Competitor Backlink Analysis: A Practical Guide
Your link gap is the list of sites that link to three competitors and not to you. Here is how to build that list and turn it into a real pitch queue.
Competitor backlink analysis means pulling the referring domains of several competitors, finding the sites that link to more than one of them and not to you, and using that overlap as your outreach target list. It turns a vague goal — "get more backlinks" — into a specific, ranked list of real websites to pitch.
It is the research phase behind most of what link building actually looks like day to day: fewer cold guesses, more informed pitches to sites that have already shown they will link to a company like yours.
On this page
What is a "link gap," exactly?
The set of sites that link to your competitors but not to you. Pull the referring domains for three to five direct competitors, combine the lists, and count how many competitors each domain links to. A domain linking to three out of four competitors and skipping you is telling you something specific: it already covers your category, it already links out, and it simply has not found a reason to include you yet.
This is a different exercise from generic link building, where you are guessing at what kind of content might earn a link somewhere. A link gap list replaces the guess with evidence: you already know these particular sites publish content that includes a link to a company in your space, because they are doing it for your competitors right now. The only open question is what it will take to get your name added to that list too, which is a much narrower and more answerable question than "who might want to link to us."
| Signal | What it means for priority |
|---|---|
| Links to 3+ competitors, not you | Highest priority — proven willingness to link in your category |
| Links to 1 competitor only | Worth a look, but could be a one-off relationship rather than a pattern |
| Links to competitors via paid or sponsored posts | Low priority — not evidence of an editorial link you could earn |
How do you actually pull the data?
Through a backlink index, because Search Console only shows links pointing at your own site, never a competitor's [1]. Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz each maintain their own independent crawl of the web's link graph, and any one of them will export a competitor's referring domains as a spreadsheet. Run the same export for each competitor and combine the files before you start filtering.
No two tools crawl the exact same set of pages, and their link counts for the same domain will differ, sometimes by a wide margin. That is not a bug to chase down; it means the analysis is directional rather than exact, and a domain that shows up as a strong overlap target in one tool is worth trusting even if a second tool reports slightly different numbers for it. Pick one tool, stay consistent with it across the whole comparison, and do not waste time reconciling small differences between vendors.
Pick three to five real competitors
Choose sites you actually compete with for buyers, not just for a keyword. A company ranking near you for one term but selling something unrelated will pollute the comparison.
Export referring domains for each
Domain-level data, not individual URLs — you want the count of distinct sites linking in, not every backlink each of them happens to have.
Combine the lists and count overlaps
A simple spreadsheet with one row per domain and one column per competitor, counting which competitors each domain links to, does the whole job.
Sort by overlap count, then filter
Highest overlap first, then remove anything that looks paid, toxic, or clearly irrelevant to your category before you build the final pitch list.
Which of those links are even worth chasing?
Not all of them. A backlink tool's spam or toxicity score is a useful first filter — treat a domain that scores high on manipulative-link indicators as one to skip rather than pitch, since Google's spam policies already discount links built purely to move rankings, and pitching a site like that wastes effort on a link unlikely to carry any real value even if you land it [3]. The same filtering logic runs deeper in toxic backlinks and the disavow file, which covers how to tell a manipulative link from an ordinary low-authority one.
Paid placements are a second filter worth applying separately from toxicity. A competitor's sponsored post on a mid-size publication proves that publication sells placements, not that its editorial team will publish about you for free. Keep those domains on a separate "paid opportunity" list rather than mixing them into your organic outreach queue.
Spotting a paid placement from the outside takes a quick read, not a tool. Look for a "sponsored," "partner content" or "in collaboration with" label near the byline, an unusually promotional tone for the publication's normal voice, or a URL path that includes something like /sponsored/ or /partner/. None of these alone is proof, but two or three together on the same page are a reliable enough signal to route that domain to the paid list instead of the earned-link queue.
What do you actually do with the finished list?
Pitch it, ranked by overlap first. For each domain, note which competitor's page it links to and why — a resource roundup, a guest post, a data citation — because that context tells you what kind of content or pitch that site actually publishes. A domain that links to a competitor's original research wants original research from you, not a generic press release.
Batch the outreach by content type rather than working straight down the ranked list. Every domain that linked to a competitor's resource roundup gets one pitch template; every domain that linked to a data-driven study gets a different one built around whatever number or dataset you can offer. Writing three or four templates this way takes about the same effort as writing one generic pitch, and it converts noticeably better, because each version actually matches what that group of sites has already shown it wants to publish.
A link gap list without the 'why' behind each entry is just a bigger to-do list. The reason a site linked to a competitor is the same reason it will link to you, and skipping that step is the most common way this research goes to waste.
Some of the best targets show up on more than one platform. Community sites and forums often link to competitors inside genuine discussion threads rather than curated resource pages, which is a different pitch entirely — see Reddit mentions and community marketing for how that channel works, since a backlink tool's crawl of a forum thread rarely captures the full context you need before you show up in it.
Track outcomes the same way you tracked the target list, in one place. A spreadsheet with a row per domain, a status column — not contacted, pitched, replied, linked, declined — and the date of the last touch turns a one-time research project into a programme you can report on. Without it, six months from now nobody can say which quarter's list actually produced links and which one just sat in a folder.
How do you avoid just copying a competitor's link profile?
By treating the list as a floor, not a ceiling. A domain that already links to three competitors is a safe bet, but a genuinely new source — one that has never linked to anyone in your category — is what actually grows the category's collective link pool rather than redistributing the same handful of publishers. Spend some of the queue on domains with zero competitor overlap that your own research turns up, not just the ones the tool hands you.
A practical split that works for most link building programmes: roughly two-thirds of pitching effort on the overlap list, since it is the highest-probability work, and the remaining third on sites you found yourself — a new trade publication, a newsletter that started covering your category this year, a podcast nobody has pitched yet. The gap list keeps the pipeline moving every month; the sites nobody else has found are what your link profile looks like that a competitor's own gap analysis, run against you a year from now, would not be able to replicate.
Questions people also ask
How many competitors should I analyze at once?
Three to five is enough. More than that mostly adds noise, and the list of sites linking to all of them tends to overlap heavily once you get past the first handful of real competitors.
What if a competitor's best links come from paid placements?
Skip them. The goal is a list of sites you can realistically earn a link from, and a paid link tells you nothing about what kind of content that site's editorial team would actually publish.
Do I need a paid tool for this, or can Search Console do it?
Search Console only shows links to your own site, not a competitor's, so a third-party backlink index — Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz all maintain one — is required for the comparison itself.
How often should I redo this analysis?
Quarterly for an active link building programme, or whenever a competitor visibly jumps in rankings and you want to know whether new links explain it.
Sources
- How to Do a Competitor Backlink Analysis (Step-by-Step) — Ahrefs (checked 23 September 2026)
- Toxic Backlinks: What They Are and How to Deal With Them — Ahrefs (checked 23 September 2026)
- Google's spam policies for Google Search — Google Search Central (checked 23 September 2026)
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Who wrote this
Ibrahem HelalCo-founder
Leads strategy and delivery.
Works on: SEO, GEO
Reviewed before publishing by Jeremy Zava, Co-founder.
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