With so many other companies out there fighting for digital space, backlinks remain the most powerful driving force for your SEO strategy. Simply put, more quality backlinks from the right websites will rank your site higher. In attempt to stay ahead of the competition, we can try to mimic what’s working for our competitors in terms of acquiring links, leading to more consistent search engine rankings. In this guide, you will learn how to build and understand your backlink profile and replicate your competitors’ backlink profile wisely.
Understanding the Importance of Backlinks in SEO
Backlinks are one of the most important metrics in how the search engines determine what pages are valuable and what pages are trusted. When you get links back to your content from higher-authority sites, both Google and users agree that the site should have higher rankings. Backlinks can both directly send referral traffic as well as bringing a site authority increase with them. If you have well-curated links, your site is more likely to rank higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages). But how do you control something that other people do? SEO Contact Software is there to help you track backlinks and not just control them, but improve them.
But not all links are equal. ‘High-quality sites’ will earn privileged status in search engines, relative for example to sites that people only visit for humorous videos of cats. So one excellent backlink from a very legitimate site could be a lot more valuable than a load of links coming from cheapskate sites. Additionally, your context matters. Backlinks that appear in related content will rank better in search results than links in fluff content or in the realms of spam. Know this before you begin the labour of examining your competitor’s backlinks and then strategically soothing the same sites into putting you on their incoming list of exalted URLs.
Identifying Your Competitors for Backlink Analysis
The first step of that process is to figure out who your competitors are online. Those are the sites that rank high with the keywords you want to rank with, and compete for the same audience. Direct competitors are those right in your niche, selling the same products or services as you do. Indirect competitors target the same audience with similar or different products or services. Knowing who your competitors are means that you can track the right kind of backlink data.
Tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz can be a good starting point here. You can enter your main keyword and the tool will spit back a list of competitors for you. You can also use a manual method, which simply requires a trip to Google Search. Type in your target keyword and see which websites show up on the first page. If a website keeps popping up, it potentially could be a competitor. Once you have a list of competitors, you can identify their backlink opportunities.
Using SEO Tools to Analyze Competitors’ Backlink Profiles
Next, do some analysis on who your competitors are and their backlink profiles. SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz are excellent tools for this. They allow you to enter a competitor’s URL and view information like number of backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts and the authority of the linking sites. These reports will give an in-depth idea of where your competitors are getting their backlinks from and how valuable these backlinks are.
Pay close attention to any similarities in the quality and type of links pointing to your competitors’ sites. Are they acquiring backlinks from industry blogs, news sites or forums? Are there a particular set of backlink URLs that your competitors seem to have in their backlink profiles? Is there a wide variety in the domains linking to your competitors or are there a few similar domains that they share? Spot’ backlink profiles will tell you where you should be focusing your own efforts in acquiring backlinks.
Strategies to Replicate Competitors’ Backlinks
The next step is to devise a plan for mimicking them – by addressing the same sites linking to your competitors’ content in an outreach email explaining why yours is potentially a better resource for their audience. This tends to work best if you happen to have similar or better content available.
Another strategy is to create content that is likely to attract backlinks, such as in-depth guides, industry reports or novel data studies. You can also use broken link building, which involves finding broken links on sites that link to competitors, and offering your content as the replacement. This allows you to help the site owner fix a problem on their site while at the same time getting them to link to yours. Combining a few of these techniques will allow you to reproduce and then even outperform the backlink profiles of your competitors.
Monitoring and Maintaining Your Backlink Profile
After you have started, it’s particularly important to keep an eye and control your backlink-profile. Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and a link that was good can become less good or even toxic, if the linking site loses its authority or becomes irrelevant. Tools such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs and Moz can help you trace your backlinks. You can be notified whether something happens with your backlink profile. This allows you to react promptly (example: if you have lost a hyperlink or a toxic link).
Regular email outreach and content updates is still required to maintain your backlink profile. Backlinks won’t all stick around: your best backlink strategy is to build backlinks, not to be done once and done for all. Regularly updating your content so it’s always seen as relevant and sending it to people who are likely to link to it can ensure these are picked up by new audiences who may add your content to their own backlink profile. Digital PR such as guest blogging and other collaborations can further help in building new audiences who are more likely to be interested in your content and gravitates to backlinks.
Avoiding Common Mistakes in Backlink Replication
Although replicating competitors’ backlinks is commonly a good SEO strategy, one should avoid common pitfalls. The most frequent ones consist in pursuing large amount of backlinks to outweigh competitors, instead of pursuing backlinks in relevant high-quality websites that are most likely to link to your content. For example, low-quality backlinks from spammy or irrelevant websites can severely harm your SEO position rather than improve it.
A second pitfall is failing to recognise the need for diversity in anchor text. Too much exact match anchor text is likely to raise eyebrows with the search engines, and can result in penalties. Make sure your anchor text portfolio is varied and natural, with a mixture of branded, keyword-rich and generic terms. Finally, don’t just rely on one way to get backlinks. The best way to earn links is to use a diversified backlink strategy, with activity across outreach, content and digital PR. If you avoid these three pitfalls then you can leave success to follow.
Conclusion
This way, you can imitate sites that provide your competitors with good backlinks, and implement them on your website. With enough care, study of your competitors, and a good set of SEO tools at your disposal, you can eventually start building up the authority and reach of your site. Monitor your progress, focus on quality rather than quantity, and stick with it. As SEO evolves further year by year, you’ll continue to get a better grip on your niche, and remain ahead of your competitors. And if done right, the constant replication of backlinks your competitors have is a great step towards getting there!