There is nothing wrong in stealing your competitor’s backlinks. Here are some of the legal means to spy and replicate the competitor’s backlink strategy. It doesn’t matter they rank better or worse than you. Consider the traffic flow to your competitor’s that you lack. So, in a way or either it would help you to improve your search ranking and drive massive traffic. Or, at least assist you in improving the authority of your domain.
Why do we use this strategy?
Why replicating competitor’s backlink strategy is so powerful?
Let’s take it this way. Search for a keyword ‘mind mapping software’ in Google and look at the results that appear on the 1st page.
Only by having good link profiles, those domains are awarded better ranking positions. But, each domain will have a unique link profile. Google loves them individually and displays in the search engine results accordingly. Otherwise, we could say that these domains meet or exceeds Google’s expectations and hence, here.
Now, empower your link profile, putting all of your competitor’s link profiles together. Your link profile will be much active, isn’t it? Your link profile is now 10 x times powerful to astound Google. Hence, you will see remarkable growth in the search engine ranking.
Another great thing about this stealing competitor’s backlinks is, you are taking your entire competitor’s hard works and efforts. You are letting competitors build a backlink strategy for you. You are merely nabbing it to enhance your link profile.
How to Spy & Replicate Competitor’s Backlink Strategy?
Let’s explore the step-step process to use the competitor’s backlink strategy. Using any powerful SEO tools, you are likely to conduct a backlink audit and analysis on your competitor’s domain. However, I am not here to nudge any tool exclusively. You go with your favourite to achieve the freshest and accurate results.
Let’s get doing the steps to replicate the competitor’s backlink strategy to give power to your link profile.
Step – 1: Find your Competitions
To identify your competitor’s, you will have to check the top-ranking sites for the keyword that you want to rank for. Just type the keyword, say, ‘mind mapping software’ in Google. The domains that are ranking in Google’s 1st page are your intense competitors. And, that’s the place you want to achieve for your target keyword.
To make your research and analysis diligent, it’s better to go with small numbers. From the ten results, take either top 3 or top 5 most prominent competitors. If you want to do with all the 10, then you will be lost overwhelming with massive data.
Before that, let me give you a small note about the page level and domain level competitions. If a site competes with you only for specific keywords, then it is page level. Otherwise, if it competes as a whole domain, then it’s domain level.
Here you go – consider the page level competitions for the narrow approach that makes a big difference.
So, now you have the list of 3 or 5-page-level competitors for the specific target keyword.
Step – 2: Get the Competitor’s backlinks
The way you will get your competitor’s backlinks is using any of your favourite SEO or backlink checker tools.
There are a lot of free and paid backlink checker tools available in the market. Each has its own database size offering the variant ranges of results. For more accurate analysis, I would suggest better to combine the results from multiple tools.
Then, Figure out the domains linking to your competitors. For an instant, let’s take the first one. Feeding the URL to whichever backlink tool you use, you will get to know about referring domains and backlinks that are pointing to your competitor’s domain.
Likewise, collect the backlink data for all the five competitors.
Step – 3: Analyze & Create a Master List of Backlinks
What if your competitors have more referring domains, you will have to invest more time to run through all. Your list will be massive. So, it’s essential to sort out the list using filters. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaffs.
Running through a small analysis of your competitor’s backlinks, you are likely to find out which backlinks are going to work best. Ultimately, you want to get quality backlinks. Otherwise, you will get hit by Google penalties that might hurt your SEO.
Google considers hundreds of factors to rank a site or page in the search engines results page. As you have a big list of backlinks, check the authority of the domain to omit a reasonable volume of backlinks. It may be either Domain Authority or Domain Rating or anything you believe.
Concerning the referring domains, sort the DR Field to single-out authoritative domains that are linking to your competitors. You may click on ‘Live’ to have only the active links. Almost any backlink checker tool will have these basic filtering options.
Most importantly, the referring sites must be Google-indexed. It’s simple to check. You don’t require any specific tools to do so. Use the below string in Google search box –
site:domainname.com
As you find results, that means Google is indexing the site. If not, then it might a got a penalty hit or an expired domain. Better to neglect backlinks from such domains.
Also, from the backlink audit report from the tools you use, you are supposed to run through a few other criteria too. They are –
- Where your competitor’s domain got links from
- Number of outbound links in the particular page on your competitor’s site
- Authority of the individual pages
- Anchor text distribution ratio (whether or not over-optimized with exact keywords)
- The ratio between dofollow and nofollow links
There is no hard rule that the target backlink must meet all the above-said thresholds. As far as you scrutinize, you will get high-quality backlinks.
Now, make a list of all the sorted backlinks of your five different competitors from different sources. If you find any duplicates, remove them before getting into the replicating competitor’s backlink strategy.
You may use Google Spreadsheets for easy process. Starting with small numbers is good to take it further. Say, five backlinks from each competitor. So, you have now a list of 25 backlinks. Not actually the backlinks, the proven link prospects.
Step – 4: Now, it’s perfect for replicating
Replicating the backlink strategy is nothing but getting a link on the domain (where your competitor has got link already) using the same link building technique your competitor used.
Just open the referring page one by one and check how your competitor got a backlink on that page.
For example, it might be via blog commenting or author bio link via guest posting, or forum links or anything.
If it is a backlink in the blog comment area, then you drop your own comment and get a backlink.
If it’s a forum site, register your account and join the discussion to get a natural backlink.
In the case of guest blogging, then check out the guest post guidelines of the particular site, outreach the owner or editor to get an opportunity to contribute valuable content on your behalf.
Or if it is Quora link, then register or login to your account and provide valuable answers to the questions asked linking to your site.
For your attention, whenever you try to replicate a backlink, never forget to offer valuable content or solutions to the audience. Don’t slip off from the core responsibility.
So far, we have seen how to find the competitors, analyzing their link profiles, and replicating the backlinks. Finally, you are likely to generate new backlinks. What are all the other ways, replicating competitor’s backlink strategy can help you?
Here are some of the ideas you can try understanding your competitor’s backlink strategy and analyzing their link profiles.
1. Niche-relevant Market Study
While running through your competitions link profile or specific page where they have got backlinks, you will get to know more aspects. Those are likely to help to understand the market standards and the target people behaviour.
- How your competitor’s link profile grows or declines over time?
- What type of content attracts more backlinks?
- What sort of domains linking to your competitor’s site?
- Which backlink generates high traffic to your competitor’s website?
- What type of expert level of audience they have?
Having all these data handy, you can make alterations to your content marketing strategy too getting more backlinks and hence, organic traffic. Above all, analyzing the top competitor’s backlinks and ranking potential, you will get to know how competitive your niche is.
2. Link Reclamation
From the competitor’s backlink audit report, you will notice if any broken links out there. It’s an open opportunity to gain a backlink for your site.
While analyzing the domains linking to your competitor’s site, if there are any link points to your competitor’s page that does exist, it’s nothing but a broken link. For example, if there is a 404 error page on your competitor’s site and there is a link from other site pointing to the page.
Check if you have relevant content on your site. If so, outreach the website owner, and intimate about their broken link. Also, request a link to your content. Possibly, you will get the opportunity here as you help the webmaster notifying about the broken link and also offering content to give life to their link.
Conclusion
When I talk about replicating competitor’s backlink strategy to my clients, they think that it’s an offence or illegal. But it is not so. You are just studying the competitor’s inputs to optimize your link building strategy. From which, you will get more link building opportunities without even breaking your mind.
I would insist you to give a try and astonish with the results building more quality backlinks in a few days.