Backlink analysis is a technique that is holding up quite well to the test of ever-changing SEO waters. Despite the many different developments in the world of web search and search engine optimization, competitor backlink analysis continues to be popular with many SEO experts owing to its effectiveness in helping sites outrank its main competitors.
Search results toppers (sites that appear in Google’s top search results) are likely to have a solid backlink profile. After all, Google wouldn’t put them there if they didn’t. They also most likely have good content that satisfies the best practices for on-page SEO and other basic optimization principles. For the most part, however, it is the strong backlink profile of these pages that propel their high rankings.
Now imagine this: What would happen to your site’s rankings if you had the same backlink profile as every single site or page in the top results? It certainly can’t hurt to identify your competitor’s most useful backlinks.
Collecting and analyzing backlink data is vital to search optimization as it gives insight into how and why your competitors are performing well in searches for any given key term. This backlink data is a goldmine for links that you can use and reuse in order to attract more traffic into your website. The process requires building the right foundation for your site and using the results of your backlink analysis to create a stronger link profile for your own site. Creating a strong backlink profile means more than just replicating your competitor’s backlink profile—it also means outdoing them by adding other useful links used by your other competitor websites. The process is slow and organic, but it pays off in the long run.
The first thing you want to do when building a strong backlink profile is to take a closer look at Google’s top results. Have a list of search terms you need to rank for, then gather the top organic results and run their URLs through a backlink checker.
There are many different ‘free’ and ‘paid’ backlink checkers in the market. These programs can provide you with a complete overview of the backlink profile of your chosen URL. Note that results are not always identical—that is, different backlink checkers may return varying results, as they source their data from various databases. To ensure a holistic analysis, you must combine data from different backlink checkers.
After running all the top-ranking URLs through your preferred backlinks checker, be sure to create a comprehensive master list of the competitor backlinks you were able to gather. Remove any duplications with a duplicate removal tool so you can proceed to the actual analysis.
It will be impossible and impractical to target all the backlinks you have gathered, which is why it is vital that you pick out only the best links with the greatest PR value. These links are to be your ‘priority’ links. Separate good links (those with high PR value) from the not-as-good links (indexed but without much PR value). Make the latter your secondary targets. Some of the backlink profile analysis tools you may use include Majestic.com, Moz.com, and Ahrefs.com.
Once you have your priority list, study how your competitors are linked to the particular page. Sometimes, a link is obtained simply by posting a blog comment; other times they have a guest post. It is through reviewing your competitor’s relationships with their linked pages that you can get a good idea how to obtain the valuable backlink from those websites, too, and ultimately build a strong link profile for SEO.
Let SEOValley take care of your backlink analysis requirements. Talk to one of our SEO experts today.
