Are You Using Blacklisted Backlinks? Check Now
Competitor backlink analysis is my favourite link building strategy of all time.
I have been using it for the last 10 years and it’s the only link building method that has stood the test of time.
With a simple competitor backlink analysis you can:
- Uncover their link building strategies
- Find their most important backlinks
- See how many backlinks you need to build
Here is how to do it…
Why Should You Conduct a Competitor Backlink Analysis?
First, performing a competitor backlink analysis allows you to discover which websites are in your niche and share the same audience as yours.
Through this link profile analysis, you can get access to your competitor’s website performance from their number of external links and link metrics to their overall online authority – including page authority & domain authority.
A competitor backlink analysis helps you build (or improve) your strategy – the right way and allows you to:
- Uncover competitors link building strategies: During this process, you’ll review your competitor’s websites and performances to find out what they are doing differently and, eventually, you’ll come out with a bunch of new strategies to implement in your website.
- Find competitors most important backlinks: Identify which backlinks (Edu backlinks? Gov backlinks? Others?) help others to rank well in your niche. I recommend you to look at the number and the quality of sites linking to your competitor.
- Identify how you can replicate your competitors’ backlinks: By analyzing the backlink profile that makes your competitors rank, you’ll identify which backlinks are worth replicating and how to find backlink opportunities in the same sites.
Pretty cool, right?
Bellow, I’ll explain how to conduct this analysis to get great and fast results!
The Competitor Backlink Analysis Method
If you go to Google right now and search for your target keyword.
You’ll get on the first results page…
…The top 5x ranking sites that have all one important thing in common:
The idea of competitor backlink analysis is to-
- Look at each of these site’s link profiles
- Filter out the “junk”
- Replicate the best backlinks for your own site
Why waste time and money figuring out what works?
There’s already a proven link building blueprint out there waiting for you.
But to pull it off, you need a backlink analysis tool and you can get access to some incredible data without spending any money.
Top 3 Best Backlink Checkers You Shoud Be Using
Before we do anything else we need to find all of the backlinks that are pointing to our competitor’s site.
Doing that is easy because we can take advantage of a number of tools that allow us to download all of our competitor’s backlink portfolio easily.
The 3x best backlink analysis tools on the market right now are:
- Ahrefs (read my full Ahrefs review)
- SEMRush (read my full SEMRush review)
- SEO Spyglass (read my full SEO Powersuite review)
They will return high numbers of links for every competitor website that you run through them. This is important because the more quality links you find, the more you can replicate!
Let’s take a closer look…
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs was the best tool on this list to find insight into competitors’ backlink profiles.
But in my more recent best backlink checker case study, they got absolutely blown away.
You can view all of your competitor’s backlinks (including their anchor text) in one dashboard thanks to Ahrefs Site Explorer.
You can then export them in a CSV file to form the foundation of your strategy.
Ahrefs offers a $7 trial that gives you full access to the tool for 1x week.
Even if you only use Site Explorer for the trial period, using it with the Backlink Analysis Method will be the best $7 you’ve ever spent on your link building strategy.
Bonus: Ahrefs also allows you to monitor backlinks and set up backlink alerts so you can keep track of your competitor’s new backlinks!
2. SEMRush
The free SEMRush trial gives you access to a powerful tool with a very easy to use interface and relevant data sources that you can trust.
It’s certainly the best Ahrefs alternative out there to execute a backlink profile analysis.
But don’t be fooled by the high number of links it shows for my site.
SEMRush counts every link from a domain, but Ahrefs groups them together!
Either way, they give you a ton of data.
SEMRush has a freemium version of their tool that allows you to perform 10 data searches each day and you can also take advantage of a 100% free 14 day trial I set up for my readers.
Bonus: SEMrush offers the most comprehensive backlink audit you can find on the market.
See how Semrush stands against Ahrefs in my Ahrefs vs Semrush ultimate comparison.
3. SEO SpyGlass
SEO SpyGlass is the best desktop based backlink checker tool.
Although the link count is less than the last two tools…
It still gives you a significant number to work with:
However, their database is ever-growing with currently stands at 1.6x trillion links so it’s always going to find more than a handful for you.
SEO SpyGlass comes in two versions:
- Free: you can access data for 1,000x backlinks (but can’t export them)
- Paid: you can access data for unlimited backlinks and export them
But it doesn’t have an expensive monthly subscription like other tools.
Don’t worry, I understand these tools can be expensive if you’re starting out so feel free to take a look at my free seo tools list.
The Best Backlink Analysis Tools Compared
Honestly, you can’t make a wrong decision here. Each tool is going to provide you with more than enough backlink data to keep you busy.
And remember, if you are on a budget you can use the free trials to grab as much data as possible for your campaign.
| Ahrefs | SEMRush | SEO Spyglass | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Price |
$99 / Month |
$99.95 / Month |
$31.49 / Month |
|
Trial Available? |
Yes. $7 for 7 days. |
Yes. 14 Day Trial & Freemium Model. |
Yes. Freemium Model. |
|
# Links Found |
69,600 |
1,600,000 |
35,500 |
But don’t do anything just yet!
First I want to show you precisely how we are going to use this data to grow our own search traffic!
The Best Way To Steal Your Competitors Best Backlinks
Using the tools above I’m going to show you exactly how to steal your competitor’s links.
This is the proven repeatable method I’ve been using for years.
Better still:
Here’s what you need to do…
Step #1 – Find Your Competitors Ranking URL’s
Your starting point is to get a list of the top #5 ranking URLs for your target keyword.
Select the keyword you want to target.
Then do a search in Google and make a list of the first 5x organic search results:
Your final list of URL’s should look something like this:
https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ecommerce-seo/https://www.shopify.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-beginners-guide
Step #2 – Download My Free Backlink Analysis Tool
Head to this page to download my free competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet.
This is the intelligent sheet I have developed over the years for this specific task – you are going to love it!
Just paste the 5 links from step #1 above into column A on the first sheet-
Step #3 – Find Your Competitor’s Backlink Data
Click on the “Click Here” links to automatically open the right report you need.
Export the data as a .CSV file.
You can export as much data as the tool will allow.
The more, the better!
Once exported, let’s put it into the tool…
Step #4 – Load The Data
Head over to tab #2 – Data in the sheet to Import each of the files you just exported.
The quickest way is to:
- Open one of the files from step #2
- Delete the first row of data
- Highlight all of the remaining data and copy it
- Then paste it into Tab #2 of the google sheet
- Repeat the process adding each report you exported in step #3 to tab #2
This is how you should do it:
Once you have loaded all the data you are ready for…
Step #5 – Competitor Backlink Analysis
Head to Tab #3 – Plan Of Attack.
You’ll see a table of links.
These are the best competitors backlinks for you to target.
The tool has already:
- Filtered out harmful spammy links
- Removed weak links you should ignore
- Prioritised which links you should focus on first
(There’s that “keep it simple” motto in action again.)
That means it’s time to put your balaclava on and…
Step #6 – Steal Those Links!
You have all of the actionable data you need to get started.
What you’re looking for in your Plan Of Attack tab is:
For example…
…If the link came from a blog comment, you’ll just need to write your own:
…if it was a forum post or a blog post, join the discussion and include links in relevant places:
…if it was a guest post, you’ll need to pitch your own for publication:
Take a look at each link and reverse engineer the process to figure out how to do it.
Just work through the Plan Of Attack tab and replicate each link – it really is that easy!
Wrapping It Up
Stealing your competitors backlink strategies is one of the most effective ways to boost rankings and increase your traffic – including organic traffic & referral traffic.
It can save you:
- Time – so you can focus on other aspects of your SEO strategy such as content marketing and keyword research.
- Money – you’ll save in link building tools.
- Effort – you’ll get a bunch of backlink opportunies in just a few minutes.
To quickly recap:
- Find the 5x top ranking sites for your keyword
- Run them through your powerful new (free) backlink analysis tool
- Steal those links
- Watch how Google reacts
- Rinse and repeat
If you have any questions/thoughts about this strategy or if you need any SEO tips, please leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help!
Next I want to introduce you to resource page link building.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a backlink analysis?
Competitor backlink analysis is an SEO strategy where you complete a strict review of a competiting site’s backlink profile to analyze the site’s performance and identify potential issues that could affect negatively its ranking.
What is competitor backlink analysis?
Competitor backlink analysis is a major part of the link building process. Any successful link building campaign starts with competitor backlink analysis. Learning how your competitors get their backlinks is key to using their backlinks against them. Ahrefs will find your competitors’ links.
How do I find my competitor backlinks?
Finding competitors backlinks is very straightforward when you have access to a good backlink analysis tool. My favourite tool for finding backlinks is Ahrefs. Simply enter the target URL of your competitor into the tool, click backlinks to see a list of all the links pointing to their domain. You can then export the data.
How do you do a backlink analysis?
To perform effective competitor backlink analysis, enter your keywords into a Google search to identify your competitors. Make sure you take the top 5 organic results and put those URLs into a backlink analysis tool. You will get a list of websites to target that provides links to your competitor’s sites.
What are backlinks to a website?
A backlink is a link that is placed on one website that points to another website. A link may be placed when a site owner wants to recommend that website. This is a sign that the website is high quality, which makes backlinks a massive part of SEO.
How can you tell the quality of backlinks?
You can tell the quality of a backlink by reviewing the link profile and the website that has placed the link. The higher the authority, the better the quality of the link is. Using metrics such as Ahrefs DR is a good indicator.
Why do I need backlinks?
Backlinks and content marketing are essential factors to build page authority or increase your authority score. Make sure to use my backlink strategy to find great backlink opportunities. This method is part of the SEO best practices.
What is the difference between on-page SEO and off-page SEO?
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing parts of your website that are within your control such as:
- Page title
- Anchor text
- Internal linking
- Website’s speed
… among others.
While off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through content creation (a great content strategy will help your website stand out) and earning free backlinks from other websites thanks to blog comments, guest blogging/blog posts, social media, etc…
1,023 Responses
Thank you for the tutorial Matthew, Excellent your article. I always had doubts between Majestic and the Ahrefs I think I’ll invest my long using Ahrefs, thanks for the techniques.
Ahrefs is the best!
Proof: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/tools/best-backlink-checker/
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for the article, but when I try to download the free competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet, the file is no longer available. I’ve even signed up with two different emails and the only Google Sheet that I receive in my email is the Steal Your Keywords – SEMrush Edition spreadsheet.
How can I access the competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet?
Hi Jefferson. It’s the same spreadsheet. The first part of the strategy is to uncover your competitors’ keywords and then their best backlinks. So you have the right sheet.
Hi Matthew, I’ve got the same problem. I didn’t see any competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet in my email. Can you send me through email? Thank you so much
Hey Dyland, please email me at [email protected]
thanks for sharing this article with suggestions of the tools that we can use for backlink analysis, bookmarking your site to read more articles like this. keep sharing..
No problem- glad it helped!
Great knowledge I owe you a beer buddy! Its what I need for my freelance designer London site!
…………….Thank You…….
Haha glad it was helpful!
Thank you for this valuable post it was very helpful. I really appreciate your effort. please keep us update.
No worries! Glad you liked the post!
This is a great blog! thanks for sharing this ! Would like to hear such information!
Thank you! Cheers!
Thanks for the great post Matthew , wish you the best .
Thanks, Kay!
Very informative and insightful . Keep up the good Work. Thanks for sharing
No problem! Always happy to help!
HI,
Your link is not good, Its the doc for keywords, not for backlinks analysis.
Can you share the good link please ?
Thanks
You get both sheets – the backlink analysis comes next, just keep an eye on your email.
Hey, Matthew, I’ve just build links like 12,13 on high authority sites and my site is somewhere a year old still the keywords are not ranked any suggestion for that?
How long ago were the links placed?
Great Article Matthew, I agree. This is the easiest method by far. I tried emailing competitors links to other websites for a guest post, but it seemed over 90% of the owners were charging for guest posts. I love the blog comment strategy. Thanks
Hey Marcus. Yes this is one of the two strategies I use for 80% of my link building! A lot of people now charge for guest posting but there are still people out there who will be happy to publish high quality unique content.
How many backlinks we should create at once on eCommerce site?
Depends on how many your competitors have.
I am very thankful to read your blog, I was searching for something similar.
Glad you found me
Thanks For sharing a great post. It’s really helpful for us.
Glad to help :)
great way thanks for sharing it’s me for create backlink.
No worries Kamal – let me know how you get on with this strategy.
Thanks for sharing your view it’s helpful
Happy to help – hope this helps you build quality backlinks
As always, another brilliant tutorial. Putting it into action today!
Great news Mike!
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the insight, this is the best tutorial I have ever seen on competitors backlink analysis, keep it up, I love reading your blog post.
Awesome thanks Daniel :)
Amazing Information. Thanks for giving us for informational Article
Hope it helps building your backlink profile Ruby :)
Hi,
Thanks a lot for sharing the great post with us. I was looking for the backlinking strategy, the tools and other info all over the web. But when I finally landed on to your website, I closed all the other tabs from my screen. Here I got much more than what I was looking for. I am new to SEO and I am preparing myself for the interview and this massive information will be a big help to me.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us all Cheers!
Welcome to the world of SEO :)
That’s really great information, I’m suffering how to find influential backlinks, This post seems so helpful, I’m definitely apply top get backlinks. Thank you so much!
Yep, it’s simple once you know how :)
very good
Thanks a lot.
Great work! This list will surely help many of us, thank you.
I certainly hope so :)
A great article Matt, thanks. Backlinking is one of the most neglected areas of SEO because people see it as ‘hard work’ for little return, which is simply not true. Thanks again.
Thanks Marc! Having quality backlinks is certainly one of the main Google ranking factors!
Really, This Is Amazing article And I have learned a lot of thing from this site. so I will never forget this site and Thank you so much for publishing very very important information.
No worries – glad I could help :)
very informative blog.great knowledge
Thanks a lot Naeem
Cheers, Matt
My link building has been so slack recently. This is such a great idea.
I first saw you on the Niche Persuit Podcast and have been diving into your stuff ever since.
Hey Vince – this is honestly my favourite and easiest way to build links. You should definitely try it out :)
Hi Sir,
That’s a very good article about what are backlinks and how these backlinks help SEO. I’m into SEO recently ..And to check backlinks I follow Ahref. But after reading this I understood there are several other ways to create backlinks and to check it.
Yep, there are a lot of ways depending on your time/budget/preference.
It was great. Thank you.
No problems at all!
Pretty! This was an extremely wonderful article.
Many thanks for providing this information.
No worries – hope you found it useful.
Hi Matt, I did not get the confirmation link to download the spreadsheet, it been 24 hour. can you please send me?
Have you checked your spam folder?
I got it
Ok great :)
Hello thanks for sharing this important Knowledge with us. It will help me to make my backlinking Strategy.
No problem, it’s always an interesting experiment to run.
Thank you so much for sharing such excellent content with us and I have read your whole article and I am just loving it and also very helpful to me.
Glad you found it helpful Richa
Thanks for sharing such a nice post. Really useful to me in my daily work.
I hope it helps you successfully build some great backlinks :)
I have a question, Matthew. I am running a CPA Offer Website, can I do the same for this and I am very much stuck with the guest post. Suggest some ways!
Analyse how your competitors are building their links and you will have your answer :)
Bless your heart, Matt! I read this with keen interest and paid attention. I’d be visiting your blog more than ever!!! Thank you!!!!
Happy to have you here Liam
I am in fact happy to read this webpage posts which consists of lots of valuable data, thanks
for providing these statistics.
My pleasure!
Great work writing this! In the process of Seo-optimizing the main thing is to be sequential. If you have a good checklist it will be not that hard to analyze your website, still personally i prefer making it with various seo tools.
One of my favourites are Plerdy Seo Checker and Screaming Frog Seo Crawler, which tools could you recommend besides them?
You can see which tools I recommend and why in the post
Hi Matthew,
This post made my night, i truly value the information and i can’t wait to start implement them.
Thank for sharing
David
Happy to help David :)
I want too know how can we get access too your free tool and if we use your free tool will we need ahrefs or no more need of ahrefs or semrush just use your tool
You will still need access to Ahrefs, SEMrush or SEO Spyglass but they all have trials you can use to get the data you need for my spreadsheet. Just follow the steps in the tutorial.
Hey Matthew, Your blogs are very insightful. But I get stuck as your excel sheet is connected to Ahref and I use SEM rush.
Can you suggest a workaround semrush?
Hey matthewwoodward, Can I contact you on whatsapp. or any social media. We need to chat please sir.
Feel free to ask any questions you have here.
Quality content is key!
Hi Matthew,
Wow, thanks for a brilliantly fantastic blog post that is as practical as it is valuable.
Started implementing them.
Can’t wait to see how Google reacts.
You’re a legend :)
Best regards,
Pedro
Hey Pedro – great news. Let me know how you get on :)
nice post Thanks for sharing information
No problem – it’s easy when you know how, right.
Hey..Matthew, Thanks a lot for sharing valuable information. This is the best way to build backlinks It helped me more as we are working in this way to achieve positive results.
No worries Samson, glad you are having success with this method too.
Thanks Matthew, just added this strategy coupled with your similar kw research/stealing spreadsheets. Appreciate ya
Cheers Justin, hope they work well for ya :)
Wow, amazing weblog format! How long have you been blogging
for? you make blogging glance easy. The entire glance of your web site is great,
as neatly as the content material!
Hey, if you’re interested – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/about/
Thank you Matthew for sharing this. Precise & concise exactly the way it should be.
Cheers George! Hope you found it useful.
Nice shots, i’m also following the same thing but not in a proper manner. So i will try this.
Let me know how you get on with it :)
Great! Amazing tips, thank you Matt.
Hey Fernando, no problem. It’s proven my all-time favourite strategy so glad I could share it.
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for sharing this valuable small guide to build links.
Thanks –
Aksshit Wadhwa
No problem Aksshit – gimme a shout if you have any questions.
Best tutorial to work.
I certainly hope so.
Thanks for this informative content. With your blog, I came to know the best ways to build quality backlinks.
Glad I could help :)
Hi,
Dont need to approve this post.
Your post has a typo. “expesnive”
Regards.
Thanks for the heads up – I’m sure there are hundreds of typos across my blog :)
Great article and tips.. gonna try this method. Many thks for sharing and contribute to the community..
Happy to help Dave – let me know if you have any questions
Do you have any posts or videos that shows what you determine as a good backlink? I know you mention your sheets does this work for you. I would like to see and learn what people determine as a good backlink or not.
The higher the authority of the link (linking site) the better the backlink. However a good backlink profile should be made up of a range of authority with do follow and no follow links so that in Googles eyes it looks natural.
Hey, matt.
I tell you that when I try to download the backlink analysis example sheet sends me the landing of the keyword research example sheet, I attach url (https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/steal-your-seo-strategy/), I don’t know if I’m wrong about something but I can’t find where to download the backlink analysis example sheet.
Greetings
Hi
Just a quick heads up
Typo under step 4 “sheete”
Cheers Reece :)
Good info, how to filter out spammy and weak links which metrics should check?
My sheets do that automatically for you on the 3rd tab
So from what I understand. This link building strategy is mostly good for building links from comments?
No you use it to replicate every type of backlink that is working for your competitors.
Sometimes that might be a blog comment – but it could also be a guest post, a link from a charity (donation), a directory, a business listing or whatever it might be thats powering their rankings.
What if competitors hide their backlinks? PBN for example
Yes its possible for someone to completely lock it down but that is in the super rare 0.01% of cases because even if they have blocked some bots, less popular ones have usually penetrated the fortress.
Thanks Matthew for sharing. At first glance this looks amazing. I will be putting aside an hour or two this evening to work through methodically, probably using SEO SPYglass. Great info…
No problem Lee, let me know if you have any questions
Looking at what’s ranking as a sign is always our starting point. Great recap on how to do it effectively!
One thing that happens often using Ahref’s, Semrush, MOZ and other larger tools, is that some sneaky links get hidden by the webmaster blocking those crawlers.
Using a smaller tool that’s less popular for a quick comparison from time to time can point out some “sneakier” links.
Yes not just from a link building perspective but from a content and context perspective as well.
Good extra tip! Not many people are blocking serpstat or se ranking!
Thanks. This is what I need right now. My blog is still new and I am still trying to figure out SEO so this is very helpful.
This is the perfect strategy for you – just work through at the fastest pace you can and you will get your first wins!
Hi Matthew,
Could you recommend a good internet marketing training program for a newbie in her 50s?
To achieve what? Please provide more details of your situation and what you want to achieve
Excellent tutorial and I have bookmarked…Thanks much and I will be using this methodology and the tools you have mentioned as well. Thanks!
No problem Dave let me know if you have any questions!
Great Article
Hope you found it helpful.
great post
Hope you found it helpful.
The website ranks by creating high quality backlinks. You can help me a bit about it. This has become a lot of trouble for me a lot later.
Yep that’s right, high-quality backlinks are a very important ranking factor!
Nice post Thanks for the sharing
No problem!
Great and so helpful Blog for getting Quality back-links thanks for the great blog
No problem – glad you are taking link building seriously :)
Wow! What great information and so easy to understand! Came across this read by accident but glad I did. You have a tone of comments and I can see why.
Thanks Mitch! Hopefully you’ll be heading to the blog on purpose from now on.
Totally what really i want , i will try your tutorial , im just a newbie in seo :)
Welcome to the world of SEO, you’re in a good place to start!
good one
Cheers Ayush.
very valuable article. i find each and every thing very important in terms of backlinks and seo tools. thanks for this guidance.
No problem at all. Best of luck with your project!
You give new information regularly through your blogs that regularly updates me on relevant topics
I sure do!
Great news thanks a lot
You’re welcome Fabio!
Your information is good.
Thanks Leena :)
someone suggested me to do this but I was confused that how will this help? but your post has cleared my all doubts. Thanks a lot for this useful information.
No problem, this is one of my favourite methods for backlinks :)
That was helpful for me
Great news
I am glad to see this. This is really interesting to be read.
Thanks for sharing.
No worries, I’m pleased it was an interesting read for you.
Thanks a lot for your detail explanation. Hope this will be effective for me.
Let me know how you go
nice sir, thanks for sharing
It’s not a problem, thanks for visiting
Great Article with great Insights. I will start using Ahrefs to spy my competitors backlinks. Thanks for sharing.
No worries Steve, you won’t regret it.
Thanks a lot Sir For Sharing this amazing article.
No problem Ajarn
nive and helpful tank you
No probs
Exactly what I needed for my new blog, thanks for sharing
You’re welcome!
Nice one
Thanks Danyal
It is Pretty Good Article For Beginner Blogger Like Me.
Thanks a Lot.
No problem, if you are a beginner blogger then I have loads of articles that will help you out, just browse through my blog. Best of luck
thank you for this valuable information
No worries :)
WOW it is Amazing
Cheers :)
Hi there very nice blog!! Man .. Excellent .. Wonderful
.. I’ll bookmark your web site and takke the feeds also?
I’m happy to find numerous useful info right here within the submit, we need develop more strategies in this regard,
thanks for sharing. . . . . .
Hey there, no problem, I’m happy you’re happy :)
Great article Matthew. Your article inspired me a new one is learning about SEO.
Thanks.
Hi there, I am glad to have been of help, now the hard work is on you :)
Thanks for providing the information on getting free backlinks. I found social media do-follow backlinks to be very powerful and fast google ranking.
HI Joel, no worries, good feedback
wow that’s a very good idea, i have learnt some lessons through this site… keep it doing the good work
Will do, thanks for the comment
Great Article
Thanks very much
Nice article
Cheers
Good Article. It Is Really help Me To get Some backlinks.
Good job on the backlinks!
HI mark .thank you for these valuable informations. Glad to come across your website
Hi Hassan, come back soon
Nice Article, Very helpful for beginner. Actually I am searching an article in online about competitor back link analysis really I get it. Thanks Admin for a nice article.
You are welcome
You have said all. Its about competition and using my head now to outdo my competitors.
It’s all up to you
Thanks a lot Sir For Sharing this amazing article. I will come back, again and again, to take writing help from you.
See you soon!
your site is very usefull i use your articles in my site
Good to know, thanks
Great.
Thanks for Its..
You’re welcome Kamal
Thanks for giving useful information for off page SEO
Glad to help
you article is so good
Thanks Ali
thank you man
Cheers bro
I will implement the idea for my blog.
Good idea Francis
thanks for sharing this Mathew, Forever struggling to find solid backlinks
No problem Scott
I’m amazed, I have to admit. Rarely do I come across a blog that’s equally educative and amusing,
and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head.
The issue is something that too few people are
speaking intelligently about. I’m very happy
I found this in my search for something concerning this.
Yes I do not beat around the bush! Thanks for your comments
Thanks for the great information
No worries
Will definitely be using this. Thank you Matthew!
No problem Peter
very useful
Thanks
it is so useful , i Like it
Hope you used the information well, thanks
Thank you so much
No problem
thank you , it`s perfect
I’m glad you think so
so good , i Appreciate that
Thanks
Excellent , it `s great
Pleased you liked it
you ave very useful web site, and its ok
Thanks!
Thank you for the tutorial Matthew, By the way. Is this method safe for adsense?
Yes I believe so
Which tools best for blog commenting because 0f blog cmnt is till valuable for seo
It depends, you can just use your browser
Nice article. many many thanks for information
No problem!
Very nice article. Thanks for sharing this great strategy.
No problem Aman!
Hi,
Nice list of free and paid tools to check backlinks of website and keep a spy on them that whether they are getting links from guest posting, paid links etc.
No problem :)
Thank you for your helpful information. It’s a good way to keyword ranking system
No problem!
Thanks for sharing the great article.
No problem :)
I use very often this method.. but i use just bank link watch always but here u have provided lots of tools to which made my work easy .. thanks for the valuable post
No problem Vineela!
You are good, thank you so much
No problem Oba!
I was excited to uncover this site. I wanted to thank you for ones time for this particularly wonderful read!!
I definitely savored every bit of it and i
also have you bookmarked to look at new stuff in your site.
No problem!
good information about backlink analysis.
No problem!
Thanks for this awesome post.It Help Me To Spy My competitor’s Backlinks And Use Them For Create backlinks For My Site.
No worrys Aman!
Thanks for this great tutorial…i’m starting right away and hoping to outrank my competitors.
Good luck!
I have a major problem with Google’s entire backlink methodology, which is this: it rewards the outreach skills of a webmaster, rather than the on-page content / user experience of the website. That said, I understand why they do it this way; they don’t yet possess the AI that could assess a website the way a human mind can, so they have to find some reliable – if still gameable – way to bridge that gap.
Also, does anyone else agree with me that the backlink system is better suited for America where there is a more cooperative attitude in business anyway, compared to how we frosty, less altruistic, arguably more spiteful Brits operate? I know I am not alone in thinking that the UK is a backlinks-acquisition-hostile environment.
There is more than one way to build links other than outreach!
Nice post. It’s so interesting and much impressive.
No problem Nikita
what a great post!
I loved the tactic. It’s time-consuming but totally worth it.
No problem Erez
Thanks Matt, as you state ahrefs is the king of backlinks. I’ve been recently using it to sort through my competitors links and I seem to be finding alot of gems.
I’ll check out the alternatives. You can’t beat having too many options :)
That is true but Ahrefs is sufficient for most
Thanks for the great information. Really useful.
No problem!
This is really a valuable post. While searching on internet backlink stealer, I found your blog post. I went down reading it and got my hands on lot of essential tools that can quickly help managing backlink campaigns.
Thank you for sharing this post.
No problem :)
Thanks for posting this article. As it helps me in placing my websites with high rank.
No problem Adolf!
Lately, but finally I reach to your post. And learn how to steal. Lol! You write things very clearly. Which is really understandable. We really appreciate your help to learn new things. Keep going! :)
No problem, glad you enjoyed it!
Hi Mathew Thanks for providing the informative post to create inbound links. I was literally looking that type of article to create backlink of my site. And now i will apply these techniques to get good results.
No problem Ramesh
Hai Matthew, I’ve used two great tools that majestic and ahrefs pro. thats recommend for seo tools
I prefer Ahrefs myself :)
Hi Mathew,
Thank you for this wonderful information, knowledge and ideas given freely.
But my question is, for a blogger that is just trying to get on his feet and does not have the capacity to afford the monthly subscription for Ahrefs what will be your best advise in getting quality backlinks and been able to rank his content on Google first page?
Looking forward to your advise.
Thanks
You could start out with some simple guest posts on relevant blogs
Hello Matt,
thank you for your great article, helps a lot.
I have a technical question – I have found a competitor’s website, have analysed it using Ahrefs and found lots of domains where I can put links to my website; these all are high ranked pages, no spammy ones. The question is – how many backlinks per day is it safe to gain? I am doing it all manually.
I wouldn’t worry about a daily amount, just get as many high quality ones as you can
A very well organized and in-depth article. Thanks Matthew.
No problem Mehdi!
What a nice & interesting article, thanks a lot for sharing it.
We will consider ahrefs subscription to improve our website SEO. We are also checking excel SEO tools and they look great.
No problem :)
Hi Matthew,
Thank you for the great post. It’s very helpful.
What if many of the top 10 organic results for your keyword search link directly to your competitors sites?
I doubt I can get them to list us.
That means its probably pretty easy to get them to link to you
I personally prefer Ahref tool because it show each and everything of competitor website. Thanks for the tutorial because I got more tools for testing.
No problem Arvind :)
Great article Matthew. Your article inspired me a new one is learning about SEO.
Thanks.
No problem :)
Great article matt, It helps me a lot to get back linking sites of my niche. These are very useful tools for blogger.
Glad to be of service :)
Awesome post, Must be very useful for my blog.
I hope it is!
very helpful thanks Matthew Woodward
No problem Hamid!
Great read Matthew. Outstanding resource for small business owners – just straight to the point and actionable. Sick of reading about getting links organically – being a 1 man service business with content that would bore you to death makes it near impossible to create content of interest for people to then link too.
My site which is a few years old, has a few links but not many of value. Currently ranking on page 1 but looking at my main competitors I’m still trailing behind with regards links – after doing my research with ahrefs.
My site is better from a content and technical point of view – imho. I’m hoping by building some links I will be able to challenge the top 5. So to my question…
I have a nice list of links I can acquire but given that currently I have amassed no more than 2 links in each of the last few years how should I approach the building process? Should I look at doing 2-3 a day or monthly or does it really matter? It’s a local service company I run if that makes any difference.
Thanks for the invaluable information in what is a very secretive sector, mostly surrounded with fear of getting you site penalized.
Don’t worry about how many you can do, just do everything you can to acquire as many as possible.
Interesting… Ive always been a content kind of guy myself and totally rubbish at link building apart from doing a few social signals for each post (pinterest, twitter, facebook etc) – time to start driving a few links I think
You’ll see a huge difference when you do!
Thanks for this post….Good reads
No problem!
Most the backlinks are giving me nofollow links does this help?
Are your competitors backlinks form the same sources also nofollow?
I found the competitors back links as no follow but when I check on the back link checker mine says I have no back links does this take a while to update?
Yes backlink checkers will take some time to update their databases
Great post, Matthew. Will definitely try this out! By the way, how come you get such a huge amount of comments on every blog post? It’s insane lol
I guess because the content is helpful and I take the time to reply to people
AWEOME IDEA
Haha thanks!
Thank you Matthew, It’s a good idea to research backlink system
It is indeed, you can learn a lot :)
Thanks Matthew.
This article should be read by all bloggers to stay updated. The ranking algorithms are changing frequently and one must be uptodate to survive the Internet world.
No problem Praveen!
its really awesome ..fantastic
No problem Hasan!
hi
I use Traffic travis but some of the software you have mentioned dont cover Australia very well or at all eg Magestic. What do you recommend out of all those you have choose above as the best SEO competitor backlinks
Take a look at my SEMRush review which will do what you need
Thanks for sharing. I dont comment any website. It’s only logical that this way works (for years). But know that its really time consuming compared to basic methodes, like talking about your website to real people, sharing real paper flyers. You have to go all in! If you go for it, know you will have better rankings and more money, but less time to spend your life with friends and family. If you have nothing but all the time in the world, perhaps it’s worth it. If you go for it, you will have (for years) little time to spend your money and enjoy your life. I just had enough time to write this! We’ll i guess it makes sense so just go on now. Good luck and God bless you!
Thanks Matthew .
Tthanks for sharing this post…so nice that you show different methods and tricks . I learned a lot from this post its really helpful to all. keep sharing …
No problem Ameeta!
Hello!
Excellent your article. I always had doubts between Majestic and the Ahrefs
I think I’ll invest my long using Ahrefs, thanks for the techniques.
Yeah Ahrefs is much better!
thank you so much for this site
No worrys :)
A few tips & tricks I knew and some that I will be trying out and sharing with clients. Thanks!
No problem!
Hi Mathew,
I used your method and found the backlinks and referring domains of my competitors who got 1st to 4th first page google ranking. I am on the bottom of the second page. The keyword was ‘Custom Home Builders’ which was quite a competitive keyword. I got the free Ahrefs trial and when I looked up one particular top competitor (www.jtfhomes.com), I found only 12 backlinks and 6 referring domains. Of the 12 backlinks, half of them were from its own website. The rest were from local business listings. In this billion dollar industry, how on earth did they get top ranking? Are backlinks that unimportant to Google?
It’s possible they are using private blog networks that are hidden from crawlers
But they have been at the #1 rank for at least two years. I thought Google disallowed PBN since 2014. However, I noticed the top four ranked sites under this particular Keyword are all heavy AdWords buyers, spending at least $2500 a month. Is there something fishy going on that we don’t know about?
PBN’s are the strongest, most powerful type of link that you can build and Adwords budget does not correlate to rankings.
Using Moz Pro I checked the Linking Domains of my competitor and found the top listing is .weebly.com with 512479 linking root domains. Then
I checked the Inbound Links and found he has a one page (400 words) blog created with Weebly using an url that ends with .weebly.com. Can that single blog link to 512479 root domains? The blog is really poorly written, And his site got to no.1 Google ranking because of that one Weebly blog.
I host at one time on godaddy.com and for some reason google ad-sense paid me at an average $3.00 a click and I was ranking #1 position on google first page, where as suppose if getting $0.03 a click at a website hosting with lowest rankin, its not just checking back-links. its getting with a high ranking hosting network, like word press on google will rank higher than word-press alone, or if you integrate word-press in to a low ranking hosting company. and the good news I wasn’t building back-links yet, I was doing natural organic social sharing, start with that first will automatic rank you high. while people are paying for cheap hosting they fail to realize high rank hosting may cost as little as $25.00 per month website with a c panel that gives you access to the root directory, this is the first primary way to assure you have authority website and solid back links. many cheap hosting will not give you access to your root directory, they have there own onsite site builder which is OK if you like to push a sale or drive organic traffic or social traffic or referral traffic. but not good for authority because he who has control over your root directory will get the ranking position. so in reality you just modeling after someone own root authority directory website. it sort of like taping a thread to a car running 35 mph to your park car. over all guys these top rankers pay for the root directory rank coding position, which you have to insert the hosting company codes into your root directory, since I build a new website I will test this theroy here onhttp://gameofartists.com/ good luck
Thank you Matthew by sharing good information to all SEO Lovers. We are expecting more tips from you.
No problem Svreddy :)
I daily spend more and more time on competitors’ site instead of on the sites I’m working on to rank! ;)
It’s my favorite tecqnique too!
Good tips and advices!
The power of observation is the greatest super power :)
Nice Tips and Tricks provided..
Thumbs up bro.. No one do that now days, whatever you have done for newbies like us.
This Will surely help in many ways. Link building , Backlinks analysis, Backlink tracking etc.. everything is great..
Thanks for your kind words, glad to be of service!
thank you very much for tutorial backlink competitor analysis. we’ve learn and hard work to this.
No problem :)
Thanks for sharing the nice update and advice …!!
Happy to help :)
This is the good information about back link analysis.This is the great process about increases the back link ranking..
This is great information.
Glad to be of service Mohit!
Thanks for another great article Matthew. I was doing most of this already, but definitely picked up some good tips. Cheers !
No problem Carl!
Thank you so much for the tips! Those tricks are very handy and I will implement it soon and lets see how it goes.
Please come back and let us know how you get on!
We do not need tiers 2 & 3 as we are not juicing them up we are simply replicating them direct to our money site?
That is correct
First of all thank you for sharing in detail.
However, some of the online tools you suggest has problems and they don’t match the results when you compare them.
I give you sample: When I use Ahrefs, I get great result.
Than when I jump on to Majestic..all kind of problems shows up.
Like: crawl error-Title tag is missing.
Also there is another tool you have not mention “Traffic Travis” there is pro and free version to start with.
I will add this article to my SEO Book collection. because it is a treasure.
Thanks again for the insight.
this article is amazing. I have started a website so this information is very important for me.. thank you so much sujoy for sharing…
No problem, I hope it helps you!
This is way too good article. If you can add more to this or create a new post on how to steal backlinks of a inner page of competitor website that would be great.
Just do the same thing but targeting the inner page
None of the site’s allow submitting inner page URL. Do you mean export results using TLD and then from excel sheet filter required results?
Take the inner URL of your competitor, plug it into a backlink checker and then replicate those backlinks?
Thank you so much for the tips! Those tricks are very handy and I will implement it soon and lets see how it goes. Great share, Matthew!
No problem Dion, glad to be of service :)
Fantastic post.
Using Spyglass to get the backlinks then RC to replicate them in GSA.
We are going to replicate these links direct to our money site. We are not going to use any form of web 2.0 buffer. Correct?
Replicate them at a rate of 50 per day?
We do not need tiers 2 & 3 as we are not juicing them up we are simply replicating them direct to our money site?
Am I anywhere close?
Yes that is correct, just replicate them 1:1 and don’t worry about anything else
Hi Matthew,
Gr8 article. Quick question :
I am in the IT Support Services industry and looked at the backlinks of my top 3 competitors who rank high on page 1 for keywords like ‘IT Support City-Name’.
Their backlinks seem to be coming from extremely irrelevant and even spammy websites (gambling, weight loss, comment spam etc).
Would you recommend me replicating such links for my website as well? They are technically ranking with these irrelevant backlinks, but i’m sure i read somewhere that backlinks need to be from similar industry sources.
Plz advise & again, thanks for the gr8 content.
Regards
I would first replicate the relevant and the quality ones, then sit back and measure the impact before going after the irrelevant ones.
A really interesting article packed full of resources. Thanks.
No problem Gary!
Great insights. Thank you. I have been using Ahref which is great for stealing competitor’s links. I will certainly follow other which you have mentioned.
Mwahahahah it sure is!
Hi Matthew Woodward,
I follow your blog, really this is very cool information’s, now I get competitors external links via your blogs information. Thank for sharing this kind information, if you have another blog regarding marketing so please update.
They are all tools free or paid?
There is a mix of them
Wow this is one of the best articole about backlinks competitor analysis… I learn a lot and i will apply all I learner here. Thanks!!
No problem :)
The techniques are simple but very useful.
Hope they help you out!
Hi Matt, is there a tool or a way to check quickly T2 backlinks of competitors?
Those would be backlinks that point to backlinks that point to money site. This can give way bigger picture and reveal tiered strategy of a competitor.
Thanks
Unfortunately not =/
The flaw in all this is if your competitors are website designers but the top 10 results for keyword phrase “website design +location” happen to have virtually all of their back links coming from site wide footer links in their client’s websites. It doesn’t give you anything to go on because you can’t mimic (mimic is a far more appropriate term than stealing because you can’t steal search engine ranking of another site) what they have done unless you build loads of client websites using wordpress.
And, before anyone starts screaming ‘Penguin’, before reading this article I spent months looking into what my competitors do and trying to replicate their strategy in exactly the same way as described here but couldn’t because of links from client websites. Nothing you can do about supposedly ‘stealing’ those!
I analysed the back link profiles for the other 9 websites listed on page 1 and all of them seem to be totally unaffected by Penguin. No diversity in the anchor text distribution for that all important ‘natural look’ that everyone goes on about and more site wide footer links than you can poke a stick at.
Makes you wonder what exactly Penguin does do and what sites it does it to!!!
Are the links dofollow or nofollow?
That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is one website has over 4000 back links using only 2 variations of anchor text. “web design X” and “website design X” (X being the location) and nearly every single one is from a footer link.
The website is placed in position 1, page 1 of search results for both phrases. The real kicker here is, I’m trying to rank higher in location Y but, because there are so many instances of “web design” and “website design” linking to their site that 1, yes, just 1 instance of the word for location Y in their home page also places them in position 5 on page 1 for location Y as well. Not one of their back links text is “web design Y” or “website design Y” and yet they appear higher than me who has many text links that include Y.
It has to be the numbers. An algorithm is a numeric based calculation and google’s mystical algorithm is no different. I used to be a technical assistant to a life insurance actuary that wrote the algorithms which provided estimated maturity values for polices at investment growth rates of 5%, 10% & 15% and they don’t use alpha data to provide a result. It’s numeric. An algorithm is a very complicated, mathematical equation that processes numeric information to reach a result, not alpha.
After seeing the back links of my competitors I instantly questioned how they survived penguin and, knowing the logic of how algorithms work and the fact they use numeric data to produce a result, it has to be the numbers. When someone types “website design X” in to a search engine the algorithm has to produce a definitive list of results and those results have to be based on a number. The feeds which provide the information in order to produce that number might have been gathered by crawlers and bots which read alpha data but, whatever cached data is drawn from when displaying a list of results, the site which appears at number 1 has to have the most number of instances of the keywords stored in the cache.
Let’s say there are 10,000,000 instances of the phrase “website design X” in the cache. If there’s a website with 5,000,000 of them linking to it, it’s going to be on the top spot. If that site only has instances of “website design X” linking to it, it also makes it the most relevant. Therefore:
4000 instances of “website design X” + “web design X” = 1 i.e. position 1 for location X
And
4000 instances of “website design” + “web design” + 1 instance of Y = 5 i.e. position 5 for location Y
Based on the back link data I gathered using SEO Spyglass, SEMRush, Aherfs, Majestic SEO and Backlinkwatch of the other 9 websites appearing on page 1 for search phrase “website design Y”, I conclude they occupy those positions due to the very high number of links containing very limited but very relevant text. if it mattered where the links came from or whether they are dofollow or nofollow, which seems to be of little consequence, they would have lost their rank and been relegated to lower pages by now.
Not only that, I put my conclusion to the test about a month ago and started changing the footer links in my client’s websites so they are all “website design Y” and not a jumbled bunch of permutations to try and look natural and my site moved up from position 8 to 6. If that isn’t due to the higher number of specific, relevant links to my site then I’d like to know what did cause the increased SERP.
Hey Rob,
You came to my site to ask my expert opinion on an SEO question you had.
For me to answer you comprehensively, I asked you a question – which you didn’t answer and instead branded as ‘irrelevant’.
When you ask someones expert opinion and they have a very specific question – it’s probably not irrelevant in the experts eyes that you are asking for help.
With that said, I can’t help you any further as you already have all of the answers apparently.
Thanks
Hey, thank you for this tutorial! Well done!
Thanks Davide :)
Hi Matthew thankyou so much for this article. We are in the process of redesigning our computer repairs website and getting more and more local content, blog articles services pages written etc to keep the organic seo side happy. We currently sit on the top of page two for our particular keyword computer repairs brisbane. We are really keen to get some link building going as we have never really done this and managed to get some good business through targeted suburb pages.
Link building is the next step for us, it seems that having great content alone cannot win the battle. This was a great article and glad to see it is active and alive after a few years. Cheers
Well, I would start with this https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/local-seo-guide/
This is just an terrific article about how to Legally Steal Your Competitors Search Engine Rankings. Even I am doing from past 6-8 months. In starting even I faced difficulty in ranking my site. This is I feel something best thing to just check the competitor list. And I feel Ahrefs and SEMrush are the best tools in providing the required information.
Please come back and let us know how you get on Rosy!
New to SEO like saga vyas but this has really help.
More strength…
Waiting for more from you.
No problem Oge, keep on growing :)
Quite funny really, I followed a competitor’s link and found this page.
Hahah inception :P
Hello sir,
I am quite new to SEO, and came to know about competitor analysis. I Googled it and I found your post. It was a worth reading post and as for the free tools, I found Small SEO Tools more efficient.
But One question…how can I subscribe to your newsletters??
I’m glad it helped you out :) You can do that in the sidebar
I read all the articles and they are really impressive. I’m new to blogging, but these articles really help me a lot. Thank you Matthew
No problem Pasan!
Hi Matthew!
This is an awesome strategy.
I have finalised on main keyword for my site and top 20-30 search results are filled with e-commerce sites. And the ranking inner pages of these sites do not have even a single back-link !
So, will it be easy to rank with fresh new domain ?
Since my competitor do not have any back-links and its scarce to find blogs in this category
And yeah, KC according to Long tail pro is 16
Thanks,
Waiting for your answer :)
Yes you could go for that, but there is more to niche research than just finding a keyword that is easy to rank for. You don’t want to set your ceiling too low :)
Hi Matthew
I really appreciate your efforts, as I’ve been looking for this guidance for months and I asked a lot of smart guys to help me but they didn’t bother to answer. Anyway, I got a huge list of my competitor’s backlinks, clicking and opening them, when I try to create backlink for my own page, I don’t see any option at these links. 10-15 backlinks (page) that I visited had no option to create any sort of backlinks.
Do you know what to do in this case?
Yes just review it yourself and make a decision on what to do, maybe its a web 2 so you can create a web 2. Maybe its from a feature/editorial so you can contact the site owner and do your own deal. Maybe its just a link from a private blog network so you can build your own network etc etc
This is superb. I have been looking at a strategy for building backlinks and didn’t know where to start really, but this has spelled it out nicely.
Matthew, do you do this as a service. ie can I hire you? I love doing this stuff myself but time is scarce at the moment so im looking to outsource some of my admin / seo etc
If so can you send me a mail with rates etc
Will be bookmarking your blog for future ref.
Hey Greg,
Sorry this isn’t something I would do but you can find someone to complete this kind of work easily on a site like elance etc
Plz Matthew I have this blog I’ve been trying to get genuine back links for a long time now, give me some advice
Hey Justin. Start by completing a site audit – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/on-page/seo-audit/ to fix any underlying issues, build a strong foundation and understand exactly what your audience wants from your site. Then you can follow this guide to build backlinks and check out some other strategies here – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/strategies/
Thats a great steal for my blog.
Yoink :P
Awesome tutorial, despite of its useful information I really enjoy reading, Thank you, I just started making a website. :)
No problem glad to be of service :)
Thanks For sharing your information sir,this is very informative and helpful.
surely will try it soon.
Thank you
No problem Abdul :)
Hi Matt. Thank you for a very useful information you’ve shown to us. I very appreciate your work ^^ But i have a question that is this strategy still useful today? Hope you will reply me ^^ Thank you and keep going bro :p
Yes, think about what you are actually doing with this strategy and you will understand that it is timeless.
Thank you, I just started making a website about programming, I will try to use it on my website. I hope I will get many backlinks with this.
No problem, I hope it goes well :)
Hi Matt,
Have been trying to implement this recently. Would you suggest that when posting links in forums/guestblogs/comments etc that we link to our home page, or category/product pages instead. It’s an e-commerce site.
Can you also shed some light on why some sites sites seem to rank well, when they don’t have many backlinks. I have thoroughly analysed their site speed, structure, content, keywords etc and nothing out of the odinary comes up. Is there any ways to check if they use PBN’s or other grey/black hat techniques? I have seen this question asked before, but hasn’t been a clear response really.
Would really appreciate your expertise on this.
Link to wherever you want to link to based on your current SEO goals.
Which sites in which niche?
Ideally I would like to generate lots of backlinks to various pages on the site, but about two thirds of competitors best links are unobtainable, due to – sponsored links, paid site, interview with CEO etc. So of the third I am able to capitalise on, I was checking to see if it’s best to boost the DA of the home page, because if i send a sporadic selection of links to product and/or category pages it may dilute the link juice?
The nice is flooring, we sell and deliver flooring. The other company I looked at has the same DA as us,, but a lot of their keywords are outperforming ours. Out site is as good as if not better UX wise, it is faster via page speed and y slow, all pages are indexed in google, and overall we have much more links and of general better quality than them. It is a big mystery on how they are doing super well? The website isn’t exactly old either. This is where I need yours or others (if they are reading) expert advice??
Ok well I would focus at a domain level and top category level (assuming you have taken care of internal linking and content to upport that) which then drives authority into the other pages/product pages.
How does your levels of content compare to your competitor?
Thanks for this great post, I’m going to implement it over this weekend to bump up the backlinks to my website.
Any pro tips from people who have used this technique recently?
Thanks and have a nice day
I use it on every new site I launch, and there isn’t really any secrets to it.
Thank you Matthew this is one of the best articles i have seen on link building,
i have taught of something like this previously but your article shed more light.i hope to see result in no time
No problem :)
Great article, I am just beginning the process. I am just wondering how many links I can add each day without alerting google? (or would they even care as the links arent from PBN’s), also apologies if you’ve already answered this i’ve flicked through the comments and couldn’t find an answer.
How many per day isn’t important but set a weekly or monthly target and then make sure you meet that target consistently
I just tweaked the strategy and this is what I do and it’s paying off for my clients. I respect Matt and his writeup gave me initially the right frame of mind to try this. After lot of playing with backlink strategies I came up with below strategy.
First identify below.
x3 Low Competition Keywords
x2 Low/Medium Competition Keywords
x2 Main keywords
Search google for keywords and identify TOP 5 websites ranking for keywords.
– Use Spyglass and ahrefs to extract backlinks for top 5 websites for all keywords I am going to target
– Use GSA platform to identify the platforms of backlinks
– Based on Platform Identification use the GSA search engine ranker to run campaign for imported backlinks of TOP ranking sites for keywords
– The key to success using GSA SER is that you should use (Private proxies + DeathbyCaptcha + GSA captcha breaker + Unique content (wherever required) + 20 emails (depending upon number of backlinks) or use your domain email address(which is best option)
– After backlinks are complete sit back and use indexing service to index the backlinks – I also use GSA indexer to some extent but I prefer paid one.
– That’s it. I am missing small things but I have mentioned almost everything.
Matt do you want to add anything to it!!
Great process that is easy for anyone to implement :)
Hardeep how are you setting up GSA?
Are using one tier and sending the backlinks direct to your money site?
I am fully set up on GSA I am just not sure of the best way to set up this specific task of replicating the backlinks.
This is a great guide. IS there a way of getting it in a printable PDF?
Not at the moment sorry
just again wonder…what a neat & clean concept for building backlinks. Keep following your blog to steal your knowledge, off course Legally!
Indeed, Great post.
Mwahahahahaha haha =D
Thanks for the free tools will definitely let you know how it goes.
No problem :)
This backlinks tutorial is all I need. Killer content alone just doesn’t work. I’ve always wondered why those ‘small’ websites rank on first page with nothing special.
Downloading SEOSpyGlass as we speak..
No problem Harrison
Quick update: I found the competitor I’m after has a private blog network. I thought Google was penalizing PBNs?
You need to watch my free training videos here http://marketerseal.com/
Hi Matthew, most of the link checker sites are asking for payments. Arrrggh.
Fancy having to invest in your business, crazy!
Can you please advise how important the url/ meta description length is? We have around 2000landing pages. 800 of them has +75characters on the url. 1100 of them has more than 150 characters on meta description. These pages were indexed by google 9 months ago. Do you think it is wiser to change the urls from the beginning and wait them to be indexed again or leave it as it is? We really can’t decide.
Thanks in advance
Just make sure they all have a unique title and meta description
Great article! I am currenly using free version of Ahrefs but it was showing up to 10 urls. I checked majestic after reading your article and the free version seems much better than Ahrefs!
Yes for checking your own site Majestic gives you a bit more
I just used some of these backlink checkers website,some of them I did not heard it,thanks for all this info .I just started to use them.
No problem Mario!
Nice layout here for the newbs like me. I was doing a little keyword research today for some niche ideas and saw that some people were ranking in the top 3 results with only 3 backlinks. How is that possible?
Last night I was all set to buy GSA and a keyword tool, but then I saw that and it made me wonder if backlinks are really that important anymore.
Are those inner pages on authoritative domains?
thank you
No problemo :)
Hi Matthew, we meet again.
I have an extensive list of 2 of our main competitors backlinks. Over 800 in total. Using the SourceTrustFlow/SourceCitationFlow = Trust Ratio or is it better to reference the DomainTrustFlow/DomainCitationFlow = Trust Ratio.
Upon research I have discovered that ratios above 1 are non spam.
A lot ofthe ratios which are above 1 do have lower source trust and citation flows – such as 8/7, it has a ratio above one but should I try and replicate as the absolute numbers are so low?
I would replicate anything that is up to 2
very very good
Thanks…
No problem :)
Is this strategy still working? How much ranking boost can it offer? And is it long term and white hat?
Yes this strategy will never die
Will there not come a point when everyone is copying their competitors backlinks, surely its more ethical and organic to acquire ones own and grow your site with great content that people want to share
Yes that would work as well. Takes a bunch more time and money but it would work!
Nice information about dofollow i have learn now more
No problem Tiska :)
this was quite nice information…thanks admin for this amazing article
No problemo :)
thanks info, i will do it
Good luck =D
Hi Matthew i’m using your techniques and i think that they are very useful! :-)
In less of 6 months i have earned the 1 st page on Google with more keywords (long tail techniques)
Thank u so much. :-)
That is awesome to hear, congratulations :)
I just found a content about steal your competitor back link. 5 reasons why copying links is bad for you.link given below
https://moz.com/ugc/5-reasons-why-copying-links-is-bad-for-you
Now what to do? is it right?
I guess you should do your own experimentation ;)
Yes by using related terms on site and then the exact term/related terms in anchors off site
ive asked this in the forums but hoping for a quick response or different info here.
If i want to rank my site for a local competitors company or product name, without having his name or product name on my site, would a link building campaign be the best bet?
lets say we both make widgets, but my widget is relatively unknown and his widget is called “super widget” – could I rank my site for that term without having the keyword “super widget” appear anywhere on my site?
Yes by using related terms on site and then the exact term/related terms in anchors off site
Hello sir, thanks for sharing the great article.
Thanks for reading :)
I don’t worry about back links, or my web site for that matter. I use google + pages. with multiple locations, for the city’s i want to rank. And I’m number one in all 8 city’s. it might be black hat seo but who cares, It works.
MWahahahahaha :P
Hello!
Excellent your article. I always had doubts between Majestic and the Ahrefs
I think I’ll invest my long using Ahrefs, thanks for the techniques.
No problem Deivide :)
Out of Inspyder Backlink Monitor and Rankchecker which one is the best software.
They do very different things
Great article about backlin finder…thanks a lot to admin
No problem Krish :)
I am getting lot of information from your blogs. These are very nice. Keep inform me about your new blogs..
Thanks Amir :)
Wow such good information and lots to get stuck into. Thanks for sharing your hard work. :) Ged Ward
No problem :)
Competitor Analysis is one of the important techniques if you are focusing on SEO services. Mostly people are not aware about this technique, but it is very important for analyze your competitors.
I think anyone that can actually ranks site knows about competitor analysis
Many thanks for the useful tips!
No problemo :)
Must be try, nice article
Let us know how it goes for you