What does competitor backlink analysis mean?

When improving a business’s search engine optimisation (SEO), companies globally constantly look for that edge over their competitors. Even the difference between ranking 1st or 2nd can often make a substantial difference in the amount of organic traffic the business obtains.
Always remember you can monitor your business’s organic traffic using Google Analytics.

Sometimes, adding a single link to the company’s backlink profile can be enough to nudge that business up one place on Google. That is, of course, if it’s a good-quality backlink from a respected online newspaper like The Independent.

Businesses are, therefore, constantly looking at ways to build more links.

One of the ways many companies do this is by using competitor backlink tools, such as Ahrefs and also Moz Pro. Another popular link-building tool is SEMRush.

These tools allow you to input a competitor’s URL; then, you can see some of the backlinks that link to that domain name.

In short, you could replicate some of those links for your business.

However, as this article will illustrate, it is essential only to build quality links.

As regular blog followers will know, we extensively discuss how Google EEAT changed SEO.

Well, the core of this is backlinks.

In short, if your business’s website shows that you are the expert and have a lot of experience with what you’re talking about, you can attract more links. Like bees to honey, the more helpful your company’s content marketing is, the more links you can attract.

 

Search engine rankings

For any business to get on page one of Google’s search engine results, the company needs strong SEO. Yet, not just strong in one area, but strong across the 200+ ranking different factors.

When you discuss SEO with most SEO consultants, they will tell you that having a lot of good links is a game changer.

It can push your website up not just for one but many keywords.
The reason is that quality links indicate to Google’s algorithm that your website is more authoritative. As such, you can gain more links.

 

What are backlinks

When you click a link, for example, when you click “click here” and are taken to another website, you have followed a link. Links are, therefore, a way to instantly teleport to another website. This is consequently helpful and useful to shoppers; why?

Let’s say they are looking for a car hire business; they go from a holiday booking website, then click a link to the car hire business. Therefore, it helps the shopper, as they can follow links and buy what they want or perhaps find out more about a product or service.

 

Backlinks are digital gold.

If you get the right backlinks, powerful backlinks.

Then, what these can do is place your website higher on Google.

Sounds like a piece of cake, right?

Well, sadly, it’s not a walk in the park.

Building quality links is hard work. The businesses that have high-quality websites with high DA scores, these businesses don’t just link to everyone. They only link to companies that offer high-quality information, such as pages with high DA and Google EEAT scores.

Therefore, building links is hard work because high-quality websites need a reason to link to you.

However, if you are the bee’s knees, the best in the business, and offer first-class, high-quality information, you gain a solid reputation online as an expert. Other companies/websites, such as bloggers, will want to link to you if you are deemed an expert. This could be because you give the best advice on how to fix a car right through to you are one of the best SEO consultants worldwide, offering first-class information.

You offer first-class information that businesses will want to link to you. Be the best, and they will come.

 

Ahrefs Semrush Moz

So many backlink-checking tools are on the market, and all are good. If you were to ask us which one we would like the most here at our agency,

 

We would have to say Moz Pro.

We like this backlink-checking tool very much; it’s simple to use, and we have moved our clients up the rankings.

 

 

What is competitor backlink analysis?

It’s like finding a needle in a haystack; what do we mean by that?

You can have a competitor; they might be ranked number 1 in your business sector on Google.

They are, therefore, obtaining the lion’s share of the organic traffic.

You naturally, as a business, want to take their space.

However, here’s the thing: you won’t be able to build some of the links in the competitor’s backlink profile. For example, those businesses might be loyal suppliers, so they link to that business as they have a commercial interest in doing so. Other companies might be for business awards; therefore, newspaper articles might feature the story.

Now, you can begin to see why link building is so difficult.

Because you can only get links from businesses that want to link to your company, a business may have won an award, a prestigious business award; therefore, they have earned that link. That business will not go on to link to you if you haven’t won that award.

However, where there is a will, there is a way

We like the saying, where there is a will, there is always a way.

This is the spirit when building links.

Sure, you might have to sit there, drinking an obscene amount of coffee, burning the midnight oil, and building links.

Yet, as you gain a stronger backlink profile, you will start to climb Google’s ranks. Trust us when we say the businesses that rank number 1, 2 and 3 on Google this is primarily due to the quality of the business’s backlink profile.

Backlinks are, therefore, like digital gold; they can mean the difference between page 10 of Google and page 1. Trust us when we say that if an

SEO agency has a good link builder, they will have someone well worth their weight in gold because backlinks drive a business up to the first page of Google.

It’s, therefore, about building as many links as you can, as fast as you can.

Nope.

No, not at all.

1 good quality link is worth a million times more than many spam links.

Here’s the thing: this is important, so please listen up and build links incorrectly; if a business builds links too fast, builds low-quality links or builds a ton of spam links, this is a surefire way of incurring a Google penalty.

What are Google’s penalties?

Well, it’s serious and shouldn’t be taken lightly, that’s for sure.
Businesses can incur a Google penalty, such as the Google Penguin penalty, because the company may have built spam links. If the company has built spam links, this flies in the face and goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It will lower the Google EEAT score, triggering a

Google penalty, which means the business can get deindexed.

Love nor money can sometimes then bring the website back. It can sometimes take years or years for the business to recover to where it once ranked on Google. So, a word to the wise: don’t build spam links.

 

How do you build quality links?

Well, first things first, don’t just wing it.

If you’re just getting started in search engine optimisation, take your time to read about white hat SEO and Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, as well as Google EEAT. Make sure you know your stuff when it comes to building links. If you build spam and rubbish links, the business can incur that Google Penguin Penalty we discussed earlier.

 

Who’s the best?

So, you might be wondering how to carry out competitor backlink research.

Here’s how we do it.

Take the keyword from Google Search Console that has the highest search volume. You can also use an SEO tool for this.

Then, run a search on Google and make an Excel spreadsheet of your main competitors. Then, place those URLs into a backlink-checking tool, Moz Pro, and check your direct competitor’s backlinks.

Download the list of links, then have your link builder work through them to see which quality links you can build.

 

Is there another way of building links?

Pages with high Google EEAT score and Google Helpful Content

So, if the work is well written by an expert and has a high Google EEAT score, these pages typically rank high in Google. As such, they attract more organic visitors, so you stand an increased chance of building more links.

For example, let’s say you offer helpful advice via a blog on how to fix a specific make of car. Other mechanics websites, such as garages, will show the work is high quality and link to you. Therefore, the business obtains high-quality links by offering helpful and valuable information.

How does our agency build links?

We use a combination of checking our competitor’s backlink profiles and creating high-quality content marketing.

When you think of a single piece of content marketing, this blog post could be live for the next 10 years, offering advice on building links.

During this time, some readers may own businesses, whether here or in another country.

Therefore, some of those readers may choose to link to the work. If their blogs or websites have high DA and are high-quality, this will help improve the SEO and search engine optimisation for the businesses they link to.

 

A word on anchor text

So, in short, the anchor text is just the text you click on, such as “click here”- an example of anchor text.

Now, what some businesses do is they make the mistake of over-optimising the anchor text.

Let’s give you an example: Let’s say the company sells sofas, and their best seller item is a “luxury sofa.” Well, across the website, they may use this anchor text excessively.

Now, this is an example of over-optimising the anchor text.

However, instead, you should have anchor text that better describes the product or service.

So, for example, “3-piece yellow sofa”, “red reclining leather sofa”, or “brown cloth sofa”, you get the picture.
This is the same for business content marketing; don’t keyword stuff, as this leads to Google penalties.

 

Broken link building

Agencies all over the world talk about broken link building as a method of technique of link building.
We think a lot of this is just hype.

The amount of time it takes to find a relevant broken link, not to mention a company that returns your calls or e-mails, well, that’s hard, that’s very hard.

I want to give you an example of what we mean. Let’s say you use an SEO tool that finds a broken link on a website to do with, say, offering accountancy services. You may e-mail them and ask them to link your accounting software business because you have spotted the broken link and feel your company can provide helpful advice via your blog.

However, as we said earlier, this can be massively time-consuming.

Here at this agency, we prefer to write high-quality content marketing with a very high Google EEAT score. Therefore, if you can clearly show you’re an expert on what you’re writing about, these pages will rank higher on Google.
When they rank higher on Google, they obtain more organic visitors, which opens up the possibility of the website attracting more links.

 

Be a thought leader

It might seem at first that you’re writing content marketing that takes a very long time to create, yet you are not seeing any benefit.
However, just like growing followers on YouTube takes time, so does creating content marketing that gains reasonable organic visitors.
However, gaining more organic visitors gives you more chances to build links. The point you want to reach is that your brand, your business, becomes a place that’s known for offering sound advice. Whichever products or services you sell, you want to be considered an expert.
As such, bloggers and other businesses worldwide may wish to link with you.

 

What does competitor backlink analysis mean?

Our SEO agency explains what a competitor backlink analysis is, and it helps to strengthen your business’s SEO.