Competitor backlink analysis is my favourite link building strategy of all time.
I have been using it for the last 10 years and it’s the only link building method that has stood the test of time.
With a simple competitor backlink analysis you can:
And then use them in your own strategy to outrank them.
Here is how to do it…
What Will I Learn?
Competitor backlinking is an SEO technique where you routinely analyse the backlinks of competing sites to see what types of links they have, how many, and the quality of links.
This is called competitor backlink analysis, and it helps you reverse engineer their link building strategy and use it for your own site. This will help your SEO and get you more traffic from Google.
Through this link profile analysis, you can get access to your competitor’s website performance from their number of external links and link metrics to their overall online authority – including page authority & domain authority.
A competitor backlink analysis helps you build (or improve) your strategy – the right way and allows you to:
Pretty cool, right?
Bellow, I’ll explain how to conduct this analysis to get great and fast results!
If you go to Google right now and search for your target keyword.
You’ll get on the first results page…
…The top 5x ranking sites that have all one important thing in common:
The idea of competitor backlink analysis is to-
Why waste time and money figuring out what works?
There’s already a proven link building blueprint out there waiting for you.
But to pull it off, you need a backlink analysis tool and you can get access to some incredible data without spending any money.
Before we do anything else we need to find all of the backlinks that are pointing to our competitor’s site.
Doing that is easy because we can take advantage of a number of tools that allow us to download all of our competitor’s backlink portfolio easily.
The 3x best backlink analysis tools on the market right now are:
They will return high numbers of links for every competitor website that you run through them. This is important because the more quality links you find, the more you can replicate!
Let’s take a closer look…
Ahrefs was the best tool on this list to find insight into competitors’ backlink profiles.
But in my more recent best backlink checker case study, they got absolutely blown away.
You can view all of your competitor’s backlinks (including their anchor text) in one dashboard thanks to Ahrefs Site Explorer.
You can then export them in a CSV file to form the foundation of your strategy.
Bonus: Ahrefs also allows you to monitor backlinks and set up backlink alerts so you can keep track of your competitor’s new backlinks!
The free SEMRush trial gives you access to a powerful tool with a very easy to use interface and relevant data sources that you can trust.
It’s certainly the best Ahrefs alternative out there to execute a backlink profile analysis.
But don’t be fooled by the high number of links it shows for my site.
SEMRush counts every link from a domain, but Ahrefs groups them together!
Either way, they give you a ton of data.
SEMRush has a freemium version of their tool that allows you to perform 10 data searches each day and you can also take advantage of a 100% free 14 day trial I set up for my readers.
Bonus: SEMrush offers the most comprehensive backlink audit you can find on the market.
See how Semrush stands against Ahrefs in my Ahrefs vs Semrush ultimate comparison.
SEO SpyGlass is the best desktop based backlink checker tool.
Although the link count is less than the last two tools…
It still gives you a significant number to work with:
However, their database is ever-growing with currently stands at 1.6x trillion links so it’s always going to find more than a handful for you.
SEO SpyGlass comes in two versions:
- Free: you can access data for 1,000x backlinks (but can’t export them)
- Paid: you can access data for unlimited backlinks and export them
But it doesn’t have an expensive monthly subscription like other tools.
Don’t worry, I understand these tools can be expensive if you’re starting out so feel free to take a look at my free seo tools list.
Honestly, you can’t make a wrong decision here. Each tool is going to provide you with more than enough backlink data to keep you busy.
And remember, if you are on a budget you can use the free trials to grab as much data as possible for your campaign.
| Ahrefs | SEMRush | SEO Spyglass | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $99/Month | $99.95/Month | $31.49/Month |
| Trial Available? | No. | Yes. 14 Day Trial & Freemium Model. | Yes. Freemium Model. |
| # Links Found | 69,600 | 1,600,000 | 35,500 |
But don’t do anything just yet!
First I want to show you precisely how we are going to use this data to grow our own search traffic!
Using the tools above I’m going to show you exactly how to steal your competitor’s links.
This is the proven repeatable method I’ve been using for years.
Better still:
Here’s what you need to do…
Your starting point is to get a list of the top #5 ranking URLs for your target keyword.
Select the keyword you want to target.
Then do a search in Google and make a list of the first 5x organic search results:
Your final list of URL’s should look something like this:
- https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/ecommerce-seo/
- https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-seo/
- https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-for-ecommerce-websites/
- https://www.shopify.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-beginners-guide
Head to this page to download my free competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet.
This is the intelligent sheet I have developed over the years for this specific task – you are going to love it!
Just paste the 5 links from step #1 above into column A on the first sheet-
Click on the “Click Here” links to automatically open the right report you need.
Export the data as a .CSV file.
You can export as much data as the tool will allow.
The more, the better!
Once exported, let’s put it into the tool…
Head over to tab #2 – Data in the sheet to Import each of the files you just exported.
The quickest way is to:
This is how you should do it:
Once you have loaded all the data you are ready for…
Head to Tab #3 – Plan Of Attack.
You’ll see a table of links.
These are the best competitors backlinks for you to target.
The tool has already:
That means in just a small amount of time you can put together a near-perfect link building strategy for your site.
(There’s that “keep it simple” motto in action again.)
That means it’s time to put your balaclava on and…
You have all of the actionable data you need to get started.
What you’re looking for in your Plan Of Attack tab is:
For example…
…If the link came from a blog comment, you’ll just need to write your own:
…if it was a forum post or a blog post, join the discussion and include links in relevant places:
…if it was a guest post, you’ll need to pitch your own for publication:
Take a look at each link and reverse engineer the process to figure out how to do it.
Just work through the Plan Of Attack tab and replicate each link – it really is that easy!
Stealing your competitors backlink strategies is one of the most effective ways to boost rankings and increase your traffic – including organic traffic & referral traffic.
It can save you:
By giving you an easy-to-follow blueprint that is proven to rank for your keyword.
To quickly recap:
This is the only link building strategy that has stood the test of time and it’s the first link building strategy I have applied on all of my sites for the last 10 years.
If you have any questions/thoughts about this strategy or if you need any SEO tips, please leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help!
Just remember… Before starting building links, make sure you have read the full link building checklist that explains all the link building process.
Or, if you want to outsource it, check out my review of the top link building services.
Next I want to introduce you to resource page link building.
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This is indeed one of the best researched post about ripping off your competitor Ii have ever read.Thanks a lot!
Thanks Jasmine 🙂 But researched post suggests I researched it, this is my process ^^
I love what i just read and i bookmark your site to visit again nice one their Mathew.
Thanks oludare!
Well maybe that’s a little overboard. But the image is so spot on.
You might be right about that but the answer makes a huge difference. After all this is a lot of work to do and it might not be worth the time investment in the end.As more people use this strategy – and if they are going after the same keywords – their rankings will go up and down like a roller coaster. I think they call it the Google Dance. Happens a lot in my niche, probably not so much with others.Any advice for folks on the other side of the coin? In other words, what do you suggest to someone when they find that everyone else is using this strategy to steal their top rankings for keywords?
Hi,Yeah that is sometimes the cases but then you know what you need to do :PI’m not using Inspyder to check if the links are still live, I’m using it to pull back indexed status/PR values etc
Keep learning =D
Is it just me or does anyone else just love the shady guy in the mask in the featured image?
You love him? ^^
So I reviewed my competitors in ahrefs and it looks like about 6-7 of the top 10 use purchased links. Several of them show most of the links coming from Russia…and these are large, U.S. based sites. Interesting.
Then you know what to do to be #1 😉
Matt,Wow very nice! I now have a couple of weekend projects! Very timely because I just launched a new niche blog and since I am new to IM and SEO was wondering were to start. Now I have a roadmap.BTW I pimped my social networks for the PDF and didn’t get a download link?
Hi James,Send me an email and I’ll get it over to you!
This is a great idea. I actually use it when I create a niche site. It give the site a great base as you pointed out. Doing it on the level you’re talking about here would really help build an extremely solid foundation.
Easy to give to an outsourcer as well 🙂
But that really was something new to me!
One word for this post – “IMPRESSIVE”
Thanks Lalit!
Wow, as I did this, I was amazed at how the number of links from sites on page 2 and beyond fell off considerably. I thought I would have to do so much work to even crack the Top 10, but now it looks way more attainable.Of course, your niche will determine this, and your results may vary.Awesome tip!
Thanks Kazura – its surprising what you find when you dig 🙂
Hey matt, as always, great post. No matter what others say, backlinks are still the way to go (oh, and hey, thanks for getting out of business and being no longer a competitor, if you think backlinks are no longer working)However, backlinkwatch.com didn’t work for me as the abbreviated the link most of the times with “…..” which doesn’t get me the complete backlink.Nevertheless, I will dive deep into this amazing technique, thanks for sharing.
Hi Phil,Yeah thats the problem with free tools, better just firing up an ahrefs sub!
Very good post, something all newbies should know how to do.It might be a bit disheartening though if you are going for something juicy and profitable, because most of the links will be paid and will set you back tens of thousands of dollars. At least in the iGaming industry in which i operate, that appears to be the case. When things like this happen you have to either have a lot of money, or start your way from the bottom targeting noncompetitive longtails.Anyway, good little tutorial 🙂
If by igaming you mean casino, well a newbie could never compete there. ever.
Hey Matt, a waste of time in my opinion. Why would you spent time doing such a boring and useless job when you could be making quality content that people naturally link to? Make good content and you don’t have to beg for links…
What if you made good quality content and it only ranks #7?
One of the biggest lies in internet marketing/SEO “Just build quality content and people will come…blah blah blah.”Making money while making the internet a better place is not a waste of time in my opinion. You know what is? Writing bits of brilliance that are lost in a sea of 42 MILLION + blogs (and that’s just wordpress).
After you have gone through this process, how long does it take before you begin to move up in the serps and how long do you stay there?
Thats not really a question that can be answered accurately
Hi Matt, Sometimes I cannot get links when I do this, As a previous poster said they have lots of links from PR domains, but at least you can see how they are ranking and just copy what they are doing. (Nice tip on trackbacks ;)Also Inspyder Backlink Monitor a nice little tool, but you can use Sleuth Xenu which is free to check for live links and it does it a lot faster.
Hi,I would start with https://searchlogistics.com/seo/tools/google-penalty-checker/
Thank you very much for your great post. I cann’t believe that SEO is so simple and easy to start like the method you write in this article.I am new to SEO but I can understand how effective it can be.Best regards
Thanks Kev – good luck =D
Great backlink checker tools… can spy competitors… then beat them!
Thats the plan ^^
Your article very interesting, I learned a lot from you.thank you
Cheers Steve!
It’s nice to see I’m not the only one that still uses Link Diagnosis lol. That thing has been around since forever.Overall great article – I think you’re spot on.
Hahah yeah its pretty old school just a shame it only returns limited results
I see I have my homework for the weekend.I am such a beginner that SEO and traffic kind of confuses me but I hope this really helps.Thanks now I am going to go bookmark this
Let me know if you get stuck/need help!
Hey Matt, you stated this about SEO Spyglass:”You can paste in a list of URL’s and it will first retrieve all of the backlinks for each URL.”Could you tell me where can I paste the top 10 list? Currently when starting a project I just can enter the keyword or adding 1 single competitor’s URL.Thanks.
File > New Project Expert Options > Create Numerous Projects
Thanks for the article. I got my work cut out for me. My biggest competitor basically owns the first page of 2 of the big 3 search engines. I think Google has been generous to me because I use their products all the time and do little favors. The problem I have is my competitor’s url is one letter off from mine and it seems he knows what he’s doing. Although our content is in the same general niche they are completely opposite and I don’t want to associate my brand with his. I’m going to take a look at his stuff but that’s it. If you ran a quick search you would see what I mean. It might just take time and hard work to out do him. What do you suggest? Thanks. I follow you on twitter @trdvdind
I suggest you step your game up if you want to compete :)Take a look at how he is doing it, then do it better 😛
If you’re a local business, try dominating the local directories (Google local, Yahoo local, Map Quest) with your links. That’s basically what I did. I created some tiered layers which directs to all my local information and bombarded them with spam. Worked great for me, I just can’t guarantee that it will work for you too.
Matthew,Thanks for the awesome resource you’ve put together (and congratulations on this month’s earnings :-)What program are you using for the social media like gate?
Hi,I’m using https://searchlogistics.com/get/sociallocker/ for that 🙂
This is a really detailed tutorial. I wanted something like this and its good to have it bookmarked for future reference. I don’t think anything else needs to be done besides this. It’s like taking the best from the best to create the new best in the serps. Thanks Matt!
Thats a very good way of looking at it!
Wow Matthew,I’m speechless. I’ve been doing SEO and Internet Marketing for the last 2 years and I wonder why I didn’t thought like this. Awesome idea + well put article mate. Way to go. Hats off to you.Thanks a lot 🙂
Its an age old technique that often gets lost in the quest for ranking 🙂
Would you advise replicating the links even if your top competitors are using some ultra spammy links? In my field some of my competitors are pointing a ton of spammy links direct to their money site. I would really like to know what criteria you use when replicating the links? Do you simply try to replicate as many links as possible or do you target ones you see as particularly high value.
Hi Ed,Thats why we do the analysis and everyone will have their own definition/feeling for what a spammy link is.For me, if a backlink is good enough to be in googles index its good enough to point at my site.Some people make it a lot more complicated but I just keep it simple 🙂
Matt, A very good post. This reminded of an instance in the past when a competition of our business came crying in a meeting we had with a major supplier because they complain that their customers phone us instead of them when their customers use Google or Yahoo in searching for their company name.The customers could not find their contact info anywhere on the web – instead our contact info dominated at least 3 pages on search. I know it is wicked of me to have done that but if they did not steal our customers by offering them a big cut on our quote to the clients, I could not have done it. I just got even and taught them a good lesson on playing fair.Keep up with sharing your knowledge, bro. Manuel
Thats the beauty of the web! evolve or die!
Nice Tute Matt, you devil!! I had the general idea of this, but your explanations fill in a few gaps. Very nice – can’t wait to apply it. Will just have to work nights ^.^
Hustle hustle malc 😛
Great walk-through. I’ve done this a few times but didn’t know about the DupeRemover tool. You just saved me a whole heap of time. Thanks. Owe you a pint 🙂
Haha no worrys, cheers Rudy!
Thanks for this post! When talking about stealing the backlinks – would this only pertain to web 2.0 type sites? For instance if the competitors have back links from newspapers and legitimate (ie not link wheel) blogs – how would you add your link to those?Ps became an email subscriber yest – glad I did!
Hi,Well from a newspaper site it could be from a comment or a user generated content area.If its from an actual article, well just pick up the phone and speak to the paper.
Also, you may see some of my friends from Web Pro World coming over for a visit. Hopefully, they will find the info valuable and want to be your friend, too. :O)
Thanks for the share Chris much appreciated!
Another spot on post MattPersonally i have got better results over the years by doing this than using any automated tool.Only problem i find is when alot of the top 10 have lots of links from PR domains, But hey you can combat that by having your own little networkKeep up the great work 🙂
Thats true and by doing this you will have learnt exactly what it takes to rank and if you need a network etcAlthough even if they have a network you can still get links from it if your creative, trackbacks for example ^^
Is it just the links to the specific page that ranks in the top 10 that we are after or the links for the main domain?
Ranking to your top 5 competitors will increase your rankings
Just so I am clear, do you use all these backlink checkers each time you do a campaign? Seems very time consuming however you cannot argue with the results.
Using the backlink checkers isn’t the time consuming part, going through it all and replicating is 🙂
Freakin awesome once again! I have 2 quick questions:1. I have a local client and local.yahoo.com and a local yelp listing is outranking his site. I put out great content and decent backlinks. My next step is to follow your tiered backlink strategy to see if I can bump it up and give juice to the links that he already has. Any ideas on how to outrank local directories?2. The way SEO is going I know it’s not so much quantity and it’s quality but if my clients site has 55 links and his competitor has 110 should I try to get more?Thanks again man! You rock!
Hi,1) is it out ranking his site for his own brand?2) Your question counters itself 😛
Thanks Matt for another great tutorial and showing that it is not always necessary to get the latest, greatest SEO tool or service out there to get started in building quality backlinks.All we need is a little bit of elbow grease, some smarts and lots of good help from you!Like you said… its a win win win. (:
Cheers Gordon hope it helps some people out!
When reusing the link spreadsheet, overtime wouldn’t you dilute the PR that is flowing through to each site?cd :O)
Not really you would have to use it an awful lot ^^
Even if you were diluting the PR, your competitors (at least the original top ten back link profiles you copied) would get diluted equally the same so your rank -assuming you got to number one– would stay number one. The links would still benefit all your other sites, and you wouldn’t be hurting your ranked sites
Hi Matt,How about those backlinks which are mini-sites? Should I replicate them?I noticed that my competitor is using minisites to rank.Same with paid directories and sponsor links. Most sites rank well using it.Your thoughts?Thanks!Tony
Hi,By mini sites do you mean their own private network?
As you know Matt I respect you, however in this one… I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. As we all know these techniques mastered the days of being able to fake out Google and other Engines and still does on most engines. However if you really dig deep into those links you guys are building you may see depending on the industry of course that you are NOT GETTING much ROI out of those leads. So WHY do it?If you ask most successful marketers where do you get most of your leads from? I would suspect many would say Organic + PPC and WELL Link Building is the death of most sites since May 22nd of 2013 with the monster release of the Killer Penguins.If anything I would be looking at how bad are your competitors links and figure out how NOT do do that since we have seen Google is going away from Trusting Links and or Going at things with another logical way but with machine learning and knowledge graph developing a VR Type “Ask it any Question” and it seems to know type Algo.Just as links so are Keywords and OLD way to Market. You can take the Yellow Brick Road to somewhere in Kansas or maybe go directly to OZ… Your Choice! Ok, that is my 2 Cents.
Hi William,What on earth are you talking about?On one hand you say there is no ROI out of the leads and on the other your saying most get leads from organic + PPC.The bottom line is if you want good search rankings, you need backlinks. Well you need a lot of things, but backlinks is one of the main ones!Link building isn’t the death of sites, inexperienced link builders are.
Hello William, I think you may be a little confused. If you are replicating the back links of the top 10 organic searches. Google has already deemed these as worthy back links no mater what stage of the Google algorithm we are under. I may not be an expert. People go on and on about this strategy and that strategy and Google’s latest changes but there is really ONLY 2 factors in ranking high with Google yes in my opinion there is only 2 factors.1. Content – be it blog post, article writing, social media or videos. Google is always a fan of good useful content. And then within everything you post or write just include a link back to a page on your domain.2. Back links it has in my opinion been a simple plan. Get more links then your competitor and you will rank as high or higher depending on these 2 factors.My winning plan – Replicate the back links of the top competitors for your website and keywords. See who is linking to them and why. Is it blog post, forum post, mention on social media just do what they did and then increase it by 30%Now look at these post your competitor made, his articles, his content and write better articles. Don’t steal what he did on this part just expand on what they did. It will make better more relevant content and will boost your rankings.In fact mention your competitors article or post and add content they failed to mention it will give you better content and with the new way google is doing with hummingbird changes it will boost your ranking also.
That is truly not the case. As you pointed out – leads come from organic and PPC.Link building is essential to SEO, it’s just a fact.As Mathew put it, inexperienced link builders are the death of sites.SEO and linkbuilding aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Very good post Matt !! Perhaps one easy way to get ranked is to follow what your competitor is doing 🙂
If it works for them… ^^
Take a bow sir! You have, yet again, produced a gem of a post! It’s becoming a habit now!!!!Thanks,Akbar
Haha thanks Akbar!
I literally published my own article on this same topic last night… But yours is in much more detail and much more thorough while mine skims the surface!What do you think about Open Site Explorer? I’ve read it is a bit slow to pick up new links – AHREFS is apparently more accurate and up to date. Thinking about switching
Hi Seb,You got a link for it?This is what I think about open site explorer – https://searchlogistics.com/seo/tools/backlink-checkers/
Awesome,Although my competitor in the top spot has a lot of viagra related anchor text back links from arabic looking sites… might have to pass up on those opportunities! Good to see a number of methods for those who may not have scrapebox also.Great methods thought Matthew. Thanks
Yeah you need to use a small amount of common sense but it sounds more like your competitor is under a negative SEO attack more than anything
What?!?! This is a crazy cool tutorial. It’s so nice that you show different methods! 😀 You just once more outranked your self 😉
Hahaha nice pun ^^
What a great post mat!Thumbs up
Thanks Bashoo!
This is a really great post Matthew. I am a big fan of ripping off competitor backlinks when launching a project (it’s just too much of a quick win not to).For those new to SEO it teaches what makes a good profile and gives them actions that they can follow to actually start getting off their arse and building links!!
Its win win win =D
Hi Alice, You are right. He has described everything in detail. What i like most in this article is that he has covered almost every SEO tool you will need to build backlinks.It is time to download RankCracker too. But there is one question i want to ask you Matthew. How many backlinks we should create at once?For example- If there is blog which is only 6 months old. It does not have a very good link profile. Now, the owner of the blog starts building backlinks. Wouldn’t it be a problem because Google will find too many backlinks being created all of a sudden?Regards,
Great knowledge I owe you a beer buddy! Its what I need for my freelance designer London site!
Hi MatthewI was randomly looking for backlinking strategy, the tools and other info all over the web. But when I finally landed on to your website, I closed all the other tabs from my screen. Here I got much more than what I was looking for. I am new to SEO and I am preparing myself for the interview and this massive information is going to be a big help to meThanks for sharing your knowledge with us all Cheers!
At the risk of sounding a complete fool…I ran the url through SEO Spyglass and clicked on the top link to go to the page. There was nothing obvious how the site got their backlink, I mean nothing in the comments section or in the article.Each comment with link posted is a ‘do not follow’ link as per a Chrome add on telling me this. I am correct that there is no point in me commenting and dropping a link as it is ‘no follow’ so it will not give me any juice?or Have I missed the point that just dropping the link is cool?
For either Alice or Matt,For someone rather new to SEO and launching a website, would you say this process takes some experience to navigate since it involves multiple tools? Or is it fairly straight forward. (I suppose that would depend on the software.) Again, excellent tutorial Matt. I’ll be giving it a go here shortly. And speaking of golden lists, I have an excel sheet with links to valuable articles for my own website building and promoting which feature basically 100% Matt Woodward content. Cheers!
nice great job