How to Find Your Competitors' Backlinks and Win Them: A 6-Step Method

Quick quiz

How should you get links from other websites?

Question 1 of 425%

Does your site already have useful content?

Very littleSome good pagesLots of articles and guides

Learning how to find competitor backlinks is the fastest way to build a list of realistic link prospects: if a site already links to three of your competitors, it covers your topic and links out. This guide shows the tools, the six steps and the traps. For the definition of a backlink, see our glossary entry on backlinks.

Which tools show competitor backlinks?

Google Search Console's Links report only shows links to sites you own, so for competitors you need a third-party index. Start with the free backlink analysis tool; our ranking of backlink checkers compares the others.

How to find competitor backlinks in 6 steps

1. Choose the right competitors

Pick the three to five sites that rank for your target queries, not only your business rivals: media, comparison sites and blogs often have the links you want. See our method for SEO competitor analysis.

2. Export their referring domains

In a backlink checker, look at referring domains rather than raw backlinks: one site that links 200 times counts as one relationship. Export each list.

3. Find the link gap

Compare the lists: keep the domains that link to at least two competitors and not to you. Paid tools do it in one report (link intersect, backlink gap); a spreadsheet works too. These are your warmest prospects.

4. Qualify the prospects

Remove sites with no organic traffic, unrelated topics, pages full of outbound commercial links or obvious link sales. Keep sites your buyers could read. Our article on quality backlinks lists the criteria.

5. Look at what earned the links

Sort competitors' pages by number of referring domains. You will usually find a few linkable assets: studies with data, free tools, templates, definitive guides, comparisons. That shows what your market links to.

6. Create a better reason to link, then reach out

Publish a more useful version (fresher data, a better tool, a clearer guide), then contact the authors who linked to the older resource. For directories, associations and partner pages, request a listing directly.

Which competitor links should you not copy?

Some links in a competitor's profile are best left alone:

• Paid or sponsored links without the sponsored or nofollow attribute, which Google's spam policies classify as link spam.
• Link farms and private blog networks: sites with no audience that link to everyone.
• Mass directories and comment links, which bring little and can look manipulative.

A competitor ranking despite these links is not proof that they help; often the site ranks for other reasons. See toxic backlinks.

How to track the results

Follow your referring domains each month in your backlink tool and in Search Console's Links report, and compare the gap with competitors every quarter. Our guide to backlink monitoring details the routine, and referring domains explains why domains count more than raw links.

The bottom line

Your competitors' backlinks are a ready-made list of sites that cover your topic and link out; your job is to give them a better reason to link to you. For more prospect sources, read backlink sites and our ranking of link building tools. Sorank, SEO and GEO software that runs on autopilot, also obtains natural backlinks automatically from the sites of its 5,000+ users while publishing your content; see the Sorank plans, with a 3-day free trial.