Hey there! Prepare to have your mind blown! In this post, we’re going to dive deep into the world of backlink analysis, uncovering the secret strategies that the pros use to dominate search results. Forget everything you thought you knew about link building. We’re about to go on a treasure hunt, and the loot is a cascade of high-quality backlinks!
Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing: The Power of Competitive Backlink Research
The first step on our journey to link building glory is understanding where our competitors are getting their links. Forget random outreach and throwing spaghetti at the wall—we’re about to get strategic.
Unveiling the Secrets of Top-Ranking Pages
- The SEO Showdown: Search Engine Land vs. Kissmetrics: Let’s kick things off with a real-world example. In the video, two SEO giants, Search Engine Land and Kissmetrics are compared. Search Engine Land’s “What is SEO” guide ranks #1 for the keyword “SEO”. Kissmetrics’ “SEO for Beginners” guide ranks lower. Why this difference?
- The Referring Domain Revelation: The key difference? Backlinks! Search Engine Land boasts 10 times more referring domains than Kissmetrics. This emphasizes that quality backlinks can significantly help a website rank in Google. Referring domains refers to the unique websites that link to a specific page.
- Link Acquisition Spikes: A Closer Look: We can also take a look at how these sites acquire backlinks. Search Engine Land regularly acquires around 100 referring domains per week, whereas Kissmetrics gets less than 10 per week. However, looking for spikes in a website’s link acquisition rate may reveal some specific strategies they have used. By paying attention to these kinds of patterns, we can identify what has worked for competitors.
- The Free Exposure Jackpot: Search Engine Land gets 10 times more organic traffic than Kissmetrics. More free exposure from search engines leads to more links. This shows the benefit of ranking high in the search results.
How to Steal Your Competitor’s Link Building Secrets
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how we can apply these insights. We are going to look at how to use different tools to analyze backlink profiles.
1. Decoding Link Acquisition Patterns
- The “New and Lost Referring Domains” Report: This report shows the rate of a website’s link acquisition over time. By monitoring this, you can see if a website has been using strategies to get a lot of links. If there are sudden spikes in the graph, you can make note of these dates and investigate them.
- The Dramatic Spike: The video notes a dramatic spike in Kissmetrics’ link acquisition in March of 2018. Kissmetrics doubled their usual link acquisition rate at this time. By examining the backlinks acquired during this period, we can see what strategies they were using.
- Redirects as a Link Building Strategy: The video reveals that Kissmetrics was consolidating some of its older content by using redirects. Redirecting links from less popular posts to other posts is a smart move for passing on link equity.
- Key Takeaway: What worked two years ago might not work today. It is essential to identify patterns to understand how your competitors are getting their good links.
2. Finding the “Good” Links: Filtering Out the Noise
Not all links are created equal. Some are pure gold, while others are just spam. Here’s how to sift through the junk and find the gems.
- The “New Referring Domains” Report: This report shows you links from new domains and not previously linked domains. It provides insights into how a site is building or acquiring links over a specific time period.
- Domain Rating (DR): Look at the Domain Rating (DR) of the referring domains. This gives you a rough idea of whether the links are good or not.
- Investigating Linking Pages: When in doubt, click on the backlinks to see the linking pages. This report shows only links from new domains.
3. Unleashing the Power of “Best by Links” Analysis
This is where things get seriously exciting! The “Best by Links” report can show you what types of content are attracting a lot of links.
- Ranking Pages by Backlinks: This report ranks the pages of a website based on their total number of backlinks. The pages can be sorted by clicking any of the columns.
- Filter Out the Clutter: Set the HTTP code filter to 200 to weed out redirects and broken pages. The video recommends sorting by the number of referring domains in descending order.
- Content Pattern Recognition: By analyzing the top pages you can see what types of content are attracting a ton of links. For example, in the video, half of Ahref’s most linked-to pages are unique research studies. The other half are guides on big topics like keyword research, SEO tips, link building, and outreach.
- Stats Equal Links: Statistics tend to drive links. People often link to references to back up their information. The video showed that many backlinks came from mentions of a specific percentage from the research study.
- Your Industry is Unique: What works in one industry may not work in another. It is important to analyze your competitor’s top pages to see what types of content attract backlinks.
4. Ride the Wave: The “Best by Links Growth” Report
- Timely Insights: This report shows you the link growth of pages based on the last day, 7 days, or 30 days. This gives you up-to-date insights on what is currently working.
- Recent Articles are Key: The video notes that most of the pages in this report are recent articles on the Ahrefs blog.
- New Referring Domains: You can also open the “New Referring Domains” report to see which new websites have linked to a page.
- Content Curation: A website may be using an RSS feeder to curate new content. This can drive links. Also, a website may include your content in an editor’s picks.
- The Takeaway: How websites are building links today may be different than how they were doing it 2 years ago.
5. The Raw Backlinks Report: Your Ultimate Link Detective
- A Deep Dive: This report shows you all the websites that are linking to a specific page.
- Key Metrics: There are some important metrics to note. Domain Rating (DR) shows the overall strength of a backlink profile. URL rating is how strong a backlink profile is for the target URL. The number of external links on a referring page also impacts the URL rating.
- Traffic: The traffic column shows how much referral traffic a page is getting.
- Surrounding Text and Anchor Text: This column gives you context about the link without having to visit the page.
- First Seen and Last Checked: The first seen column shows when the link was discovered and the last checked column shows when the page was last checked.
- Filtering: For larger websites with many backlinks, you can use filters. You can filter by link type, like dofollow and by language.
- Platform Filter: The platform filter lets you filter for certain types of websites, such as WordPress sites.
- Content Filter: The content filter lets you identify links that are within a big chunk of text.
The Secret Weapon: Resource Page Link Building Hack
- What is it?: Resource page link building involves finding pages that have curated lists of helpful resources.
- The Problem: Scraping search results often leads to irrelevant pages or pages with no outbound links.
- The Solution: Do a domain search on a website in your niche that has a lot of backlinks. Then set your filters to dofollow and language and search for the word “resources”.
- Analyzing Results: This will narrow down the results to only ones with the word resources in the titles, URLs, or anchor/surrounding texts. The video gives the example of finding a list called “The essential list of startup marketing resources”.
- The Metrics: Within Site Explorer you can see the number of external links on a page as well as the organic traffic numbers.
- Repeat and Conquer: Use other keywords like “round ups”, or “links” to find more resource pages.
Conclusion
By using the strategies above, you’re not just building backlinks, you’re building a powerful online presence. You’re moving beyond the outdated “spray and pray” approach to link building and becoming a strategic force in your niche. Armed with the knowledge you’ve gained today, you’re ready to go out there and dominate the search results. No more guessing, no more wasting time, just targeted and efficient link building. The backlinks are waiting – go get them!
FAQs
What is the difference between “referring domains” and “backlinks?” Referring domains are the unique websites that link to a page, while backlinks are the actual links from those domains. A single domain can have multiple backlinks to a page.
How important is Domain Rating (DR) when analyzing backlinks? DR represents the overall strength of a backlink profile of an entire website. It gives you an idea of the quality of a backlink. A higher DR generally indicates a stronger and more valuable link.
Why is analyzing my competitor’s backlinks important? Analyzing competitor’s backlinks allows you to understand their link-building strategies. This information can help you find link opportunities that they might be using that you are not.