How To Analyze Competitor Backlink Profiles And Acquire Their Backlinks For The First Page Local Ranking
Backlink competition surely seems to be difficult, especially with knowing where to start. The critical part is gathering as much data as you can and understanding how visually and contextually your competitors acquire their traffic.
This entire article is to help you understand how to effectively analyze and retrieve necessary data from your competitor’s links so that you can acquire their ranking for backlinks while at the same time elevating your local SEO standings.
What is a Competitor’s Backlink Analysis?
Competitor backlink analysis refers to analyzing the backlinks of your competitors, primarily looking at their competitors and how they compare to you and them. Knowing what is associating crimes to the competitor narrows down a lot of things and sets a base for evaluation. With these techniques, your domain authority will increase, and your competitor’s link activity will be rendered useless because you will have overtaken them.
What are the Benefits And Drawbacks of Competitor Backlink Analysis?
Concerning local search terms, backlink analysis plays a vital part in one’s search engine optimization tactics. Here is why this action is critical:
- By backlinking competitors, you can identify the top-performing domains in your field. A deep analysis allows marking even the most overlooked resources.
- Knowing how your competitors get their backlinks makes acquiring them a whole lot better. You can easily adopt that for your link building campaign and be more efficient than ever before.
- For any given niche industry, analyzing the market gaps enables strategizing effectively in becoming the leaders and reversal marketing works best.
How to Acquire Competitor Backlinks?
Backlink analysis for any competitor is simplified by key processes that require different SEO tools as well as some manual digging. Below are the instructions to do this:
1. Search for a Similar Page on Your Competitor’s Site
The very first step of analyzing competitors rationale for backlink profiles is figuring out which landing pages target the competition’s keywords. These pages are likely to have strong backlinks from authoritative websites.
Employ SEMrush or Ahrefs to determine the most important pages of your competitors and what keywords they are likely to rank for. Then, you can begin to research their backlinks and then move to the following step.
2. Get a Backlink Analysis Tool to Extract Data
Many key backlink analysis tools help extract important information for the competitors’ backlinks. Some of the most widely used tools include:
Ahrefs: This platform shows the backlink profile in detail, explaining what backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts, and other components are present. It is one of the best tools available for competitor research.
SEMRush: With this tool, you can also keep an eye on competitors’ backlinks, referring domains, and how these links affect their search ranking positions.
Moz: In your particular niche, Moz helps determine domain authority and analyze backlinks from authoritative sources.
Google Search Console: Even though it is not as comprehensive as Ahref or SEMrush, Google Search Console does provide some backlink data, especially for your site. It can also be used for finding backlink opportunities from other high-authority sites.
3. Analyze Each Site’s Backlink Profile
In this case, after collecting data regarding competitors’ backlinks, the most important step to take will be a more granular and deeper analysis. Consider the following points:
The Quantity of Backlinks: Sites with greater authority are known to have a significant number of backlinks, but you should always remember that the quality of those backlinks matters. One quality backlink can have more impact than several lower-quality backlinks.
The Domain Authority of The Backlink Sources: Having high authority websites pointing to your site also means that their backlinks carry more value. Ascertain if the backlinks leading to your competitors’ domains are from credible sources like news sites and educational or government domains.
Page Strength Ratio: The quality of linking domains is as important as the domain authority of the website itself. Links from relevant, authoritative pages can greatly improve the performance of your site.
Anchor Text Ratio: A penalty may be faced if the distribution of anchor text is not diverse. Excessive exact-match anchor texts can flag search engines and raise suspicion of foul play.
How To Acquire Competitor Backlinks
With your research completed, the next step is implementing measures to acquire backlinks similar to your competitors. You can use the following method:
1. Look For Competitor Directory Links
Local companies obtain backlinks through specific industry or general directory sites. Search for appropriate directories related to your business and get your business listed.
Some of them are free; some local ones might charge a fee. Focus on only those directories which are relevant and known to be of good quality.
2. Search For Competitors’ Backlinks And Reach Out To Blog Owners To Get Featured
An alternative method of obtaining backlinks is searching for bloggers who have written about your competitors’ products or services. This can range from general product reviews to guest posts to even industry compilations.
After you find these websites, get in touch with the owner, and present them with your content. Ask them if they would be willing to add your website to theirs.
3 Search For Listicles That Competitors Are a Part Of But You Are Not
Most industries have articles that list the best businesses and service providers that are featured. Find out which areas you business is lacking in that your competitors are listed. Reach out to the writer for your business to be featured. Explain using specific examples so that they understand your business is a good fit.
4. Duplicate Guest Blog Posts From Your Competitors
One of the best ways to get backlinks for a website is to use guest posting. Look up the sites that are accepting guest posts from your competitors and create your own article to post.
5. Utilize Replacing A Broken Link
Utilize Ahrefs or Semrush to discover broken links that direct to competitor content. Afterward, offer that site owners your content to be used instead.
6. Leverage Backlink Opportunities With 301 Redirect Link Building Methods
…Of course, there are the websites that either no longer exist or have been repurposed. These tend to still have valuable backlinks on them. If your competitors have backlinks from these expiring or repurposed websites, then you stand a chance at acquiring similar backlinks.
How to do Competitor Link Gap Analysis?
With a Link Gap Analysis, you can identify backlinks your competitors have but do not use. One of the equally important components in backlink research, is additional opportunity discovery. This tool serves as that.
Step 1: Choose Your Key Competitors
Website traffic and all keyword gaps deemed essential for your marketing goals should first be assigned to competitors. Check tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or similar platforms, to see which sites in your industry are moving up in the rankings.
Step 2: Start Your Backlink Competitive Gap Analysis
There are tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz that can perform a backlink gap analysis. This will allow you to compare your company’s backlinks with those of your competitors and even conduct a detailed backlink check.
Step 3: Examine The Other Competitors’ Backlink Gap
Here is where you have to find competitors backlink offerings that do not have corresponding backlinks from you. Such gaps can help you target reputed providers who aim to gain valuable prospects.
Step 4: Choose Specific Websites for Your Link-Building Campaign
Take note of the high-authority site domains referring to your competition, but not to yourself. You’ll want to target these first.
What are Common Mistakes to Avoid?
In the matter of backlink building, there are a lot of beneficial strategies, but a few common mistakes need to be avoided at all costs:
More Keyword Than You Can Handle: People often do this in excess and end up being penalized because link-building keywords to backlinks is a sensitive area. Always opt for higher quality over quantity.
Ignoring Anchor Text Diversity: Natural diversity in anchor text is critical in helping maintain a good backlink portfolio so silo structure should not be neglected.
Employing Hisgh Quality Links: Links from irrelevant or low-quality sources may have a greater negative effect on your rankings than positive.
Ignoring Changes to Backlink Strategy: The overall approach needs consistent reworking leading to more adaptation, which is highly focused on backlink as one of its pillars.
Final Thought:
Identifying backlink sources of competitors and trying to replicate them is one of the most important strategies in improving local SEO rankings. In the same manner, you can work on sourcing your backlinks on the same sites your competitors do in order to improve your backlink profile. Do make sure to acquire quality backlinks provided for different anchor texts and not fall for other problems. If you stick to the plan, the website will eventually, with time, be well-positioned in the local search results.