Competitor Backlink Analysis: What to Know In 2024

Are you ready to find out how you can strengthen your link-building strategies? Then you are in the right place, as we will give you the ultimate guide on competitive backlinks analysis.

Don’t take our word about the power of backlinks, as the survey states that the 1st ranking position in the Google SERPs gets 3.8x more backlinks than other positions. 

But how to rank better by using the power of competitor links? 

One of the most effective ways of any digital marketing campaign is checking out your competitors. When it comes to SEO, it’s more than important to determine their link building activities. 

Moreover, by analyzing your competitor’s backlink profile, you can enhance your backlink strategy and significantly improve your off-site SEO tactics. 

Keep reading, as we are going to suggest actionable tips for successfully conducting competitor backlink analysis and provide steps on how to improve your backlink profile based on the collected data.

But first, what is this competitor link analysis, anyway?

What is Competitor Backlink Analysis

Competitor backlink analysis is the process of examining the link profiles of your main competitors’ websites. 

By performing competitors backlink analysis, you gain insights into the types of websites and sources that have linked to them. Moreover, this strategy will help find out the quality and quantity of competitor backlinks and discover both advantages and weak points of their backlink profiles. Learn more on this and other terms on our SEO glossary page.

What is great about competitor link analysis is that it opens room for potential opportunities to get similar backlinks. Basically, it can guide you to build a more effective link-building strategy for your website.

But how does the competitor backlink analysis contribute to YOUR link-building strategy?

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7 Benefits of Doing Competitor Backlink Analysis

Do you still wonder why this process is essential and why you should invest effort into it? Let’s get a closer look at the key advantages of competitor backlink analysis:

 ✔ New link building opportunities

It’s important to find competitor backlinks and analyze them, as it provides valuable information about authoritative websites linking to your competitors. 

Having this data in your hands, which you can get by using a backlink checker, you can come up with link building outreach tactics for offering those reliable sources a collaboration and automatically increase your website’s authority.

 ✔ Improved backlink profile

It’s hard to underestimate the importance of backlinks and doing competitive backlinking analysis to reach your link building goals. This is because, when you find competitor backlinks, analyze them, and incorporate them into your link building strategy, you improve the quality of your backlink profile.

The more backlinks you will have from authoritative websites in your backlink portfolio, the more you will increase your visibility and authority in organic search results. Google rewards websites with authority backlink portfolios by boosting their rankings.

 ✔  Expand link building strategies

By doing backlink tracking of competitor websites,  you can discover which backlink techniques are most effective and which type of websites and content rank well in search engine results.   

By learning what they are doing differently, you can come up with new techniques to implement them in your link-building strategy. 

✔ Closed link gaps

When analyzing competitors’ backlink strategy, you can uncover gaps in your backlink profile and ultimately craft a more targeted outreach strategy to gain backlinks from these sources. This is one of the best ways to find backlinks your competitors have built and recreate a new strategy. 

An essential element in this stage is that you should not try to duplicate your competitor’s tactics. Instead, you need to use collected data about competitors’ backlink profiles to build your own unique link-building strategy and eventually outrank your competitors. In this case, always tracking backlinks and ensuring your keep up with competitors and important.

✔ Content opps identification

Another awesome benefit of backlink tracking of competitors’ websites is getting insights into their most successful content marketing tactics. You will find out what topics, formats, and types of content resonate with your target audience. Then you can use the information to enhance your link-building efforts. 

✔ No threats 

By regularly doing competitor backlink analysis, you can track their backlink profiles over time and identify any sudden boosts or drops. Using this info, you can avoid threats and SEO attacks to your own backlink profile.

Basically, you are learning from the mistakes that your competitors are making and are trying to avoid them. By identifying toxic or irrelevant backlinks, you can stay away from those practices and create a more organic, high-quality backlink profile.

✔ Finding niche trends

Lastly, you can find competitor backlinks and modify your strategies by watching the latest trends and developments in your industry. Also, you can discover new link-building strategies and use them as inspiration to modify your own.

How to Check Competitor Backlinks In 4 Steps

In case you are already convinced that conducting competitor backlink analysis is a beneficial idea, now you may be looking for effective strategies to implement it.

Step 1: Find your main competitors

When starting this process, keep in mind that you need to research two types of competitors: domain-level and page-level.

Domain-level competitors

You compete with your domain-level competitors across their whole domain. These websites categorize within the same niche as yours and typically target the same audience as you. 

They not only battle for SERP rankings with you but target similar potential markets and compete with your offers.

To research the domain-level competitors, you must analyze all competing domains’ backlink profiles. In the meantime, check what kind of different competitor analysis tools Ahrefs offers for a more professional approach.

Consider identifying competitors at the domain-level on Ahrefs by following these steps:

These are the domains that exist for the same reason as yours and have the same target goals. 

But how different is the second group of competitors?

Page-Level Competitors

On the contrary to domain-level competitors, page-level competitors may not have the same client pool and may not be trying to target the same audience as you.

Instead, the page-level competitor research only looks at the backlinks of a specific page.

And here’s how to find competitors backlinks using Ahrefs:

Got the difference? 

After identifying competitors and analyzing both types, you should create separate lists for each of them. Next, you need to build unique tactics on how you should try to outrank these two types of competitors.

Step 2: Analyze competitor keywords

Chances are higher that you already have several keywords as an integral part of your link-building strategy. However, your job is to conduct competitor keyword analysis and find new top-performing keywords,  so you don’t miss out on valuable opportunities.

And yes, this is an ongoing process.

For that matter, as you have already defined your competitors in your niche, you should look for the anchor texts used for the backlinks linking to their websites. After that, check the relevance of the keywords used in the anchor texts to your own website.

Without a doubt, you should check the Keyword Difficulty, Search Volume, and other important metrics as well. 

Furthermore, when you conduct competitor keyword analysis pay attention to user intent behind each keyword and highlight the ones that align with your link-building goals.

By understanding the keywords that your competitors target and the websites linking to them, you can find and fill potential gaps in your own link-building strategy.

Step 3: Qualify all of your competitor backlinks

You already did a great job identifying and making a list of your main competitors. 

It’s time to do a competitive backlinking analysis to uncover opportunities for improving your own backlink profile and SEO strategy because having many backlinks isn’t a sign of their quality. 

One of the things to keep in mind is leveraging SaaS backlinks, as they increase your website traffic faster and give your website more trustworthiness. If you’re just getting started, read our SaaS link-building guide to find out how to do backlink qualification and boost Off-page SEO.

What to remember when qualifying competitors backlinks?

Follow several criteria and metrics that will guide you through the process:

✓Keep in mind the domain rating (DR) to find out how strong a site’s backlink profile is. This metric gives an idea of a website’s overall authority in search engine rankings. Ultimately, your goal should be getting backlinks from high DR websites because, considered more valuable and authoritative, they can increase your search engine rankings.

✓Consider the anchor text to get insight into the keywords your competitors are targeting with their link-building strategy.  

✓ Keep an eye on backlink placement to ensure your link is visible to website visitors. Not to mention, you should avoid inserting your links in places where there are too many other links. 

✓ Backlink relevance is another important factor to consider because you need to add your links on relevant websites. This ensures that their visitors will be interested and will click on your link to get additional information.

✓Look for link gaps to identify domains that link to your competitors but not to your own website, which takes us to the next point.

Step 4: Define competitor backlink gap

Simply put, a link gap is the difference in both the number and quality of backlinks that your competitors have but you don’t.

So backlink gap analysis should be an important part of your competitor backlink analysis. By comparing competitors’ backlink profiles to your own, you can identify sites from where they get backlinks, but you don’t.

In this stage, it’s important to consider the quality and relevance of these backlinks to determine their value.

Let’s discuss this with an example. Assume that Oxfordre.com (Research Encyclopedias) wants to find out where its competitors, britannica.com and encyclopedia.com, have backlinks that they miss. 

In the next step, check the relevance and authority of those websites that your competitors have backlinks from. Then try to create your own outreach tactics for getting backlinks from those domains as well.  

Competitor Backlink Analysis is Done, Now What?

You did an excellent job doing competitor backlink analysis and following tactics on how to check competitor backlinks. But you may wonder what’s next and how you can use the collected data to enhance your link-building strategies. 

So we will suggest some tactics that will guide you to develop your link-building strategy after this process.

Set clear link building goals

Before anything else, define your objectives and decide what you want to accomplish with your link-building strategy. 

Ensure that your goals are realistic and achievable and that you have enough resources to reach these objectives. Start a goal-setting process by defining the quality and quantity of backlinks you need to gain. Then evaluate your current backlink profile to identify areas for improvement. 

In that matter, establish quality guidelines and determine your standards for a high-quality backlink. These guidelines ultimately will support the process of building a strong backlink profile.

In your future plans, you may reach out to the website editors or bloggers that you consider potential backlink sources convenient to your goals.

Remember, to start  an effective collaboration, you should showcase the value your content can deliver to their website visitors. Lastly, establishing transparent relationships within your industry enhances the likelihood of acquiring quality backlinks and reaching your link-building goals.

Check your website’s backlink profile health

In the next stage, one of the important steps that you shouldn’t ignore during competitor backlink analysis is checking the strength of your backlink profile. By examining your website’s backlink profile and keeping it healthy, you can build effective SEO strategies.

Basically,  by regularly monitoring your backlink health and doing backlink audits, you can enhance your website’s authority and boost organic traffic.

✔ Quantity of backlinks

First and foremost, check the number of backlinks your website has because it’s one of the main signals of its popularity. A reliable free backlink checker can help you reach this goal.

✔ Quality of backlinks

While quantity is an important factor, the quality of backlinks has significant power on your website’s backlink health.

In order to assess the quantity and quality of backlinks you can use Ahrefs’ “Site Explorer” tool and simply go to the Backlink Analysis section. Here’s what doing that will give you:

In the screenshot, we can see that this feature provides all the necessary information about your backlinks – the domain that linked to you, the corresponding articles, their DRs, traffic and so on.

✔ Relevance of backlinks

Check backlinks from websites that are topically relevant to your website’s content and are considered more valuable than your website in the industry or niche it operates.

✔Anchor text diversity

Having a diverse range of anchor text gives a signal to search engines about the context and relevance of the linked content.

Ahrefs can be your best friend in this process also, as it gives you a comprehensive overview of all the anchor texts you have ever used. Learn more on what is Ahrefs and how you can use it for link building strategies. Take a look at the screenshot below to better visualize how this works.

Overall, monitoring and maintaining a healthy backlink profile can positively impact your website’s search engine rankings, organic visibility, and overall online reputation. Lastly, consider regularly checking your backlink profile health to find various issues and build strategies to acquire high-quality and relevant backlinks.

Replace broken competitor backlinks

Another tactic for developing your link-building efforts after doing competitor analysis is replacing your competitors’ broken links. 

Start by finding competitors’ broken links from different domains using a free backlink checker. Then offer these domains to replace those links with yours. This way, you can gain a competitive advantage and drive more traffic to your website over time.

If you prefer using Ahrefs, you can also identify your competitors’ broken links by using their Broken Backlinks feature. As you can see in this screenshot, it’s as simple as it gets.

Remember that when analyzing competitor backlink data, you should filter the broken backlinks, which lead to error pages (404) or expired domains. Next, consider the relevance and context of the broken links to determine whether they are suitable for replacement with your own content. Look for broken links that were originally pointing to content or resources that are similar to what you offer on your website.

Lastly, communicate to the editors of the websites with the broken links and offer your own content as a replacement. Don’t hesitate to highlight the relevance of your content and the value it can provide to their audience.

Remember, this method is helpful for gaining backlinks and redirecting relevant traffic from your competitors’ broken links to your website, but you need to build well-thought-out strategies.

Avoid building spammy backlinks

The next tip for successful competitor backlink analysis that we suggest is avoiding spam backlinks, low-quality directories, and link exchange schemes. In either  case, you may harm your website’s reputation.

Analyze your backlink profile, track backlinks regularly, and use a toxic backlink checker to find and address harmful links that could negatively affect your site’s SEO performance.

Instead, after competitive backlink analysis you should follow ethical link-building strategies to safeguard your website’s reputation and ranking. Build strong and authentic partnerships with bloggers and website owners. Ensure the backlinks are relevant to your content and appear naturally within the context. Maintain anchor text diversity and avoid excessive use of exact-match keywords. 

Get included in listicles mentioning competitors

When trying to evaluate your strategies after competitor backlink analysis, identify opportunities for  getting included in listicles where your competitors are mentioned.  Evaluate the quality and relevance of these listicles.

Again after pinpointing those listicles, reach out to the authors or website owners responsible for them. Showcase your expertise and valuable content to strengthen your case.

Implement guest posting strategies

One of the most effective tactics to enhance your link-building approach is to implement guest posting strategies based on competitive backlinking analysis. It’s about finding blogs and websites where your competitors have guest posts, and you don’t. After that, you can leverage this data to suggest a guest blog collaboration to these domains. Or, you can try to find guest posting opportunities that are better than what your competitors have.

By analyzing your competitors’ guest posts during competitor backlink analysis, you discover relevant websites open for guest post contributions. Don’t forget to check the relevance to ensure that your guest post will address the target audience’s needs. 

After tracking those sources and finding ones that suit your needs, don’t hesitate to offer guest posts collaboration. Write a compelling guest post pitch that highlights your expertise and the value your guest post will provide. This way, you will not only have valuable backlinks but also automatically improve your own website’s visibility.

Refine your content marketing game

In case you have a goal to enhance your link-building strategies after conducting competitors backlink analysis, don’t underestimate the significant role of content. 

So, follow these tips to strengthen your content marketing:

✔Fill in content gaps

This process starts by finding relevant topics your competitor’s blog is covering but you aren’t. Also, you should discover the type of content they publish that engages readers. This information allows you to create unique and useful content that fills those gaps and gets backlinks from authoritative websites.

Further Reading: Full Guide to Content Gap

✔Improve content quality

Analyzing competitor backlinks provides insights into the type of content that earns links. Generative AI tools can help you to boost the quality of your content and implement important elements in it. This will later help you to attract backlinks from new and authoritative websites. However, you shouldn’t forget to track backlinks from time to time and see how they perform. 

✔Refine content promotion strategies

Another excellent fact about competitors backlink analysis is that it can help uncover new content promotion strategies by identifying the channels and platforms where your competitors’ content is popular. Thus you can use the power of the most effective channels that bring more engagement and build content distribution based on that.

✔Monitor competitor trends

Besides analyzing existing competitor content, it’s also crucial to keep an eye on industry trends and anything new that’s happening. Then, you can use collected data to reinforce your content marketing strategy.  

One of the important assets is that you shouldn’t just duplicate competitors’ content marketing tactics but instead use valuable data to generate your ideas. So, always aim to craft authentic and high-quality content whose value speaks for itself. 

Remember, by creating content that is unique and relevant to your target audience, you increase the likelihood of other websites linking to your content naturally. To maximize these chances, you should offer these bloggers even better content that can provide more value to their audience. This will help to beat your competitor’s content.

Start your link building outreach

One of the main steps you should take after doing competitor backlink analysis is building an effective link-building outreach strategy. Thus, you need to reach out to website editors and bloggers to create potential backlink opportunities.

Remember that your outreach should be personalized and clearly explain why linking to your content can be beneficial for them and what value it will give to their audience.

Luckily, you can check our guide about link building outreach, to make yours more professional and engaging. Plus, we have provided email templates as well.

Emphasize how important this potential collaboration is for both sides and try to build strong relationships with website editors. By maintaining strong relationships with them, you open room for enhancing your website ranking thanks to effective link-building collaboration.

Monitor and track results

Lastly, after doing competitor backlink analysis don’t hesitate to continuously monitor your backlink profile and analyze the effectiveness of your efforts and tactics.

In that matter, you need to identify new backlinks with a free backlink checker, track keyword rankings, and discover any lost or broken links. Moreover, you can identify potential spam or low-quality backlinks that could lower your rankings. 

This process will also help you make informed decisions, improve your strategy, and, as a result, have a strong backlink profile.

3 Competitor Backlink Analysis Tools

We covered almost everything about competitor backlink analysis. But you may wonder what tools are out there that make this process successful and effective. So, let’s check a list of SEO analytics tools for competitive backlink monitoring.

Ahrefs

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve mentioned Ahrefs several times throughout the article. This isn’t surprising because this complete SEO tool is an excellent option for analyzing competitor backlink strategies. 

Here are several ways Ahrefs backlink checker can be extremely helpful during this process:

Key Takeaways

 Okay, let’s summarize the key findings about competitor backlink analysis.

• With competitor backlink analysis, you can improve your backlink profile, find new link building opportunities, and more.
• Doing a competitor analysis can help you identify a backlink gap. 
• Checking your site’s health, replacing broken competitor backlinks, and refining your content strategies can improve your own backlink strategy. 
• A trusted link building agency can help you perform an effective competitor backlink analysis.
• Using Ahrefs backlink checker, SEMrush, Moz or SEranking you can do successful competitor backlink analysis.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

FAQ about competitor backlink analysis