you will understand the 3 clever & instant ways to spy or analyze competitors' backlinks, without much struggle, and also have a look at what other activities can help you drive backlinks. But before moving to that, let’s know the type of competitors usually an online business has.
Your Competitors Are of 2 Types --- Know Them First!
Here’s what your 2 types of competitors are all about:
1. Domain-Level Competitors
These are the competitors that rank for every common search term in more than one or two pages. These domain-level competitors rank for many similar keywords that you are pensive about targeting.
With competitor's backlinks checkers like Ahrefs, you can easily identify your domain-level competitors and see how many mutual keywords they are targeting.
2. Page-level competitors
These page-level competitors are not your wholesome competitors, but they rank on certain mutual keywords or topics that you are thinking of targeting.
For example, you could find various other pages writing about Top 12 SEO tools, which you could be also planning to write about.
With competitor's backlinks checkers or tools, you can easily summon a list of competitors who could be using quite effective backlinks to get “authority” and “first-page ranking”.
So now you know what type of competitors you could be focusing on to analyze their backlinks. Let’s identify how you can spy on your competitor's links in 3 simple ways.
3 Ways to Analyze Competitors Backlinks From Scratch!
1. Find Where Your Competitors Are Submitting Their Guest Posts
Guest-blogging is today’s one of the best ways to build qualified backlinks. And your competitors must be making a hell of a lot of backlinks to their site.
To know where your competitors are submitting their GP (guest posts), you can try these 2 methods:
Method 1 - Use Google’s Advanced Search Queries
We have got a simple formula that will list out the name of the websites where your competitors are getting their backlinks from.
The formula is -“Author name” + inurl:author
Method 2 - Use Ahrefs Content Explorer
This competitor's backlinks checker tool gives you advanced search operators, where you can insert a query as --- author: Author name and get the results of websites where your competitors are stockpiling their content pieces.
2. You Can Loot Backlinks from Page-Level Competitors By Writing Better
You have identified the list of close competitors, pick their most popular content & analyze their backlinks.
Write even better content from them. Fill in your content with fresh, engaging & entertaining information. Add everything that their content piece is missing. Once done, you can approach websites that are linking your competitors. If they find your content to be best-in-all, they wouldn’t mind linking back to your content.
3. Identify your competitors’ broken links & use them for your benefit
Check out the broken links linked to your competitor's site. There are competitor backlinks checker tools like Ahref that help to identify broken links. They help you identify the pages where your competitors' content is no longer available.
Find your competitors' broken pages in your niche, then write better content than them, and approach those sites (who are linking to your competitors), then loot their backlinks.
And if lucky, you will even find a broken page that has tons of backlinks, there you have a massive opportunity to target yourself for more visibility & authoritativeness.
These are the few ways you can analyze competitors' backlinks & loot them. The purpose of spying on your competitor's links is to understand the ways they are creating their link building game. You will realize the opportunities that you too need to tap on. But this spying technique will only help you retract 20-30% of links. For the rest, you will have to perform other Backlinking practices.
Some Other Practices You Can Explore to Get the More Backlinks!
1. Get Backlinks through infographics - Infographics on third party sites are the most effective way to attract the desired links & traffic footfall. You can reach out to popular publishing sites like Mashable & submit your infographic content there.
2. Guest blogging - Identify other guest blogging platforms that your competitors haven’t tapped into yet. You know, now Google Analytics also accepts Guest Blogs from contributors like you.
3. Promote your content right - If you won’t promote your article, how can you expect the bloggers or high-authority websites to consider or link you. You can use email campaigns, social media outreach to promote your best articles. Or you can contact the popular websites or creators who conduct the monthly or weekly roundups (kinda shoutout to the best blogs).
4. Write Testimonials for other products - In case you are using other websites, tools from some brand, you can write a testimonial for them. This testimonial will highlight your brand, and might as well convince the other website or brand tool to give you a backlink.
5. Donate - You can promote your visibility by donating to the NPOs (Non-Profit Organizations). You will easily find some of the genuine NPOs in your niche by typing a query as:
contributors page + donate + your keyword
These NPOs will give you a quick backlink once you write a donation (of any amount) & URL to your web.
6. Explore the interviews - If you are very informed in your niche, you can contact the interview sites that interview the high-authorities. This could stand as your best gig to win the backlinks to your sites.
7. Write Exclusive Content - One of the best ways to get desired backlinks is to have an eye on fresh & relevant content. Informative & unique content is what drives the other websites & content creators to pass on the backlinks & traffic to your site. If your content is accurate & watches the intent of the audience, you won’t have to struggle hard to create your link building game.
Final Thoughts on 3 Ways to Analyze Competitors Backlinks!
Gaining backlinks is a very important factor to level up your ranking game. You can easily attract 20-30% links in your court, if you are aware of your competitors link building plans & actions. You can easily loot qualified backlinks from the sources they are turning towards.
But solely you can’t drive 100% backlinks by replicating your competitors’ actions. You need to follow additional tactics as well (as discussed) to get ahead & make your link juices more solid.
Hope this article helps you plan your upcoming link-building measures. But if you are too doubtful about how to go about it, a professional SEO Company can free you from the hassle of calling in traffic, achieving authority, and meeting long-term customers.
Source linl:- https://voticle.com/a/articles/75545/3-clever-ways-to-analyze-competitors-backlinks-replicate-them
