Backlink analysis – Competitor analysis
It is extremely important for the operator of a website to keep track of the backlinks. This tells you who is linking to your own website and whether the linked pages are relevant and up-to-date. Backlink analysis can answer these questions. But not only with regard to your own website, but also the websites of your competitors. After all, the competition may be linking to pages that would benefit your own website.
What is the aim of the competitor analysis?
Keeping an eye on the competition with a backlink analysis has more than one goal:
- Rebuild links
As soon as you realize that the competition is linking to pages on which you would like to be linked yourself, the replication can be very efficient. Especially as soon as the thematic content of the pages matches the content of your own website.
- Identification of strategies
A closer look at the competing websites quickly reveals their marketing strategies. This is a great advantage if you come from the same industry and are roughly the same size. This allows you to create plans and strategies for your own marketing campaign. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the relationships.
- Identifying strategies without success
When analyzing the competition in detail, links that were created because of an intended campaign are always noticed. However, if this campaign produces few links, care should be taken not to make the same mistakes. It can still be an incentive to use this strategy, only better thought out, for your own website.
- Be inspired by the competition
The failed campaigns of competitors in particular serve as an incentive to better implement the ideas. How can you get more links with a better campaign or a simple change to your website? The analysis of competing backlinks provides inspiration for your own campaigns!
Procedure of a backlink analysis
It is worth taking a systematic approach, especially if the competition has been active on the web for a long time and can convince with significantly more backlinks.
1) Step – Identify the competition
Who is a direct competitor and who is an indirect competitor?
Which influencers are there in the industry?
Who else ranks for the same keywords as my own website?
2nd) Step – Collecting the data
As soon as the competition, as well as influencers or non-branch websites, have been identified, the backlinks are determined with the help of certain tools (backlink analyzers, link research tools, etc.).
Finally, it is possible to search through the data manually. However, this would take an enormous amount of time and is not recommended, especially for large amounts of data. Another option would be the sorting function, which is significantly more time-saving.
Excel or Google Docs can also be used. The links are processed in the process. Similar to the link search tools for desired metrics. Finally, you get a list which you can search through manually and sort according to the strongest links. The above-mentioned objectives are also taken into account.
