10 unique ways to benefit from your competitor’s links

Checking the backlinks of your competitors can greatly improve the position of your own website on Google and other search engines.

Websites that link to your competitors are websites that could link to your site. Reverse-engineering the link structure of your competitors often reveals very helpful information.

Do your competitors participate in link schemes? Is there anything unusual in their backlinks? Do they get the majority of their backlinks from only a handful of sites? Do most of the backlinks to your competitors come from the same IP address range?

The detailed backlink analysis that you get in a SEOprofiler Link IQ™ report will help you to get the answers to these questions. Here are some examples:

1. Get links from .edu sites and other trusted domains

Although not all SEO’s agree that a link from an .edu domain will positively influence the position of your website in Google’s search results, links from .edu sites are highly coveted.

A link from an .edu site to a company website can mean that there is an article about a certain topic on the .edu site with links to related sites. If it makes sense, ask the author of the article to add your website to the list of related sites.

It can also be that that the linked company is recruiting on that university. In that case, visit the .edu pages to find out what your competitors are looking for. If you also have a job to offer, contact the universities. Changes are that you will get qualified people and a link from an .edu website as a bonus.

Of course, the SEOprofiler Link IQ™ report will show you the links from .edu sites on a separate page so that you don’t have to search them. The Premiun Analysis also lists links from other trusted domains:

2. Find out if your competitors uses paid blog reviews

If there are several blogs that all review the same product or website of your competitor, then chances are that your competitor paid these bloggers for the reviews. If the paid links aren’t nofollowed, this can get your competitors in trouble with Google’s anti-spam team.

The Link IQ™ report will show you all links from blogs and from pages that contain the word “review” and similar words so that you can find these pages quickly:

3. Find out if your competitor participates in social media sites and forums

If one of your competitors has very many links from reddit.com, digg.com, etc. while most of the other competitors have only one or two then it’s very likely that the competitor is a social media spammer.

If a competitor gets an unusually high number of links from forums then this could be a forum spammer. Of course, links from forums can also be legitimate:

If your competitor is listed on social networks that do not list your own website, try to get on these networks.

4. Find out from which countries your competitors get links

Your competitors might get links from countries from which your website doesn’t get any links yet. By analyzing these links, you can find out why the website of your competitor is more attractive to webmasters from other countries:

The distribution of the links can help you to find out in which markets your competitors engage in Internet marketing activities.

5. Find out if your competitors use coupons and get links to your site

If a competitor website has many backlinks from coupon sites then it’s very likely that the competitor uses couponing as a part of their marketing strategy. If you also offer coupons, these links can make sense for your website as well.

The Link IQ™ report lists all links from coupon sites on a separate page so that you don’t have to search for them. We do the work for you, you just have to decide which links you want to follow:

6. Find trade shows or other events that are sponsored by your competitors

Sometimes it’s important to sponsor the right events to get the word out. The SEOprofiler Link IQ™ report shows you which events, trade shows, etc. are sponsored by your competitors.

This enables you to find new trade shows that you should be a part of and it also enables you to find new ways to promote your company. For example, you might find out that your competitor sponsors the soccer team of an elementary school and that this sponsorship leads to several newspaper mentions and links:

7. Discover the activities of your competitors on Q&A sites, press release sites, etc.

The Link IQ™ report also shows you if your competitors participate on Question&Answers (Q&A) sites and if your competitors send online press releases (including links to these sites so that you can add your own site):

The Link IQ™ report will also show you if your competitors gave interviews on websites, if they published guest posts in blogs, if they are listed on yellow pages websites, and more. Visit these websites and add your own link to these resources.

8. Find out if your competitors participate in linking schemes or micro networks

If most of the links to a competitor come from the same or similar IP addresses then chances are that the competitor participates in a linking scheme:

9. Find new affiliates quickly and easily

If you create Premium Analyses for the websites of your competitors then you will get detailed files with all the backlinks that point to your competitors. Open the file in a spreadsheet program and sort the links by source URL:

You’ll quickly find patterns and similar links that point to your competitors. If your competitor has an affiliate program, the affiliate links are usually something like “http://example.com/page.htm?affid=1234“. Use the search command in your spreadsheet program to find these links.

This is a great opportunity for your own website. Websites that use affiliate links to link to your competitors are interesting in linking to related sites. If you offer an affiliate program, contact these sites and ask them to add your affiliate links to your web pages.

Contacting the affiliates of your competitors will often result in many new links to your website.

10. Dig in the raw data

When you request a SEOprofiler Link IQ™ report for a competitor website, you will get a detailed report with clearly arranged chapters. The chapters will help you to find the most important links quickly and easily.

In addition, you’ll get a CSV file with the raw link data. You can work with the raw link data to create your own reports and charts.

The raw link data enables you to draw your own conclusions from the links to your competitors. Analyze the all_links.csv with your own tools and get an edge over your competitors by using the link data for things that they don’t expect.

Analyze the backlinks of your competitors now

Our Premium Analyses contain up to 30,000 backlinks per competitor domain. There are lots of new backlink opportunities for your website.

Analyzing the backlinks of your competitors will result in many new backlinks for your own website. The more competitor websites you analyze, the more backlinks you will get.

Enter the domain of one of your competitors in the following box and click the “Show me the backlinks” button. Important: If you want to get a detailed Link IQ™ report, click the “Link IQ™ report” panel on the result page:

Discuss this article in our community.

Share this!

You may also like…