Before looking for competitor backlinks, you need to know who your competitor actually is.
The word can be confusing because a competitor in backlink research is not always another business selling the same product or service. Sometimes it is a website appearing in search results for many of the same subjects as yours. In other cases, the useful competitor is simply one page covering the same topic as one of your pages.
The difference becomes easier to see side by side.
| Type of Competitor | What Does This Mean? | Simple Example | Why Is It Useful for Backlink Research? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business competitor | A website run by a business offering products or services similar to yours and trying to reach similar customers | Two SEO agencies offering similar SEO services | Its backlinks can show where businesses like yours are being mentioned or referenced |
| Search competitor | A website appearing in search results for many of the same topics or searches as your website, even if the business behind it is different | An SEO agency and a marketing publication both have pages appearing for searches about backlinks | The websites may not compete for the same customers, but their content can compete for visibility in the same search results. Its backlinks can reveal sources that reference subjects you also cover |
| Page competitor | A particular page covering the same subject or answering a similar search as one of your pages | Your website has a guide about anchor text, and another website has its own guide about anchor text | The entire websites do not need to compete. Backlinks to that particular page can show who references content closely related to your own |
Once you know which kind of competitor is useful for your research, an SEO tool can show you which websites link to that competitor. These links are competitor backlinks.
The goal is not to find backlinks and automatically copy them. It is to discover who links to competitors, what those websites link to, and why those references exist.
Should You Analyze the Whole Competitor Website or One Page?
This depends on what you want to learn.
Suppose you want a broad picture of the websites linking to an SEO competitor. You could enter its entire domain into a backlink analysis tool. The resulting report can show backlinks pointing to different pages across the website.
But perhaps you have published a guide about anchor text and want to investigate backlinks to similar guides. In that case, analyzing one competing page about anchor text can give you more focused information than analyzing the entire domain.
The target you enter therefore changes the question you are asking. A domain helps you investigate backlinks across a competitor’s website, while a specific URL lets you concentrate on backlinks to one particular piece of content.
What Do You See After Entering the Competitor?
Once you enter the competitor’s domain or page, the tool can show backlinks it has discovered pointing to that target.
Two parts of the report are especially useful: referring domains and backlinks.
A referring domain is a website that provides at least one backlink to the competitor. If example.com links to a competitor five times, that represents five backlinks but only one referring domain.
The referring domains report therefore helps answer:
Which websites are linking to this competitor?
The backlinks report lets you move closer and ask:
Which individual pages contain those links, and where do they lead?
For example, you might discover that a marketing publication links to your competitor. Opening the individual backlink could then reveal that the link appears inside an article about SEO tools and leads to the competitor’s backlink checker.
Now you know more than the fact that one website links to another. You can see the actual relationship that produced the backlink.
What Should You Look for in the Backlinks?
Finding the backlinks is only the beginning. The next step is understanding why they exist.
Suppose several websites link to one particular competitor guide. Open some of those linking pages and look at what is happening. Writers might be citing statistics from the guide, recommending it as a useful resource, or referencing a tool the competitor created.
Those are different reasons for receiving backlinks, and seeing those reasons can tell you more than simply counting the links.
You can also look at which competitor pages receive links repeatedly. This may reveal resources, studies, tools, or subjects that other websites frequently reference.
When the report is large, filters can help narrow the data by destination page, link attributes, discovery date, or other information available in the tool. This is one practical use of backlink analysis: the tool organizes the links so you can focus on the part relevant to your research.
What Are You Actually Trying to Find?
The useful result is not simply a long list of websites that link to your competitors.
You might discover a website that regularly references resources in your subject. You might notice several competitors receiving links to original research. You could also find publications that repeatedly reference the kinds of guides or tools you create.
Some SEO tools can also compare multiple competitors and identify websites that link to them but not to you. This can reveal potential sources worth investigating.
But a competitor backlink is not automatically a backlink opportunity. The important part is understanding who provided the link, what they linked to, and why the reference made sense.
