Welcome to the newest installment of our educational Next Level series! In our last episode, Brian Childs equipped copywriters with the tools they need to succeed with SEO. Today, he's back to share how to use Link Explorer to find link building opportunities based upon your competitors' external inbound links. Read on and level up!
In Moz’s SEO training classes, we discuss how to identify and prioritize sources of backlinks using a mix of tools. One tactic to quickly find high Domain Authority sites that have a history of linking to pages discussing your topic is to study your competitors' backlinks. This process is covered in-depth during the SEO Bootcamp.
In this article, I’ll show how to create and export a list of your competitor’s backlinks that you can use for targeting activities. This assumes you've already completed keyword research and have identified competitors that rank well in the search results for these queries. Use those competitors for the following analysis.
How to find backlinks?
Step 1: Navigate to Link Explorer
Link Explorer is a tool used to research the backlink profile of a website. It will show you the quality of inbound links using metrics like Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score. You can do a good amount of backlink research with the free version, but to enjoy all its capabilities you'll need full access; you can get that access for free with a 30-day trial of Moz Pro.
Step 2: Enter your competitor’s URL
I suggest opening your competitor’s site in a browser window and then copying the URL. This will reduce any spelling errors and the possibility of incorrectly typing the domain name. An example of a common error is incorrectly adding “www” to the URL when that's not how it renders for the site.
Step 3: Navigate to the "Inbound Links" tab
The Inbound Links tab will display all of the pages that link to your competitor’s website. In order to identify sources of links that are delivering link equity, I set the parameters above the list as follows: Link type - Follow, Links Status - Active. This will show all external backlinks providing link equity to any page on your competitor’s site.
Step 4: Export backlink data into .csv
Most reports in Link Explorer will allow you to export to .csv. Save these results and then repeat for your other competitors.
Step 5: Compile backlink .csv results from all competitors
Once you have Link Explorer backlink exports from the top 5–10 competitors, compile them into one spreadsheet.
Step 6: Sort all backlinks by Page Authority
Page Authority is a 1–100 scale developed by Moz that estimates the likelihood of a page’s ability to rank in a search result, based on our understanding of essential ranking factors. Higher numbers suggest the page is more authoritative and therefore has a higher likelihood of ranking. Higher Page Authority pages also will be delivering more link equity to your competitor’s site. Use Page Authority as your sorting criteria.
Step 7: Review all linking sites for opportunities
Now you have a large list of sites linking to your competitors for keywords you are targeting. Go down the list of high Page Authority links and look for sites or authors that show up regularly. Use your preferred outreach strategy to contact these sites and begin developing a relationship.
Want to learn more SEO processes?
If you like these step-by-step SEO processes, you'll likely enjoy the SEO training classes provided by Moz Academy. These instructor-led webinars show you how to use a variety of tools to implement SEO. Learn more here:
This is probably the best tutorial for using Moz OSE in an effective manner, I do have to recommend also cross-referencing with other backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, as each tool will usually find different backlinks than the one before. Moz OSE is an awesome place to start though! Thanks for these great tips Brian.
This is the absolute best way to gather your high-ranking competitor's backlinks. As much as I love the OSE, I have to also mention that cross-referencing the link analysis with the same competitors in Ahrefs or SEMrush is a great idea as well.
Wow! It's really amazing. This Next Level series making me crazy. I just analyze the backlinks of all my competitors after reading this post. Eagerly waiting for next "Next level Series".
Thank you for this because I really want to know my competitor's whereabouts and what am I really missing.
Hi Brian Childs, thanks for share this post, but I have a question for you? this is a great post but in my case I'm trying to learn in deep SEO, but mostly Link Building, there is many blogs or tutorials out there claiming be the "ultimate guide" but in your case which sources will you recommend to any student who really want learn.
I will recommend backlinko to anyone!
Thanks for sharing ! But i hope every seo expert doing same way. what about next level? This same old school level technique.
Hey Parvez.
Thanks for the comment and I think it is a fair critique. The Next Level series is really focused on helping people learn some of these core skills and processes. Some of the posts may be new insights, others might be vanilla-SEO tactics. My goal is to help raise the productivity of people across the digital marketing landscape.
What might be old news for one person can be insight for others. We all come to SEO from different backgrounds. Next Level posts are helping bring folks to the same place so we're all speaking the same language and using best practices.
Have the same concern
Brian, you've showcased a very simple and effective way to find the list of competitor's backlinks using Moz OSE. Also, when you combine the list of backlinks from various competitors and sort them, we are also able to find out the most common sites used for link building. There will be repetitive sites as well that multiple competitors will be receiving links from. So, those repetitive sites with higher authority ranks should be given higher priority.
What are your thoughts, Brian?
Touching on your question there Himani, backlink checking tools such as Ahrefs actually offer tools (e.g. link intersect) to find sites that have been used by multiple competitors. The idea is that if multiple competitors are on the same site then this site must be worth linking from to your own website.
Obviously this isn't always the case, some competitors may just link blindly based off their competition, but that's up to you to decide.
Yeah, these tools are great. Moz has the same feature ... not sure where AHREFs got it from :) ... in Open Site Explorer under the tab "Link Opportunities". Link Intersect allows you to check for sites that are linking to two competitors, but not linking to you.
I'd take a look at the Link Opportunities tab in Open Site Explorer. Some nice features in there.
Ah, I wouldn't have a clue what Moz has to offer, I don't use Moz myself. Good to know though.
Hey Brian, just wanna ask you that why while checking competitors back-link in Moz it send reports through email not give option for import in csv or any other format? I know it's not a big deal to discuss but just want to know the actual reason.
Thanks in advance for you response.
I don't know Brian thoughts, but, as for me, I think you just gave me a great strategy! Brilliant idea, thank you very much!
Nice post,
But i wonder does MOZ updated the backlinks frequently?
for case study :
One of our website organicvisit.com has about 7.5K backlinks when checked with Majestic.com but why only few backlinks about 30+ discovered with MOZ?
Also the DA/PA showing only 1/1 even though the domain had TrustFlow 15 and Citation Flow 40 at Majestic?
Does MOZ had different way to index or the MOZ technology on indexing had some adjustment?
Any advice or thought would be very highly appreciated as i'm still new and learning this SEO improvement factors.
Thanks alot in advance.
Kind regards,
XNIUX
Really a nice strategy for link building but being a newbie in blogging field less people are interested to give you a backlink.
How to overcome that situation?
I appreciate this strategy. Always try to not reinvent the wheel.
Nice article about link building, if my site spam score is 2. how can i get that into 0 spam score
Good advice to copy the links of the competition. I will definitely put it into practice to find quality backlinks and improve SEO. Thank you.
This has been an insightful piece of information. However I have been using ahref and semrush for long, but your post adds too many new tools to my stack. Amazing!
Thanks for sharing this. We use both Open site explorer and Ahrefs for finding competitor backlinks. A combination of both will help you to find the best link opportunities. Instead of searching for the backlinks that point to the root domain, you can search for links that point to the similar content on your website/blog (infographics or power pages). This is very helpful if you're running a campaign to build backlinks to targeted pages.
Great post!! I like so much open site explorer, but i use semrush too. Is the best combination that you can do to have all controlled.
¡Such a good guide Brian! Im definitely implementing this into my estrategy :)
A very informative guide on SEO. I hope to follow some of the tips you outlined on my websites. Thanks for share...
This is always a valuable tool! A necessity for the never ending battle of link building.
Open Site Explorer is a tool used to research the link profile of an internet site. It just goes to show you a better quality of inbound joins utilizing metrics like Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score. You can do a good amount of research with the free form, but to experiences all its capabilities you’ll necessary full access. You can get that access for free with a 30 -day trial of Moz Pro.
Interesting post Brian!
Open site explorer is a great tool but personally I prefer Ahrefs, it's very good too.
For those who can not afford to pay these tools every month we can share them in some pages for 15 € / month. For example in foro20.com in the premium tab you have this possibility.
short but clear, and easy to understand when it comes to mozbar. there are several tools though, i think mozbar can be complemented with others too. thanks for the tips.
Nice guide, Backlink Watch is also best seo tools for competitor backlinks analysis.
Really Nice Information, but you can check manually in Google.com like links:sitename. Anyway there are lots of tools available in today market. Thanks
You can use links: if you like but it's well known that doing so doesn't work at all.
The "next level"?
Great write up as always, Brian. I recall reading about a script or site that would take that CSV and find the 404s. Ring a bell
Thanks for sharing this idea, i use a tool to check the backlinks from the competitors. But the Openexpolder is a good tool too.
thanks for sharing, i like MozBar from Moz
Me too! I love MozBar. Makes it really easy to see page attributes.
Another one here! I don't contemplate Chrome without MozBar.
My favourite tools are Ahrefs, SEMrush and Moz. I like those better than Majestic because it gives you tons and tons of useless backlinks which you won't be working with anyway.
This is really an easy and great way to find competitor's backlink. I was using SEOprofiler. Hope will give it a try soon.
Thanks for sharing, Back links are the most important factor for getting the ranking, Your post is really helpful when we find of competitor websites' back links..
Really enjoying the "Next Level" series, as an avid up-skiller learning the tools and techniques of the trade is a big help!
Whenever I look for competitor's back-links I check for both Moz and Ahrefs. I see lot of difference between them. I get to see more backlinks on Ahrefs than MOZ. What could be the reason?
You are totally right, Moz doesn't show many backlinks, takes a lot of time to find it.
Moz back links are fully different that back links report provided by Google search console? whom to believe now?
Thanks for this!