In the competitive landscape of online marketing, understanding how your rivals are building their backlink profiles can provide invaluable insights for your own SEO strategies. Analyzing your competitors’ backlink strategies isn’t just a task for seasoned SEO professionals; it can be a game-changing strategy for anyone looking to boost their online presence. This guide will walk you through a straightforward, step-by-step approach to conducting a backlink analysis of your competitors.
Step 1: Choose the Right Tools
To begin your analysis, you’ll need a reliable SEO tool. In this guide, we will use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, a powerful resource that allows you to dissect any domain’s backlink profile.
Action Item:
- Sign up for a trial or subscription to Ahrefs or any other comparable SEO tool that offers backlink analysis features.
Step 2: Input the Competitor’s Domain
Once you have your tool of choice ready, navigate to Site Explorer and input the domain you want to analyze. For example, let’s look at the Content Marketing Institute (contentmarketinginstitute.com). Upon entry, you will be presented with a summary of the website, including key metrics like total backlinks and referring domains.
Understanding the Metrics:
- Backlinks: The total number of links pointing to your competitor’s site.
- Referring Domains: The number of unique domains that link to your competitor.
- Link Indices: Familiarize yourself with the three indices – Live, Recent, and Historical. The Live Index shows currently active links, Recent includes links lost in the last 90 days, and Historical encompasses all past links.
Step 3: Visualize Link Growth
Ahrefs provides interactive graphs that illustrate link acquisition over time. By setting the time frame to view, you can observe trends in backlink growth for your competitor. This helps in comparing the effectiveness of link acquisition strategies over various periods.
Comparative Analysis:
Utilize the comparison feature by entering another website’s domain (for example, copyblogger.com) alongside your competitor’s. This side-by-side visual will reveal which site has consistently performed better, highlighting opportunities for your link building.
Step 4: Identify Spike Patterns
Examine the graphs that show new and lost referring domains. This aspect of analysis can reveal specific content campaigns that generated spikes in backlinks. Identifying such campaigns enables you to learn what types of content are attracting attention and backlinks.
Step 5: Dive Deeper into Referring Domains
Visit the referring domains report to see unique websites linking to your competitor. Given that larger sites may contain too many links, use filters to narrow your focus. Start by filtering to show only ‘dofollow’ links, which pass link juice.
Sorting and Filtering:
- Sort by Number of Dofollow Links: This gives insights into which domains contribute the most value.
- Search for Specific Domains: If you’re interested in whether a certain website links to your competitor, use this search function to quickly discern their link presence.
Step 6: Evaluating Backlink Quality
Once you’ve identified high-value referring domains, analyze the nature of the links. Check how many links a site has directed to your competitor and the quality of these links. Not all backlinks are equal; focus on reputable sources that align with your niche.
Step 7: Build Your Own Strategy
With the data collected, derive actionable insights for your own link building strategy. Consider reaching out to websites that link to your competitors but don’t yet link to you. Formulating relationships or producing similar high-quality content could increase your visibility and draw similar backlinks.
Bonus Tip:
For less popular domains, perform the same analysis to ensure your strategies are legitimate and replicable, without engaging in questionable link-building tactics.
Conclusion
By following this step-by-step guide, you can effectively analyze your competitors’ backlink strategies to unearth valuable link-building opportunities. As you develop your approach to SEO, remember that continuous learning and adaptation to the competitive landscape are key to sustained success. Stay tuned for further insights and advanced techniques in subsequent parts of this series, and happy analyzing!
