4 Quick and Simple Ways to Find Competitor Backlinks

According to the great military strategist Sun Tzu, “If you know your enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” You might be surprised to find out that this famous saying is applicable not just in the military but also in SEO. Finding and obtaining your competitors’ backlinks is an effective SEO strategy that can help you gain industry authority, referral traffic, and better search rankings. 

There are several ways to find competitor backlinks and take advantage of them. But before we do that, first, we must discuss how you can identify the competition. 

Getting to Know the Competition

There are two types of competitors you can obtain backlinks from: domain-level and page-level. 

1. Domain-level competitors

Domain-level competitors are websites that you compete with on search result pages. They are targeting many of the search terms you are trying to rank for across many pages. However, keep in mind that your domain-level competitors are not necessarily your business rivals. 

2. Page-level competitors

As the name implies, page-level competitors are those that compete with you for specific topics and/or keywords on a page level. 

Obtaining Backlinks from Your Competitors

If many websites are linking to your competitors, there’s a significant chance that they might want to also link to you. To help convince these sites, here are a few tips you should consider. 

1. Analyse your competitors’ homepage links

A significant number of links use branded links. This is because instead of linking to a specific page, most people tend to link to homepages when mentioning a specific brand or company. For this reason, you should research your competitors’ homepage links to identify the websites that are mentioning or linking to them. 

Next is to find out why these sites are linking to your competitor and not to you. Fortunately, this is something you can easily accomplish. Look at the page title, surrounding link text and anchor text to determine why your competitors are getting mentioned. Then, try to emulate their example to get online mentions. 

2. Write for the same sites that feature your competitors’ guest blogs

Because guest blogging is still one of the most effective yet most straightforward ways to acquire high-quality backlinks, your competitors are likely using this strategy. Therefore, why don’t you consider writing for the same websites that host your competitors’ guest blogs? 

There are two simple ways you can determine where your competitors are doing guest blogs: 

a. Google advanced search queries

You can do a quick Google search to locate your rivals’ guest post. Enter the search strings below to find what you’re looking for: “Author name” + “guest post” -site:competitordomain.com -site:https://twitter.com, or “Author name” + inurl:author. 

b. Reverse image search

Alternatively, you can perform a reverse image search to find posts that contain your competitors’ headshot. While using Chrome, right-click on the author’s image and select “Search Google for image” from the drop-down menu. 

3. Keep track of your competitors’ brand mentions

Another way to find competitor backlinks is to monitor your business rivals’ brand mentions. This will help you discover more opportunities to build backlinks for your site. You can use paid tools to keep track of your competitors’ brand mentions. However, if you don’t want to use paid tools, Google Alerts is an excellent alternative. 

Follow these steps to keep an eye on your competitors’ brand mentions on Google Alerts:

• On the box where it says “Create an alert about,” enter the brand name of your competitors. Consider placing quotes before and after their brand name for increased accuracy.
• Choose how often you’d like to receive alerts for these brand mentions.
• Choose your language and location.
• Select the number of results you’d like to receive.
• Enter your email address to where the alerts will be sent.
• Click on “Create Alert.”

4. Transform those brand mentions into link building opportunities

After keeping tabs on your competitors’ brand mentions, the next thing you need to do is put them on a list. Then, take the following steps: 

• Sift through your competitors’ brand mentions and determine if your brand or company is also being referenced alongside them.
• If your brand is being referenced along with your competitors, see if the website that mentioned them also has a backlink to your site.
• If the site is not linking back to you, get in touch with the post’s author or the site owner. Ask them if they can include a backlink to your site in your brand.
• In case your business is not mentioned on their site, analyse their content and determine why your competitor has a brand mention from them.
• If the brand mention comes in the form of a blog post that links to multiple competitors, it would be an excellent opportunity to ask the post author or site owner to also link to you.
• On the other hand, if they are linking to a particular page, such as your competitor’s blog post, you should try pitching in and providing them with a similar piece of content.
• Don’t have similar content? Don’t worry. A great alternative is to write a more comprehensive and updated resource than the one your competitor has. Then, pitch in your work to the website linking to your competitor.

Learn from Your Business Rivals

Learning from the competition is an effective business and SEO strategy. This is why you should get to know them better. However, instead of copying their strategy, what you should do is surpass them. Create something better to get brand mentions and backlinks from other sites that would help increase your online authority and credibility. 

If you think your current link building strategies could use a makeover, we at Springhill Marketing can assist you. We can provide you with expert onsite and offsite SEO services to help you make the most of the opportunities search engines can offer. Please speak with us today!