Checking Your Competitor Back Links – Beginner SEO Part 1
A vital part of SEO is link building, and obtaining links will most likely take up about 70% of your time when optimising your site (after on site optimisation, but that is another post entirely!). Whether that be through research of finding links and tools to help you a long the way, or writing articles and guest posting!
Instead of letting you get on with it I thought I would give you all a few pointers on how to go about some more in depth link research. Lets say that you already rank pretty well for a term (this also works if you rank poorly as well!). You are surrounded by your competitors and there doesn’t seem to be much movement going on. One of the best and most successful ways to make progress is to check the links that all of your competitors have!
If you are stuck in between them and check there back links, locating a whole bunch that you haven’t got, but can obtain, you can push yourself above them, and because you already have the power from links you have previously created!
In order to do this, you need to get yourself some tools, and hey presto I am here to supply! All of these are web based, and for all you advanced SEOs don’t hate on me for giving simple advice, read the title!
1. First up is Link Diagnosis – This web based device allows you to simply enter the URL of a desired website and analyse a group of links to that page! You can specify filters as well, which means you can look for page rank, whether you want links that go to the entire domain, or just to one page! You will have to download the Firefox Plugin in order to use it!
http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/
2. Now for those of you beginner SEOs that already know this, I am sorry but it is still very effective. Simply enter link: www.competitordomain.com into Google and you will be returned with a bunch of sites that have links to your competitors, unfortunately you will also be returned with there on site links as well, but still worth looking through!
3. Good old Yahoo Site Explorer! One of the most basic tools to use, this actually works in the same way as Google, returning pages that link to your competitor, except you can actually identify whether or not you want just links from outside your competitors domain! Much more effectuive than using Google, but it can return thousands of links and they can take ages to trawl though, still worth it for link counts!
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
4. Majestic SEO. One of my favourite tools for investigating your own sites because you can get extremely detailed results! It can also be used to find out the link counts of your competitors and for a small fee you can also use it to get very detailed results on your competitors!
http://www.majesticseo.com/
Anyways, I hope that this has helped, happy link locating, I will also try to get back to you guys in future if you have any questions, been really busy recently!
Bio:
Mark C works with a Web Design Agency in Worthing, heading up the SEO team for a Safari holidays tour operator!
Category: SEO
About the Author (Author Profile)
Without sounding to Corny - Mark C helps out where he can with any SEO issues around the web! The #1 Hurstpierpoint SEO, Follow Mark on Twitter if you want to know more: Marcus SEOSubscribe
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I like linkdiagnosis for its interface
+1 for that.
But site explorer remains my favorite.
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Site explorer is best for finding out link counts, but it lacks the ability to locate the higher PR links. Link Diagnosis may not find as many links, but will supply the best links for you (Generally Speaking). Still my favourite for deep analysis is Majestic SEO.
It may cost a little bit of cash, but best way for massive websites! Of course it is free for your own!
Twitter: netchunks
says:
Well LinkDiagnosis is quite cool, but I hate when sometimes you have to wait so long for the server to be available
Back to back post today ?
Btw, a funny thing happened in Linkdiagnosis. it showed me , retrieving information made before 14782 days..
Siva recently posted..ReqSearch Freshness
wow…this include all about SEO…..i liked it….can u please post some more things on some great SEO tips……
and thanks for sharing……
Digital Imagination recently posted..How to make Trojan using ‘C’ language
Iam new to this online marketing and Link Building. Is it really necesaary to have back links to my website. Mine is a travel related website with some good information but iam not getting much traffic. The site is almost 2 years old now
Twitter: netchunks
says:
Bro, Yes it is absolutely essential to build backlinks for two reasons:
1) You will get more visitors. See you left your link here, now I will visit your link.
2) Is needed to increase your site’s ranking in Google and other search engines
Hi There,
If you want to create back links, checking those that rank in the top ten and finding where they get the majority of theirs from is a good start. Many use directories and some use tour operator boards. I actually work with many tour operators around the UK, which means i can broaden my horizons in the SEO world!
I will create some more posts around link building, and generally improving your SEO profile!
The backlinks are really troublesome and time consuming… and still when i get some good backlinks google and yahoo take a lot of time to find them.
Maybe SEO in spanish is harder… still Im greatefull for you tips all of them are really helpfull
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Awsome site…. thanks.. for the share….
Wow Nice guide i like it Now its easy to find out my competitor back link.
I like this its help me to improve my logo design visibility On Search Engine .I like it.
Nice share And Nice blog.
UPDATE:
Just as a Quick note people! I just had a quick discussion with an SEO colleague of mine and in Google and Yahoo you can actually isolate links outside of your competitors domain:
Insert:
Link: http://www.competitordomain.com/ -site: http://www.competitordomain.com/
This will then return your competitors links excluding the ones coming from their own site, – will update post as well!
I hope that this helps!
Thanks!
Twitter: netchunks
says:
Thanks about the Update Mark
Excellent tips here. I used to use Arelis for finding links to my competitors but I lost the software when my computer crashed.
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Twitter: netchunks
says:
Oh bad to hear that you lost that software. Arelis also seems to be a good tool but is way too costly
Great SEO tutorial, Mark! As they say – knowing about your enemy/competitor is winning half the battle/competition!
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Twitter: netchunks
says:
You are right TechChunks, studying competition is an integral and Important part of SEO
Great info bro
post something more about SEO
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Twitter: netchunks
says:
Don’t worry Technoholic, Mark will be posting more about SEO pretty soon. That is why you see the “part 1″ Tag out there….This is a Series
Hi.. Thanks for sharing this very useful information.. I’m 1st time using link diagnosis and majestic seo.
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All definitely worth a try!
Those two in particular offer the best results, Link Diagnosis will give you some of the highest page rank sites, and easy to filter!
Good luck grabbing those competitor links!
Oh.. really.. sound interesting.. but when i go to diagnosis site, it must download the tools before we can use right?
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Twitter: netchunks
says:
Well for LinkDiagnosis, you must download the firefox plugin while for Majestic SEO you will need to create an account with them (BTW they also have plugins for browsers but that is optional)
Hi Shiva Chettri..
Thanks for your respond..
I will try link diagnosis..
but, have any tools like link diagnosis there?
Azuan recently posted..Dapat Balik PR5 – Google Pagerank Sedang Update ke
Twitter: netchunks
says:
If you do not want to download plugin of Linkdiagnosis then you can use MajesticSEO. In MajesticSEO you will only need to register an account to view the report…no downloading anything
Oh..
that it..
OK.. thanks for suggestion..
Azuan recently posted..Dapat Balik PR5 – Google Pagerank Sedang Update ke
top!!
I have only tested the Google and the Yahoo Site Explorer methods and they both seem to find pretty good for me. Will check out the other tools though, as they might give some more useful details. Thanks for sharing!
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I think some of the tools like at http://www.majesticseo.com/will give you what you need provided that you subscribe to them which is good. I prefer Yahoo and google explorer method for now.
Thanks for this useful info. I’m going to try some of these.
Craig recently posted..ToysRus Coupons
The right SEO tools are playing important role in SEO. Link building, competitor analysis and own website research are the key to achieve higher SERP.
Can anyone tell me the method to check the rankings and backlinks of the competitor website.