27 Sep 3 Ways to Poach Backlinks from Your Competition
In the world of digital marketing, a strong presence on Google should be a priority for every business owner. The world’s most commonly used website is still responsible for over three times the amount of traffic as social media, including clicks from consumers who are actively ready to start the buyer’s journey.
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While the Google algorithm for ranking websites is updated over 500 times per year, some elements remain central ingredients in the recipe for success. Backlinks are unquestionably one of the most important metrics, which is why embracing a backlink checker should be high on the agenda.
There’s a strong chance that you understand the basics of backlinks as well as their value to your hopes of climbing the Search Engine Results Pages. However, one of the most effective practices is to poach backlinks from your competitors. You can achieve this goal by using advanced backlink checker tactics. Here’s how.
Use Guest Blogging
Guest blogging remains one of the very best ways to secure backlinks to your site for a number of reasons. It allows you to focus on having your site linked to high-quality content that Google loves. Likewise, it gives you the best shot at securing quick backlink opportunities.
Better still, guest blogs help you reach new audiences and prove yourself as an authoritative voice in the industry (in addition to boosting your search engine visibility). However, this can only happen when you get your content seen in the right places.
Some high authority sites only use in-house content creators or charge for a link. Thankfully, using a backlink checker like ahrefs.com allows you to see where your competitors have placed their guest blogs. You can subsequently reach out to the site owners to see if they’ll host one of your blogs. This is also an opportunity to research their existing content to see what type of posts they like, as well as the quality that you need to surpass.
It can take a few days (or sometimes weeks) for content to be indexed by search engines. With this in mind, you may also reach out to edit existing blog posts on an author’s site. This allows you to add content that is relevant to your backlink or even replace existing links to direct users to your site. As long as the new webpage you’re linking to is of higher quality, the website owner will be more than happy with the alteration.
Steal Your Competitors Fans
Guest blogging is great but will require you to spend a lot of time creating new content. Wouldn’t it be better if you could get other websites to naturally promote your site through backlinks? You can.
Once again, a backlink checker is your greatest asset. When running a search on your competitor’s backlinks, you’ll see which sources have made multiple mentions. These authors clearly respect your competitor and feel that their own audiences can benefit from finding out about the content on the linked site.
Strike up a winning partnership with that referring site, and they will naturally start to link out to your site when it’s appropriate for their own content. After all, linking out to high-quality content helps their SEO too (note I’ve added hyperlinks to this blog post for good reason). They won’t be linking to your site because they need to, they’ll add the backlinks because they want to!
To make this happen, you’ll want to head to the Site Explorer, followed by the Best by Links relating to your competitor’s site. A LInk Intersect tool will subsequently let you see those fans that are linking out several times. When reaching out, it’s usually best to use a soft sell approach while also sending them the content that you think will resonate with them. A strong first impression can be the foundation for building long-term partnerships.
Utilise The Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is arguably the most effective way to steal a competitor’s links. Rather than simply getting your content shown on the same websites, you will be aiming to replace the links completely. In short, your visibility on the SERPs will rise while theirs will simultaneously fall.
So, how do you use the skyscraper technique? Step one is to use the backlink checker to see which of your competitor’s web pages or blog posts has gained the most links. Perhaps they have produced a guide on a particular topic, for example, that other websites subsequently feel will add value to their audiences.
Step two is simply to produce better content. A guide that includes newer and more relevant statistics, additional points, or infographics to underline a point being made will give even greater value to the readers. Once you have done, reach out to websites that are linking out to your competitor’s page to ask whether they’d like to link to your site instead. As long as you sell the benefits to them and their readers, most will accept.
The skyscraper technique shouldn’t be limited to your competitor sites. You can also use a backlink checker tool to search for high-linking content via keywords and search phrases. Skyscraping through both methods will soon fire your site up the Google rankings. The fact that it encourages you to upgrade the quality of content on your site can only impress your visitors too.
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