# Competitor backlink analysis: turn a rival’s links into your list

A rival's backlink profile is a list of people who have already decided that products like yours are worth linking to. Most of it you cannot have. The point of the exercise is to find the part you can, which is usually a tenth of the export and is enough work for a month.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/competitor-backlink-analysis

## Pick the right rivals first

Your search rivals are not always your business rivals. The sites to analyse are the ones that hold the results pages for the searches you want, which may include a blog, a directory or a much larger company.

- Take three or four queries your buyers use, and list who ranks in the top five.
- Keep the ones that sell something like what you sell, and the ones that are lists in your category.
- Drop the giants. You are not earning a link from a page a thousand sites link to, and their profile is mostly noise for your purposes.
- Two rivals of a similar size to you is a better study than eight of any size.

## Get the export

You need referring domains rather than individual links: one row per site, not one row per URL. Every link index has its own crawl, so two tools will disagree about the same rival, and both are partial.

1. **Choose the view** Referring domains, sorted by whatever authority score the tool uses, filtered to links that are still live.
2. **Export to a sheet** Keep four columns: the domain, the page linking, the page it links to, and the anchor. Delete the rest.
3. **Do the same for the second rival** Then mark the domains that appear for both. A site that links to two of your rivals and not to you is the most qualified name on the list.
4. **Remove what you cannot use** Scrapers, aggregators, sites in languages you do not serve, and anything that looks generated. Usually half the export.

The free version: Search Console's Links report shows only your own links, but Bing Webmaster Tools includes a backlink comparison against another domain at no cost, which is enough to start.

## The four kinds you will find

Sort every surviving row into one of these. The sorting is the analysis: the raw list means nothing until it is grouped by what you would have to do to get the same link.

| Kind | What it looks like | Can you earn it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Listings | Directories, alternatives pages, category lists, review sites | Yes, today. Submit and wait. |
| Coverage | An article about a study, a launch, a funding round, a controversy | Only with something of your own worth covering. |
| Integrations and partners | "Works with" pages, marketplace listings, documentation of another product | Yes, if you build the integration. |
| Editorial | A guide that cites them as an example or a source, in a paragraph | Sometimes, if you have the better reference for that paragraph. |

There is a fifth pile: bought placements. You will recognise them by the site that covers four unrelated industries and by an anchor that reads like a product page title. Leave those alone. Google's policy covers them and the links are mostly ignored anyway.

## Turn it into ten emails

An export is not a plan. Take the listings pile and the editorial pile, pick ten rows, and decide the specific reason each site would link to you rather than to them.

1. **Open the page that carries the link** Not the home page. Read the paragraph or the list entry where the rival appears, and ask what the reader wanted there.
2. **Decide what you would offer** A free tool, a clearer explanation, a corrected fact, a category they are missing. If you cannot name it in one clause, skip the row.
3. **Check for a defect** Run a broken link checker over the page. A dead link on a list gives you a reason to write that is about them and not about you.
4. **Write one paragraph, by hand** Name the section, name what you have, make it easy to say no. Ten of these beats a hundred sent from a tool.

> Never write "I saw you linked to our competitor". It tells the editor the email is about your ranking, not about their page, and it is the fastest delete on the list.

## What the analysis tells you besides links

Half the value is not a link list at all. Reading where a rival's links come from tells you how they got attention, which is usually the more useful finding.

- A cluster of coverage on one date means a launch or a study. Look at what it was.
- Many links to one page means an asset: a tool, a report, a template. That page is their best marketing and you can see it for free.
- Many integration pages means the product is embedded in an ecosystem, which is a moat and also a map of partners you could approach.
- Almost all listings and nothing else means they have not earned anything yet, which tells you the category is open.

Worked example. Two rivals both have thirty links to the same kind of page: a free calculator. Neither has a link to a comparison page. The finding is not a list of emails, it is that a free calculator is what gets linked in this category, and that nobody has written the comparison yet.

## How often to repeat it

Once a quarter is plenty, and the second run is faster because you only look at what is new.

- Export again, and filter to domains that appeared since last time.
- New coverage tells you what your rival shipped or published.
- New listings tell you about directories that have appeared in the category.
- Links you have won since last time go in a separate tab, so you can see the profile you are building rather than the one you are chasing.

Judge your side the same way you judge theirs: referring domains a person in your field would recognise, and what they send. A count of links is a vanity number in both directions.

## Questions

### How do I analyse a competitor's backlinks?

Export their referring domains from a backlink index, keep the domain, the linking page, the target page and the anchor, then sort every row into listings, coverage, integrations and editorial. The sorting is the analysis, because each pile needs a different action from you.

### Can I check competitor backlinks for free?

Partly. Bing Webmaster Tools includes a backlink comparison against another domain at no cost, and it is enough to see the shape of a profile. Search Console shows only your own links. The paid indexes give more depth and each one crawls differently, so no tool has the whole picture.

### What is a backlink gap analysis?

Listing the sites that link to two or more of your rivals but not to you. Those domains have already shown they will link to a product in your category, which makes them the most qualified names on any outreach list you can build.

### Should I try to copy every competitor link?

No. Most of a profile is coverage you cannot replicate and placements you should not. Take the listings you can join and the editorial pages where you genuinely have the better reference, and ignore the rest.

### How often should I run this?

Once a quarter, filtering to what is new since the last run. More often than that and you are watching a number instead of doing the work that changes it.

## Read next

- [Backlink gap: the sites that link to your rivals and not to you](https://porteur.ai/guides/backlink-gap): Find the sites that link to rivals and not to you. Read the page, make the ask, and track new links. A practical backlink gap workflow.
- [Referring domains: what the count means and what moves it](https://porteur.ai/guides/referring-domains): Learn what referring domains are, how they differ from backlinks, why breadth beats volume, how tools count them, and what actually moves the number.
- [The outreach email that gets a reply](https://porteur.ai/guides/link-outreach-email): One paragraph, sent to the person who wrote the page, about their page. The template, the openings that get deleted, and the single follow-up.
- [Broken link building: find a dead page, write the replacement, tell the sites](https://porteur.ai/guides/broken-link-building): Find a dead page other sites still link to, write the page that replaces it, and tell them. The five steps, the tools for each, and the email.
- [The best backlink checkers: your links, a rival’s, and the gap](https://porteur.ai/guides/best-backlink-checkers): Pick a backlink checker you can trust, see what the scores really mean, and turn a rival’s links into a shortlist you can win next.
- [Backlink checker](https://porteur.ai/tools/backlink-checker): Type a domain and see how many sites link to it, how many only with nofollow, the spam score, and the twelve strongest linking domains. Free, no account.
- [Link gap](https://porteur.ai/glossary/link-gap): Link gap means sites that link to your rivals but not to you. Here is why it matters, how to find it, and how to turn it into links.
- [Referring domain](https://porteur.ai/glossary/referring-domain): A referring domain is a unique site that links to yours. Here is why the count matters more than backlink totals, how to check it, and what to do.

Paste your URL and the free check names your rivals on the searches that matter and the sites that link to them and not to you, in about thirty seconds. Free check: https://porteur.ai/