Key Takeaways

  • Competitor backlink analysis unveils useful data to improve your SEO strategy.
  • Appropriate tools ensure that backlink research will be done effectively.
  • The best mixture of free and paid options is appropriate for all kinds of companies.

Of course, backlinks remain the core of SEO, which makes it possible for websites to be ranked higher and bring organic traffic. 

Amazingly, 96.55% of all pages get no search traffic coming from Google. That is enough to stress the importance of backlinks, given that Google named links as one of its top three ranking factors back in 2016. Google’s Gary Illyes said in 2023 that he no longer places links in the top three, but he still called them important. 

The focus of this article will be on how to find competitors backlinks through both free and paid methods in 2026 and helping you improve your link-building strategy to be ahead of the competition.

What Is a Competitor Backlink Analysis, and Why Is It Important?

Competitor backlink analysis means analyzing the backlinks of your competitor’s sites.

Why does it matter?

  • Identify Link-Building Opportunities: Find out about the websites linking to your competitors and replicate their strategy.
  • Understand Competitor Strategies: Learn what works for others in your niche.
  • Increase Rankings: The number of backlinks in the top positions usually has 3.8 times as many backlinks as the pages ranked between positions 2 and 10. Getting more quality backlinks can make your website reach these much-desired top rankings.
  • Stay Ahead: Knowing your competitors’ moves means you are not lagging behind in the SEO race.
  • Opposite view:
Some would say that, with algorithms constantly changing, Google is soon going to kill the backlin. Others say the focus has shifted to content quality, user experience, and topical relevance. Though these things are important, most would consider backlinks as still a core of SEO, the clear-cut way to attain authority and higher rankings.

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks in 7 Steps

It may sound complicated, but finding your competitors’ backlinks is actually relatively simple when broken down into manageable steps. In this roadmap, you will learn where your competitors get their link equity and how you can either copy or beat their strategies.

Step 1: Find Your Top Competitors

First, learn the ranking of the competitors for the keywords you want to target. You can easily do this through Google Search, Semrush, or Ahrefs to identify the websites that rank best in your identified niche.

Step 2: Select the Most Relevant Competitor Sites

There are strong and weak competitors in the marketplace. This means you should choose the ones relevant to a particular category of interest to make sure the results align with your goals.

Step 3: Analyze Your Competitors’ Backlink Strategies

Dig deeper. Is the website using strategies like guest blogging, directory submission, or partnerships to gain backlinks?

Step 4: Identify the Backlinks of Your Competitors

Using tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz, get a link list of websites linking to your competitor.

Step 5: Find Hidden Linking Opportunities

Find links on pages that don’t currently link to you. More times than not, competitors’ links can reveal hidden linking opportunities.

By the numbers: Since January 2013, 66.5% of the links pointing to more than 2 million sampled websites have rotted, according to Ahrefs, so a competitor’s dead or lost links are often an open door for your own outreach.

Important

An analysis by Ahrefs shows that pages that attract links from more domains also receive more search traffic.

Step 6: Learn from Competitor Link-Building Tactics

Are your competitors trying to reach certain industries, blogs, or forums? But this does not mean that you should change the whole content strategy to fit theirs. Instead, adapt their tactics to fit yours.

Step 7: Select the Best Tools for Backlink Analysis

Select the tools that fit your budget and needs. Recent data reveals that 82% of SEOs depend on backlink analysis tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush, highlighting the importance of analyzing competitors’ link profiles. Let’s see how Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can assist in the process.

  • Summary

Competitor backlink analysis is important for fine-tuning your SEO strategy. Identify who your top competitors are, and dive deep into their backlinks to uncover hidden opportunities. Then, replicate their success to gain a competitive advantage. With tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz, the entire process has become very efficient, saving you time by providing actionable insights.

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks with Semrush

Source: Semrush Backlink Analytics

Any business owner would know that Semrush is one of the most sought-after SEO tools in the market today. Since April 2026 it has been part of Adobe and still operates under the Semrush name. According to Backlinko, it has the fastest backlink discovery platform, which makes it perfect for competitor strategy analysis.

  • Important:
Want to know how I grew my website from 0 to 100K visitors using Semrush? 
It was through implementing a competitor analysis strategy. Using the Organic Research tool in Semrush, I studied the keyword strategies of 20 competitors to identify high-value keywords driving traffic to their sites. That’s how competitor strategy would come into play in SEO.

Free Method: View some backlink data with a free Semrush account, which allows only a limited number of searches per day. This is ideal for small businesses or preliminary research works.

Source: Semrush Competitor Analysis

Paid Method: Enjoy all the benefits of Semrush’s tools, plus access to the Semrush backlink database with additional features.

Expert opinion

Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, considers Semrush to be the number one link-building tool because of its high-quality data and multiple features.

Brian Dean

Backlinko

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks with Ahrefs

Ahrefs runs one of the largest backlink indexes. It reports about 35 trillion external backlinks across 209.5 million domains, while Semrush is cited as having over 390 million referring domains in its database. Ahrefs is especially useful for competitive analysis at the individual business level.

Free Method (Up to 100 Backlinks)

Source: Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Ahrefs provides a free backlink checker. Users are able to get a snapshot of up to 100 backlinks for any given domain. 

Paid Method (All Backlinks)

Source: Ahrefs Site Explorer

Subscribers can unlock the entire backlink profile of competitors to analyze anchor text, refer domains, and more.

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks with Moz

Moz is a great option for companies that need reliable data. It is a more focused toolset than Semrush (which grew to 60 tools by 2025), but Link Explorer and the Domain Authority metric make it a good contender in backlink analysis.

Free Method

Source: Moz Link Explorer

Run up to 10 queries per month with the free version of Link Explorer for detailed data on backlinks, the anchor text, and domain authority.

Paid Method

Source: Moz Pro

Moz Pro gives access to detailed backlink data with more in-depth analysis and advanced filtering.

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks with Ubersuggest

Source: Ubersuggest Backlink Checker

Ubersuggest is an easy-to-use tool made for small businesses and beginners. It provides easy backlink analysis at an affordable price. At the moment, there are over 50,000 Ubersuggest users, ranging from small businesses to enterprises.

Expert opinion

By testing the platform, Matt Walsh found that one can use Ubersuggest to its full potential both on smartphones and tablets. All of its features were readily available, and none of its functionality was compromised, providing a seamless experience on mobile devices.

Matt Walsh

Style Factory Blogger

How to Find Competitors’ Backlinks Manually

Source: Google

Manual research is not as expensive as other methods, so even when operating under a limited budget, you are likely to find useful information.

Here’s how:

  • Just type your competitor’s name in the Google search bar. Since organic traffic is responsible for 53% of all site traffic, focusing on top-ranking pages can reveal important backlink opportunities.
  • Check out how often they are being mentioned in the forums, blog posts, or on social media sites.
  • You can find free extensions such as MozBar that are useful for analyzing backlinks.

Conclusion

Finding competitors’ backlinks doesn’t have to be that hard to find. Be it free methods, advanced tools like Semrush, or a mix of strategies, knowing your competitors can give you a real advantage.

By understanding their strategies, emulating their successes, and tapping into new opportunities, you can take your link-building game to the next level and rise through the search engine rankings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, backlink analysis of competitors helps to find high-quality link opportunities, understand their SEO strategies, and uncover niche-relevant websites to improve your own ranking. This gives insight into the tactics for link building and emphasizes gaps to strengthen your site’s authority.

The best way to do this is to make use of SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz. These platforms give you comprehensive backlink profiles, including referring domains, anchor texts, and domain authority metrics that let you analyze the backlink strategy of your competitors effectively.

In Ahrefs or Semrush, insert the competitor domain, run a report for backlinks, and export it into a .csv or Excel format. Most of these tools will have an option for exports with a custom filter on particular metrics: domain authority and anchor text, to name a few.

Focus on links from high-authority, industry-specific domains that reach a comparable audience. Use SEO tools to filter results by relevance to industry, domain authority, and anchor text. Manually check that linking pages are relevant to your content and target keywords.

Google’s old “link:” operator no longer returns reliable data, so search for your competitor’s domain in quotes and exclude their own site (for example “competitor.com” -site:competitor.com); review the search results for linking pages, check their press releases, guest posts, or social profiles to see where they sourced their backlinks.

Related reading