Successful link building is a vital SEO process that drives referral traffic, improves engagement, and enhances website authority. Fundamentally, link building involves external websites linking back to your own site via hyperlinks. Link building demonstrates your site’s quality and authenticity, and your website will struggle to rank high on the SERP without a strong link-building strategy in place.
Keep reading for a comprehensive overview of what this entails and to understand why backlinks are an essential part of the marketing equation.
What is Competitor Analysis for Link Building?
Competitor analysis for link building is fundamental to building a successful network of backlinks. As with any marketing campaign, achieving this without doing sufficient market research first is challenging.
The most successful SEO strategists check competitors’ backlinks meticulously, using tools such as SEMrush or Majestic. In doing so, they gather vital information on the links that are helping competitors rank higher and how they acquired them. This significantly improves market knowledge of the important websites to focus on and provides an understanding of valuable backlink targets.
To check competitor links and run a successful link building analysis, you must cover the following factors:
- Identify your competition: recognizing your competitors is the first step. Gather a comprehensive list of keywords and search for competing websites by SERP saturation. In most cases, these will be your main rivals.
- Recognize target links: not all backlinks are the same. Your competitor analysis for link building should help you focus on the correct target links. It will uncover which sources and link types are the most advantageous while revealing ones to avoid.
- Analyze backlink profiles: export several competitors’ backlink profiles into Excel to easily track the URLs, page authority, and domain authority. Analyze all links to create the optimum foundations for a winning link-building strategy.
- Create an action plan: you’ll be in the perfect position to create an action plan once you have completed your competitor analysis for link building. Consider the most useful links, how to gain them, and whether it’s realistic to do so.
Benefits of a Competitor Link Analysis for Link Building
Investigating competitor links is beneficial for many reasons. This is the first step towards a backlink-building strategy that works, helping your website rank higher and increasing organic traffic. Specific benefits of checking competitor links include:
- Identify competitor strategies: competitor analysis for link building uncovers strategies you can use to enhance your approach to securing high-level backlinks. Alternatively, it can show disadvantageous tactics that you should avoid.
- Discover new keyword opportunities: a byproduct of researching competitor links is a better knowledge of your industry’s keyword opportunities. Search for any relevant gaps you can exploit, specifically regarding keywords you hadn’t initially considered.
- Convenient backlinks comparison: when you check competitors’ backlinks, it allows vital space for comparison. Analyze where competing websites have the edge over yours and implement steps to change this.
- Form new working partnerships: research competitor links is also a valuable way of securing new working partnerships. Create a list of potential avenues to go down, based on competitors, and work toward forming your own professional relationships.
Popular Link Building Tools To Use for Competitor Analyses
SEO specialists have numerous tools to help them analyze competitor backlinks. Three of the most commonly used are Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Majestic.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an extensive SEO tool with complete functionality covering all steps required for a winning SEO formula. It has an entire section dedicated to competitor analysis, providing domain comparison, backlink profile audits, and revealing potential link building targets.
SEMrush also has several ways to enhance your link-building strategy. Users can identify linking domains, understand how authoritative they are, filter by backlink or anchor type, and more. It’s an extraordinarily detailed tool, but the only downside is that beginners may be swamped with data.
Majestic
Majestic is another powerful SEO platform that can supercharge your competitor’s backlink analysis. Its ‘Site Explorer’ is a quick and practical way to identify and track your main competitors. There are also numerous filtering options available once you have done so.
Majestic also offers ‘Link Context’, providing valuable insights on the position of backlinks within a block of text and their context. It’s an extremely powerful backlink analysis and building tool with countless potential uses. Just be aware the advanced Majestic features can take a while to fully understand.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs has several unique features benefiting SEO experts. The platform focuses more on the link building aspect, allowing users to create detailed audits of their own websites and their competitors’ sites.
Its ‘Content Explorer’ tool is great for researching relevant keywords and topics to find valuable websites for potential backlinks. You can also use the same tool to find any websites that mention your business but are not linking back to your page. Similar to SEMrush and Majestic, Ahrefs’ main downside is its initial complexity.
Which Tool Should You Use?
There is no absolute gold-standard competitor backlink analysis tool, although the tools mentioned above are widely recognized as the most popular among SEO experts. Users prefer different options based on their unique workflows, preferences, and favored metrics.
Ensuring you understand the full range of features offered by platforms like SEMrush or Majestic is the most crucial factor in your decision. Using a few tools in tandem is the best way to cover all angles and ensure that you’re not missing anything important in your analysis.
Eliminate The Fuss & Supercharge Your Link Building Through Proton Links
Competitor analysis for link building is a vital first step toward a meticulously targeted and optimized SEO strategy. In doing so, you will identify all competitors, potential backlink avenues, important link metrics, and more. It’s the perfect foundation to start building links of your own.
Outreach link building is time-consuming but vital if you want a successful backlink profile. Proton Links is the ideal way to eliminate the tricky areas and supercharge your link building.
After completing account verification, Proton Links users can choose from various domains. Check your target metrics before selecting the most advantageous options, and we’ll handle the rest. All you need to do is supply an anchor text and the link. Sign up for a comprehensive, stress-free, and seamless approach to the link-building process. It’s time to boost your links!
Competitor Analysis For Link Building FAQs
What is competitor link building?
Competitor link building involves targeted research of competing pages and their backlinks. It is a vital SEO strategy designed to help you reverse engineer the approach used by successful businesses in your niche. Backlinks are fundamental to high-ranking web pages and cornerstones of online search engine-based marketing.
How do you manage the success of your link building efforts?
Advanced SEO platforms like SEMrush, Majestic, or Ahrefs are vital to tracking link-building success. These powerful information mining tools can show you where you’re going wrong, as well as successful areas you should double down on. They offer an immense set of metrics that are key to managing the success of your link-building campaign.
Is there an easier way to build up my backlink profile?
Yes. Using Protonlinks can significantly scale your SEO with ease. It offers a stress-free and optimized way to find new affiliates and link-building opportunities, leveraging automation and advanced AI to deliver a strong backlink profile.
Do I need backlinks to rank higher organically on search?
Backlinks are crucial to SERP rankings for numerous reasons. Successful link building illustrates your page’s authenticity, value, and overall quality. As a result, Google’s algorithms rank the site higher, improving your overall SEO score.
Should I trust all my competitors’ backlinks?
You should never blindly trust your competitor’s backlinks without doing careful research and using various metrics and SEO tools first. Some backlinks to avoid are spam sites, unrelated sites, and discussion forums. If you’re analyzing the top competitor links correctly, chances are these second-rate backlinks haven’t been used.
Is outreach for link building easy?
Planning and implementing a successful link building outreach blueprint can be challenging and time-consuming. Reaching out to the ideal platforms is tricky, especially when convincing them to feature your website or product. In these cases, short, snappy, and courteous emails are the best way to go. Alternatively, using Proton links means you can take a step back and let our optimized link-building platform do all the work for you.
Which tool should I choose for my competitor backlink analysis?
Most SEO experts have a core group of tools at their disposal, not just one. We recommend using platforms like SEMrush, Majestic, and Ahrefs simultaneously to plug all potential gaps in your competitor analysis for link building. Ensure you learn exactly how the leading features of each can help you.