There are many advantages to keeping an eye on your competitors’ backlinks.

One way to get a leg up on the competition is to study their link profile by keeping tabs on their backlinks.

Counting the number of sites that link to them is as simple as keeping an eye on their “backlinks.”

You, as the site owner, will benefit much from having this data readily available.

So, what does this entail?
Now you can see all the websites that are pointing back to your rivals.

The next step is to narrow down the search to only return credible sources.

Finally, you need to figure out how to obtain a backlink from those same sites.

You do have one advantage when it comes to your competitors’ backlinks, though.

Considering they linked to your rivals, they probably will link to you as well.

The process of constructing authoritative backlinks to your site relies heavily on spying on the links your competitors are utilising. It’s a method that may be used on a large scale and maintained over time to boost your site’s SEO rankings.

The days of blindly amassing links are over. These days, getting quality connections back to your site requires diligence and strategy.

One link from a high-authority site like Mashable or TechCrunch is worth more than a thousand links from a low-quality site.

Therefore, you can speed up your site’s success by concentrating on acquiring links from other, similarly successful websites.

Competitor backlinks: where to look, and how to find them

Having established the benefits of researching competitors’ backlinks, let’s dive into how to go about doing so.

We’ll focus on the simplest approach to researching the backlinks of your rivals on Google.

Enter the following into the search box:

Click here to visit our competitor’s website!

We are utilising Google search operators to narrow our results for this inquiry.

The “Link” is the URL of the site that links to the rival.

Remember that as of 2017, this search operator is no longer supported. It’s not Google’s official backlink checker, but it’s still a viable option.

When you click “Site,” the indexed pages of the rival URL will appear.

Where to Apply Knowledge about Opponents’ Backlinks?

We’ve gone over some of the potential next steps after collecting a large number of backlinks with SEMRush.

What’s more crucial, though, is knowing how to put that information to use.

The objective is to improve your own link profile by pilfering that of a competitor. Most of them may require you to “steal” a link from a site that already features them.

In link building, though, anything goes. All that remains now is to put the information to good use.

Some suggestions for converting your rivals’ backlinks into your own.

Find and steal your rivals’ most valuable inbound connections

Any other link analysis tool would do the trick here. But if we’re being honest, SEMRush is far and away the best of the bunch.

In particular, the Backlink Gap tool available on SEMRush is ideal for this.

With Backlink Gap, you can see how your website stacks up against the competition by viewing their backlink profiles side by side.

Provide the URLs, and SEMRush will analyse them for you. By doing so, you might find out which websites are linking to your rivals instead of you.

As additional inbound links are uncovered, opportunities to take use of other sites and linkages become clearer.

Investigate Guest Blogging Platforms Used by Competitors

Guest blogging is still very much alive and well. You’d be shocked at how many of your rivals’ inbound links originate from guest posts.

Then why not use it to your advantage?

The inbound links of your competitors are a gold mine for guest posting ideas. That’s something you need to take care of right immediately.

Input your competitor’s domain into SEMrush and then select Backlinks to explore linking opportunities.

You may then narrow down the results by selecting from the following:

• Anchor text searching – [blogger’s name]
• Categorized as Text
• Instead of “All links,” select “Follow”

Seek Out Discussions Where Your Rivals Post

Comments are a great source of backlinks.

Your rival will make posts in various online communities and blogs.

The links in these discussions can be really useful.

You can learn about your competitors’ commenting habits by snooping on the websites to which their connections lead. Smart people will also take the time to offer feedback here.

Use “Lost” Backlinks to Your Advantage

Links originally owned by a competitor might be lost for a variety of reasons:

The link could have been easily removed by the site’s administrator.
It was possible to pull the page from circulation.
The article or post has been updated.
We are in the process of redirecting the page.
If your rival is any good, he will figure out how to get those links back. However, there is a high probability that they would “lose” those connections permanently.

Access the Backlinks page for the rival URL you’re analysing in your SEMrush account to steal these links.

Upgrade your content by a factor of ten

Now comes the exciting part.

There is a reason why sites connect to your competition. The most plausible explanation for that is….

Excellent material.
You can find out which of your competitors’ pages receive the most inbound links by analysing their backlink profiles.

To do this, open SEMrush and navigate to Backlinks > Indexed Pages after entering the competitor’s URL.

Backlinks from various domains are displayed.

Conclusion

One of the best strategies to fortify your link profile is to examine the backlink profiles of your competitors.

You may now see which websites are linking to your rivals.

They proved they can help others, so they can help you too!

Of course, without SEMrush, none of this would be possible.