Find Competitor Backlinks to do Link-building [step-by-step guide]

This article will teach you how you can find competitor backlinks and “take” their links.

Linkody is the tool that can not only help you assess competitor backlinks and show which backlinks are not linking to your site but also help to get all your competitor backlinks.

Feeling like you struck a gold mine?

Well, it’s pretty neat what this backlink tracker can do for you.

In this quick guide you’ll learn:

• How to find competitor’s backlinks,
• Assess competitor backlinks,
• How to add competitor backlink as a prospect link,
• & which of the competitor backlinks you are missing.

While on your 30-day free Linkody trial, you will be able to add 1 competitor to one of your domains, for a total of 2 domains and 500 links monitored.

Find Competitor Backlinks

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to find competitors backlinks.

1) First, click on the domain itself, under “Domains“:

2) Then, from the drop-down menu “Competitors“, select “Add A Competitor“:

3) Type in your competitor (in our  case mailmunch.co) and hit “ADD COMPETITOR“:

4) You can navigate away from this page and come back later or press F5 to see the progression of the link search in real time:

5) Shortly, individual links from all unique domains will become visible:

Note: Linkody will display 1 link per unique referring domain.

And Boom, this is how you find competitors backlinks.

And Linkody will keep looking for new links each week and send you an update via email with newly discovered competitor backlinks.

Check Competitor Backlinks

Linkody will instantly mark a link green if it finds that you and one of your competitors share a backlink from the same domain (or page):

You can also filter all their backlinks to see:

• Which of your backlinks is also theirs;
• & which of competitor backlinks are not yet yours.

When analyzing competitors, each time when you think it would be a good idea to have a link from the same domain, you can select the + button and “add as a prospect link“:

The prospect link will be assigned to your daily monitored links (read: all backlinks under “Links”), meaning that Linkody will start tracking its status and let you know when the link is acquired.

Continue reading more use cases of the prospect link feature: “How to use Linkody’s Prospect Link Feature and Save Time“.

Using Linkody’s metrics, you can also easily assess backlinks’ quality and aim for the higher ranking blogs.

For example, you can order links by Moz PA (Page Authority) and scout for the popular blogs with low Spam Score, high EFL and shares, that have picked up a competitor:

You may also want to keep an eye on the Spam Score and avoid getting links from sites with a high number:

Benefit from competitors’ strategies

When you head over to “View All Competitors Links” or select one of your top competitors, there is amazing potential for finding backlinks.

Here’s how to find competitor backlinks:

1) Find Guest Blogging Opportunities – Search for “blog” +Follow

In this way you will be able to find guest blogging opportunities. 

If you see that somebody has mentioned your competitor and given a do-follow backlink – there is a huge chance they will do the same for you if your write a nice guest post.

We tried this and from 10 sites we contacted we got 6 guest blogging opportunities.

2) Find Roundups – Search for “roundup” +Follow -Not Shared

Finding roundups where you haven’t participated will never be easier:

• Search for roundups
• Filter do-follow links
• Select “Not shared” – these are the backlinks from websites that haven’t given you a backlink before.

And just like that you will get a list of roundups where your competitors are mentioned but you are not.

3) Find Reviews – Search for “reviews” 

If you are looking for a website that could write a review for your (or client’s) product or service – there are huge chances that your competitors’ already have found one.

In the search bar search for “review”, having follow links are optional in this case, and you will get a list of sites that have reviewed similar service to that of yours (or clients’).

4) Find Tool Lists – Search for “tool” or “list”

Locating all the “top tool lists”  will take 1 click – just search for “tool” or “list” and there you have them.

There are over 14k websites and almost all of them have a list of tools where your site haven’t been included.

Go through the list – and get backlinks.

Monitoring Competitor’s Top Pages

Just a couple of weeks ago we released a stellar feature to quickly go through all your competitor results and find competitor backlinks that you just must have and the ones that would be good to have.

This feature turns link-building into a walk in the park.

Ready, set..

1. To get to the sweet part, click on “Competitors” button
2. And select “View all competitors links”

Then just head over to the “View Pages” section.

Et Voila – the top pages that link with your competitors.

The best part, of course, is the overview:

1. You can view only the links that are NOT shared with you (backlinks that your competitors have but you don’t). Or check the competitor links that you have in common with your rivals.
2. Then you will be able to see URL and  The title of the page that links with your competitors. 
   • When we tested the new feature we found 5 amazing link opportunities that before we just didn’t notice – 4 SEO tool lists that link with our competitors but not us and a site that wrote a review about our competitor.

Go, take it for a spin and trust me, you will like it 😉

Use Competitors to Find Link Magnet Content (aka content that gets backlinks)

Linkody also allows to see which of your competitor’s pages have the most backlinks:

And this is useful for several reasons:

• You can see which topics have the potential to generate a ton of backlinks
• You can find similar pages to yours and get those backlinks

Here’s what I mean

1) How to find topics that earn backlinks

People link with a certain type of content and finding which content will earn backlinks is a hard work.

It’s impossible to know if your content will turn into a “link magnet”.

The good news is – your competitors already have done the job for you!

And even better news is – Linkody can help you to find content that gets backlinks:

Within seconds we can see several trends:

1. Free Tools – people love free stuff and if you give away something for free – you will get backlinks in return.
2. Thought provoking content – people are very eager to share something that makes them feel good about themselves or is provoking something/someone.
3. How to guides – detailed educational content is the backlink gold mine.

Now, add your competitors to Linkody and see if there are any topics that get them a ton of backlinks. And if you can beat what they have created – go for it.

In short, that’s a recipe to creating content that makes backlinks.

2) Find similar content and take competitor’s backlinks

While analyzing another competitor, we stumbled upon an article that’s exactly like one of our posts – 52 SEO tools

Once we checked which exactly pages link with our competitor’s content – we noticed that we have only 2 backlinks in common:

Just like this we found 14 websites that link with our competitors but not with us (for more information visit this post).

What to do next?

Contact these websites and ask for a backlink to your article – here’s how.

80/20 rule

Competitor analysis is one of the true 80/20 methods (80% of results come from 20% of causes) for link building – why reinvent the wheel when you can just find out what the winners in your niche are already doing, and just do more (or better) of the same?

You’re likely to find all kinds of link sources this way:

• You may find niche directories that your competitors are listed in. Most directories are a waste of time, but you may find attractive ones in your competitors’ link profiles, that are worth submitting to
• The same goes for other types of links you find in your competitors’ profiles: wiki links, social bookmarks, forum links, blog comments and so on.
• You might find awesome topics that can bring backlinks and increase your site’s authority.
• Locating sites that link with similar content that you already have is easier than ever. Just ask them to add a backlink to your page as well.

The Wrap-up

Did this guide help you to understand what it takes to find competitors’ backlinks?

It actually is not that hard – with Linkody this process can be automated to a whole new level:

1. Plug in your competitor domain names @Linkody,
2. Tool will find competitor backlinks,
3. You can assess your competitors’ backlinks and see how you can “steal” them.
4. Set the link acquisition targets and reach out to get new backlinks.

If you have any questions about how to find, filter & assess competitors backlinks – feel free to ask us in the comment section below.