If a competitor outranks you, their backlink profile is one of the most useful things you can study — it shows you exactly what kind of sites are already willing to link to businesses like yours.
How to pull the data
Google Search Console only shows your own site’s links, so competitor research requires a third-party backlink checker with its own independent crawl index. Most offer at least a limited free lookup.
What to look for, not just count
- Which of their pages attract the most links — often a specific piece of content (a tool, a study, a guide), not their homepage.
- Which sites link to multiple competitors — a strong signal that site is open to linking within your niche generally.
- What kind of content earned the link — so you can build something comparable or better.
Turning research into action
Don’t just try to replicate their exact links one for one — some may be unavailable, paid, or low-quality. Use the pattern to guide your own outreach instead. If you want this done systematically rather than manually, that’s part of our Link Building Services.