Competitor backlinks
that you can steal.

How to Analyse Competitor Backlinks and Turn Their Link Profile Into Your Own Opportunity

Most link building campaigns stall not because of poor outreach, but because the prospect list was built wrong. Reaching out cold to sites with no established pattern of linking to content like yours is a slow, low-yield process. The better approach is to start where the evidence already exists: your competitors' backlink profiles.

When a site has already decided to link to one of your competitors, it has demonstrated something valuable — a willingness to place links in your niche, an editorial process that accepts external references, and a content appetite that overlaps with your own. That combination makes it a far more productive outreach target than any site you find through a generic search.

This guide walks through a complete six-step process for finding, analysing, and acting on competitor backlinks — from identifying the right competitors to separating high-quality targets from the sites not worth your time.

Why a Competitor Backlink Strategy Works Where Cold Outreach Often Doesn't

A competitor backlink strategy involves auditing the backlink profiles of sites that compete with yours, identifying which domains are linking to them, and then approaching those domains with a case for linking to you as well.

The logic is straightforward but the practical advantage is significant. Rather than persuading a site to do something it has never done before, you are approaching sites that have already done exactly what you need — placed a relevant, editorial link in your niche. The conversation starts from a fundamentally different position.

The results this approach can generate are substantial. Competitor backlink analysis formed part of the strategy behind a 5,329% organic traffic increase for PDF Simpli — a figure that reflects how much untapped opportunity tends to sit inside a competitor's link profile when it is examined properly.

Step 1 — Identify the Right Competitors to Analyse

Before you can extract link opportunities from a competitor's profile, you need to know which competitors to look at. The answer is not always the same as the businesses you consider direct commercial rivals.

For link building purposes, a competitor is any site that ranks for the same keywords you are targeting — regardless of whether it sells the same product or operates in the same space. This distinction matters because it shapes both who you look at and what you do with the data.

There are two categories of SEO competitors worth tracking separately:

Finding domain-level competitors is most efficiently done through an SEO tool. In Ahrefs, the Organic Competitors report within Site Explorer automatically identifies which domains rank for the most keywords in common with yours, along with data on how many of those keywords your site does not yet rank for. That gap data also doubles as a content opportunity list.

Finding page-level competitors is a manual process: export your keyword list from Ahrefs, run each target query through Google, and record the specific page URLs that appear in the top two pages of results. These pages — not just their root domains — become your analysis targets for that particular topic.

Step 2 — Run a Backlink Analysis on Each Competitor

With a list of competitors established, the next step is to audit their backlink profiles using a dedicated SEO tool. Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, Majestic, and Ubersuggest all provide this functionality. The output is a list of every domain linking to your competitor, along with key metrics for each referring domain.

When the list is long — which it often is for established sites — filtering becomes essential. Three filters consistently deliver the most useful results:

• New links only: New links only: opportunities that existed several years ago may no longer be available — filtering for recently acquired links surfaces current, active prospects
• Dofollow links only: Dofollow links only: only dofollow links pass link equity, so filtering out nofollow links ensures your effort goes toward placements that directly affect rankings
• Sort by domain authority: Sort by domain authority: starting with the highest-authority prospects means the most impactful opportunities get actioned first

Beyond analysing one competitor at a time, the Link Intersect tool in Ahrefs (called Backlink Gap in SEMrush) adds another layer of insight. Enter two or more competitors alongside your own domain, and the tool identifies every site that links to all of them but not to you. A site that has chosen to link to multiple competitors in your space is not just willing to link in your niche — it has a pattern of doing so. These are your highest-priority outreach targets.

Step 3 — Decode How Your Competitors Actually Acquired Their Links

Knowing which sites link to your competitors is useful. Understanding why those sites linked — what tactic or content type generated each placement — is what turns a list of URLs into a replicable strategy.

Six link types appear most commonly in competitor profiles, and each one points to a different outreach approach.

Expert Roundups

Roundup articles collect input from multiple contributors on a single topic and typically link back to each expert's site. If a competitor has links from this format, there are two practical routes: contact the author to ask whether your perspective could be added to the existing piece, or request to be included in future roundups on similar topics. Many site owners maintain a list of contributors they return to regularly, and getting on that list can generate ongoing placements with minimal additional outreach.

Niche Edits

A niche edit is a link inserted into content that is already published and indexed. Because the page has history and ranking data behind it, a niche edit can be more valuable than a link in a brand-new post. If a competitor has secured a niche edit on a relevant site, approaching that site owner with a request for a similar placement — or a new insertion in a different article — is a legitimate outreach angle. These placements are sometimes paid, and in highly competitive industries that is a standard arrangement rather than an exception.

Blog Roundups

Roundup posts that list the best resources, tools, or blogs in a category are common across most niches. If a competitor appears in one of these lists, the route to a placement is direct: contact the author, explain the value your site offers their readers, and make the case for inclusion. Some will add the listing freely; others may have a submission process or charge for placements.

Guest Posts

Guest post links are among the most replicable competitor placements because the evidence of a site's willingness to accept contributions is public. When you see a competitor's link appearing in a by-lined article on an external site, that site is, by definition, accepting guest contributions in your niche.

The most thorough way to find all the guest posting sites a competitor has used is through a targeted Google search: search for the competitor's brand name alongside "guest post," then repeat the search using the names of their founders or key authors. This often surfaces sites that a standard backlink analysis would not flag clearly.

Once the relevant sites are identified, the quality of the pitch determines success. The approach that consistently works treats each site as an individual editorial opportunity:

1. Review the site's existing content in detail and identify a genuine gap your article could fill
2. Identify the decision-maker — typically a Head of Content or editor — rather than using a generic contact form
3. Write a personalised pitch that references specific content on their site and explains why your proposed topic serves their audience
4. Include examples of your published work so the editor can assess quality before committing
5. Follow up once after a week or two if there is no response — beyond that, move on to other targets

Directories and Forum Listings

Links from directories and forums rarely move rankings significantly on their own, but they serve a secondary purpose: brand visibility and referral traffic. If a competitor's profile shows consistent listings in niche directories or active participation in relevant forums, replicating those placements is a low-effort baseline activity worth completing before moving on to more labour-intensive tactics.

Connectively and Expert Platforms

A competitor profile showing a pattern of high-authority news links — from major publications or respected trade outlets — typically points to one thing: the site is actively responding to journalist queries on a platform like Connectively, formerly known as HARO. Journalists using these platforms are looking for expert sources, and when they use a response, they typically include a link to the respondent's site. Registering and responding consistently to relevant queries in your niche is the direct way to replicate this type of link.

Step 4 — Find and Target Broken Links in Competitor Profiles

Broken link building is one of the most conversion-friendly outreach tactics available, because the site owner has an immediate, concrete reason to act on your message. When an external link on their site points to a page that no longer exists, they have a problem. Your outreach solves it.

The process in Ahrefs is direct: enter a competitor's domain in Site Explorer, navigate to Broken Backlinks in the left menu, and export the results. For each broken link, review the original context — what topic was the page covering, what kind of content was it linking to — and determine whether you have an existing page that fits, or whether creating one would be worthwhile given the link opportunity.

When the content is in place, the outreach message writes itself: let the site owner know the link they have pointing to a certain URL is no longer working, and suggest your content as a replacement. This approach works because it leads with a benefit to the recipient rather than a request for one.

One additional point worth noting: this is not a one-directional tactic. Competitors run exactly the same process against your profile. Monitoring your own broken backlinks and reclaiming them before a competitor does is a standard part of maintaining a healthy link profile.

Step 5 — Use Reverse Image Search to Uncover Hidden Guest Posting Trails

When contributors use the same author headshot across multiple publications — which is extremely common — a reverse image search maps every site where they have published. This is a reliable method for uncovering guest posting opportunities that would not show up in a standard backlink analysis, particularly for sites that use different author names or brand content differently across placements.

The process is straightforward. Navigate to a competitor's site, open an article, and find the author photo in the contributor box. Right-click the image, copy the image address, then paste it into the URL field in Google Images' reverse search. The results will show every page where that image appears — which typically corresponds to every site where that author has contributed.

Work through the results and add every relevant, high-quality site to your outreach list. This method often surfaces publications in adjacent niches that would be difficult to find through keyword-based competitor research alone, expanding the prospect pool considerably.

Step 6 — Filter Every Target by Quality Before Outreach Begins

A competitor backlink analysis generates a large pool of potential targets. Not all of them are worth pursuing, and some are actively worth avoiding. Copying a competitor's spammy or low-quality links does not replicate their success — it replicates their risk exposure. Three assessment criteria, applied together, reliably separate genuine opportunities from sites that will waste time or create problems.

Content Quality

Visit the site and read several articles. Original writing, expert-level depth, unique imagery, and clear editorial investment are the signals of a site that Google trusts and readers return to. Generic content spanning random topics, thin articles with no original perspective, and suspicious outbound links are warning signs. Sites that publish on every conceivable subject regardless of niche are almost always link farms, regardless of what their authority metrics say.

Domain Authority and Domain Rating

These metrics are useful as initial filters but should never be the only signal you rely on. Sites that were once legitimate and have since been converted into PBNs often retain high scores from their earlier history. Always verify authority metrics against organic traffic data before adding a site to your outreach list.

Organic Traffic

Organic search traffic is the hardest signal to fake at scale and the one most reliably correlated with genuine site quality. A site that ranks for real keywords and attracts real readers is one that Google's algorithm trusts. A minimum of 1,000 monthly organic visits is a reasonable baseline when evaluating outreach targets — below that, even a high DR score should be treated with caution and the site subjected to additional manual review.

Turning Competitor Intelligence Into an Ongoing Link Building Process

The six steps above produce something more useful than a single outreach list: they produce a repeatable intelligence process. Every time a competitor acquires a significant new link, that event carries information — about which site just became more open to outreach, about what content format worked, about what angle resonated with a particular editor.

Running this process quarterly, rather than as a one-off exercise, means your link building strategy stays calibrated against real competitive movement. The sites that were linking to competitors six months ago may have changed their policies. New sites may have launched content in your niche. Broken links accumulate steadily. Guest posting opportunities open and close on editorial calendars you cannot see directly.

Used properly, competitor backlink analysis is not just the starting point for a campaign. It is the ongoing intelligence layer that keeps a link building programme pointed at the opportunities most likely to convert — and the ones your competitors are actively trying to claim for themselves.

Want Help Putting Competitor Backlink Analysis to Work?

If you would like support mapping your competitive landscape, identifying the highest-value link opportunities in your niche, or building an outreach programme around competitor intelligence, get in touch directly.

Send a message to [email protected] with a brief overview of your site, your primary competitors, and what you are trying to achieve. I will come back to you with a clear picture of where the opportunities are and how to approach them.