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How To Out Rank Your Competition By “Borrowing” Their Links

Posted by Paul B | July 2, 2008 .

I think that most people are fully aware now just how important inbound links are to your search engine rankings. There is no disguising that it’s a large part of the equation, especially with Google. Unfortunately for us webmasters it’s also one of the hardest parts for us to hold influence over, there are certain things we can change quickly to help our chances but getting inbound links requires a whole lot more effort.

In saying this there is a tactic that I’ve been using for several years that has helped me outrank my competition for numerous phrases, some of them hugely competitive. It sounds obvious, but I steal borrow their links. This involves analysing who links to them and going and asking for a link, I’m a very firm believer of if you don’t ask you don’t get and you’d be surprised how often this works, sure you’ll need to link exchange sometimes but you shouldn’t take your eye of the goal here. If you can get a similar/better linking profile with better on the page content then you should out rank.

The tool I use to help me with this is WebCEO. It’s a complete suite of webmaster tools featuring link analysis, keyword research, on-page optimisation, file uploader, website auditor etc etc. A good featured free version is available but the specific feature I use for borrowing links is only part of the paid software. I made the plunge to spend money on WebCEO many years ago and I’ve never looked back.

So say for example I’m a Private Investigator and I want to rank highly for the search term “discrete private investigator”. The first thing I need to do is a Google search for that phrase. I now need to take a note of the top 2 results (www.salgadoinvestigations.com and www.lasker.co.uk). Now in WebCEO I go to the Analyze Link Popularity Tool and select the Linking Sites Overview tab. I edit the profile to only check for links in Yahoo (Google doesn’t give you a full list of back links and using only Yahoo speeds this whole process up). I then add the 2 sites from the Google search as my competition. When I click start WebCEO is going to go and process all the back links to those domains in Yahoo. Where it’s really nice is it gives me a great chart that I can quickly cross reference to see what links the top 2 sites have in common. The screenshot below shows some of the results, a quick glimpse shows that the number 1 website is relying heavily on link directories for its links. There is nothing to stop us from going and submitting to those same directories.

competitors links

Even better WebCEO allows us to see exactly what page on each site the competitors link is on. For directories this allows us to quickly target the right category, for other websites it is a handy shortcut straight to the page where they are either putting links or link exchanging.

find linking page

It’s now a case of going through the list of websites (starting from the websites that link to both the number 1 and 2 search results) and either asking for a link, submitting your website details, asking for a link exchange or doing whatever else you need to get that link. If this all sounds like hard work then WebCEO can export that report for you and you could outsource that actual link requests/submission. Whilst you’ll probably not get them all there is a very good chance that if they’ve linked to your competitors they’ll also link to you. Create a properly optimised page for the phrase “discrete private investigator” on your website that is well linked to from within your own site and you’re 99% of the way to pushing your way to the top spot for that phrase. Repeat this for a number of searches in your niche and you’ll have a linking profile that is the envy of everybody else!

Q: I’ve got a brand new site, what if nobody will swap links with me?
A: You have 2 options here, the long game is to wait until your website gains trust and then try again. My preferred method (which works if you have more than 1 site) is to offer a link from an existing older website that you own in exchange for a link to your new website.

Q: Most of the links look like junk, I don’t want to get penalised?
A: The great thing about this method is that by analysing the back links for websites that rank well in Google you can be sure that there can’t be a penalty for those links. At worst they won’t count but if there was a penalty then the site you’re analysing wouldn’t be ranking so highly!

Q: Is this a one shot wonder?
A: No, I would run the same report every month, you should then start to see your site and your competitors having more links in common. WebCEO will also show what links your competitors have gained since you last run the report, these are great sites to target.

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6 Comments so far
  1. Google Web Hosting UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 3.0  July 2, 2008 11:40 pm

    Dude….it’s tough, I’ve tried that too with Seoquake, but a bunch of times, they’ve got like links from the fox website or endgadget. That’s very difficult to replicate.

    Google Web Hosting’s last blog post..By: Google Web Hosting - Part 2

  2. Paul B UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.15  July 3, 2008 5:00 pm

    Take all the links you can and combine it with optimised content and you’ll move up. Even if you can’t make the top, a first page result on Google can be priceless. I know some links are difficult to get (if not impossible) but this is just one of those tasks that takes time. If you’re getting frustrated with the lack of links coming your way then I always suggest targeting the newest links. If a site has “just” created one link they are much likely to add one for you.

  3. Melvin UKRAINE Windows XP Internet Explorer 7.0  July 4, 2008 9:04 pm

    I’ve enjoyed reading all your link building posts.

  4. Tom - StandOutBlogger.com AUSTRALIA Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.15  July 5, 2008 12:35 am

    that looks like a nice tool to increase search engine ranking. I will have to check it out.

    Tom - StandOutBlogger.com’s last blog post..Quick ‘No Brainer’ Way To Make An Extra $10 A Month - With No Extra Work

  5. Beth UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.15  July 9, 2008 8:51 pm

    I find backlinks to competing sites through Yahoo. It’s a great way to find sites (sites you might not have thought of or even heard of!) that could be willing to give you a link. The WebCEO tool you are using sounds like it would be very helpful and a great way to track the progress of inlinks.

  6. Kevin L UNITED STATES Windows Vista Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.16  July 17, 2008 3:21 pm

    Getting links is tough. At least this way you know sites that are willing to put up links. You just have to show them that you site is worth the backlink. I would wait until you are at least a PR4 before asking for links (or at least have 10,000 page views per month).

    Kevin L’s last blog post..iPod Shuffle Contest - I am giving one away for free!