competitor backlink analysis
Also called: link gap analysis, backlink gap analysis, link intersect
Competitor backlink analysis is the practice of studying which sites link to your rivals to find domains that link to them but not to you, then pursuing those same sites for your own backlinks. It is also called link gap analysis.
A backlink gap analysis compares your referring domains against several competitors at once. The output is a list of sites linking to them but not you, usually ranked by how many rivals each site links to.
How the gap gets prioritized
A common priority order:
- High: domains linking to all the competitors you entered
- Medium: domains linking to at least two
- Low: domains with a single competitor link
The logic is simple. If one site already links to three companies in your space, it covers your topic and is willing to link out, so you are a plausible next target. Most tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking) let you add several competitors and filter by Domain Rating, dofollow status, and traffic before you export prospects.
Two cautions. First, not every competitor link is reachable or worth chasing. Ahrefs suggests filtering to relevant, higher-authority domains (for example DR 50+ with real traffic) and reviewing each by hand rather than firing outreach at the whole list. Second, the data goes stale fast. Rivals earn new links constantly, so a gap list from six months ago is already thin.
This matters because Google treats links as “a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl.” Closing the gap with editorially earned links and descriptive anchors (not href="javascript:..." tricks Google can’t crawl) is what actually moves rankings, not the raw count.
How it affects your traffic
Competitor backlink analysis is where most link building campaigns start, because it turns a blank page into a ranked list of sites that already link to your competitors. Those prospects convert better than cold picks, since the site has already shown it links out in your niche. Our Link Building service runs this gap analysis, filters for quality and relevance, and handles the outreach, so you earn the same links your competitors rely on to outrank you.
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