How to Get the Backlinks That Your Competitors Have

The past couple of posts that I've made here on the blog have been related to building links.  I'm going to continue that trend, as its both a highly complicated topic, and a highly controversial one depending on the approach you take.

Building links also continues to be very important to rank your sites in Google.  The recent Panda and Penguin updates have penalized sites with poor content and poor link building practices, so its becoming even more important to re-analyze the strategies that you are using.

Last week, I kicked off my series of posts about link building with: Link Building for Micro Niche Sites vs. Authority Sites. Then Tyler Herman submitted a guest post last week called: Building a Quality Link Profile.  Both of these are a good start to get some basics on building links.  However, so much more detail needs to be covered!

Today, I want to dig into how you can get the same backlinks that your competitors have.

Why Copy the Links of Your Competitors?

The reason you should want the same links as your competitors is simple.  With those links, they are ranking in Google!  Provided your site has great content and is relevant to the keywords you are targeting, if you get the same links as your competitors; the chances are that you can rank in google as well!

Obviously this is only the beginning, you should try to copy as many links as possible, but then you should go out an acquire additional links as well to ensure that you rank above them.

Not only will mimicking the backlinks of your competitors allow to see what they are doing, it can open your eyes to alternative link sources that you can potentially use in the future on OTHER sites as well.

Example: How to Find the Links of Your Competitors

My favorite tool to see what sites are linking to other sites is OpenSiteExplorer.org (free trial membership here).  Let's take a concrete example, so that this process sinks in.  Imagine you are building a site centered around the keyword: “dog obedience training”.

First, lets do a Google search on the keyword, dog obedience training.  Then we can start analyzing the links for the sites that are ranking in the top 10 for this keyword.  One of those URLs ranking is: www.perfectpaws.com/whytr.html.

Next, you take that URL and input it in Open Site Explorer to analyze the links.  Here's what it looks like:

One important aspect to know about the links showing in Open Site Explorer is that they are ranked by Page Authority.  This means that the strongest links are listed at the top and the weakest links are listed at the bottom.  So, if you are trying to copy links – focus as much as possible on those near the top.

You will notice that several of the links listed are from its own site: perfectpaws.com.  So, ignore these, as there is nothing you can do about that.  However, you can then start going through the links one by one to find potential link locations that you CAN use.

In this example, I have found several links that I could copy if I was targeting the keyword dog obedience training.  Here are the links that perfectpaws.com/whytr.html has that I believe I could also get.

• uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Neurotypical_syndrome (perhaps not the exact same link, but since its a wiki, I could likely find a relevant page on wikia.com to link to my site from).

• workingdogweb.com/wdtrain.htm .  See this image below and you will notice that they allow people to submit links to their own sites!

• squidoo.com/Rudepets-com—help-save-these-pets- .  You can obtain a link from Squidoo just as easily as they did.
• workingdogweb.com/wdcompet.htm . Another link from the same WordkingDogWeb as shown in the image above.  Just submit your URL to this location as well.
• helium.com/zone/2234-dog-training .  Helium is an article directory; you can also submit an article there.

This is just a few of the links that you could potentially get that are shared by this competitor.  After obtaining as many of these links, you can then move onto the other 9 sites ranking in the top 10 for this keyword and find lots of other places to acquire links as well!

Hopefully this gives you a clear picture of the overall method.  As a disclaimer, I'm not claiming that “dog obedience training” is an easy or good keyword to go after; this was just an example.

Obviously, you won't be able to get the exact same or all the links of your competitors, but this will at least get you started.

If you want to start analyzing the links of your competitors, you can get a 30-day free trial to Open Site Explorer here.  I use it on a regular basis.

Increase Your Link Database

Not only will going through this exercise of analyzing your competitors allow you to find link locations for your current site; it can also help you create a database of potential link locations for all future sites.

As you start analyzing the top 10 sites, I would recommend keeping a separate spreadsheet or database of all link locations that would work for other niches or sites as well.  For instance, in the example above; I would save the site WorkingDogWeb.com as a link location that can be used for any site in the dog niche.  I would also jot down wikia.com, squidoo.com, and helium.com as potential links for any general niche.

Of course, the more links you analyze, the bigger your database you will create.  You will be surprised how many sites like workingdogweb.com there are that you can easily obtain links from.  Overall, this practice will increase your overall knowledge of what's out there and will dramatically increase your ability to create a diverse link profile.

In Conclusion

Overall, this method should help you get started with a great base of links pointing to your site.  It may or may not be enough to get you in the top 10 for your chosen keyword, but it will certainly help you get started on the right track.  After all, if you are able to get the exact same links as your competitors, you know you are doing at least as much as they are in that department.

I would love to hear your thoughts!  Have you employed this method and had success with it?  What other comments or questions do you have?