SEARCHENGINES

Backlink Gaps: Quick Guide

Published

3 years ago

July 6, 2021

Have you ever heard of backlink gap analysis? If you do SEO, you probably know what we’re talking about, but if you don’t know then read on to find out. In this short guide, we’ll show you what backlink gap analysis is, why you should integrate this practice into your everyday SEO tasks, and how you can use SERPed.net to get the most out of this data. Let’s dive in.

What is Backlink Gaps Analysis?

To understand backlink gap analysis, we first need to understand what backlinks are.

Backlinks are links that point to your website (homepage or inner page) from external sources. Unlike internal links, which you can set up inside your website architecture by yourself, external links are usually organic – i.e., they result from a positive action taken by someone else outside your website.

Since backlinks are considered by Google’s algorithm as upvotes for your website, the more backlinks you have, the better. However, it’s not just about quantity; the quality of these links also matters. You want your backlinks to come from websites with a low spam score and a high authority in their field.

Therefore, since backlinks are necessary for your website to rank higher, you need to have a backlink strategy that includes tactics on how to make sure your website gets external links that matter.

Backlink gap analysis is a part of competitive analysis in SEO and is something that has developed as a result of the ever-increasing sophistication in SEO tactics. Essentially, a backlink gap tool will analyze your competitors’ external link profiles in order to identify backlink gaps, that is, backlinks that are present in your competitors’ external profiles which are not present in yours. A backlink gap tool will provide you with a list of websites that link to your competitors, but not to you (yet).

But how does this benefit you? We’ll answer this question in the next section.

Why You Should Use Backlink Gaps Analysis

So why should you do backlink gaps analysis? It’s not as complicated as it seems. Basically, if you find two of your competitors (or more) have links from a website and you don’t, getting that link is probably easy to do. If you run out of ideas when it comes to link building, this is something you should definitely try.

When performing backlink gaps analysis, you’ll find links that can help you with your SEO strategy. Some links may come from websites that are not as relevant for your website, but by reviewing these links carefully, you should be able to determine the links you should get and the ones you should ignore.

Links

Thus, in order to benefit from this practice, you need to spend some time analyzing these links. SERPed.net makes it easier to strike gold, by giving you metrics that help you understand if that link will improve your website SEO or make it harder for you to rank.

Once you have your list of websites that you’d like to get a link from, you would probably have to get in touch with the webmasters. It is very important to plan your approach. We recommend sending an email to get the ball rolling.

Of course, your email needs to get the attention of your target recipient. Sometimes, you’ll hit a wall either because you don’t get a reply from your recipient, or because your email doesn’t get to the right person.

Tips For Outreach Emails

There are a few things you can do in your outreach email (the message you send to the webmasters) in order to increase your chances of getting that link. We’ll go through a few tips that might help.

First of all, make sure you know your target recipient. If you get a few details about your recipient’s interests, you can use them to create common ground between you two and enhance your chances of success.

Don’t use a template to copy and paste your email. Different people require different approaches.

Offer something in return. Your recipient will always think “what’s in it for me?” and you need to make it clear what they’re getting from you. Ideally, you should be able to get their cooperation without having to pay for the link, as paid links can damage your reputation online.

As a final note about outreach: get straight to the point. Don’t waste your recipient’s time. Be short and concise. If your email is over 200 words, you need to cut it down!

And now that you have a few tips about how to contact webmasters for backlinks, we’ll explain how you can use SERPed.net to analyze your backlink gaps.

Backlink Gaps on SERPed.net

To carry out a backlink gap analysis, use the Backlinks Explorer tool. You can find it on the Tools menu, under SEO Analysis.

Backlinks Explorer 1

Once you open the Backlinks Explorer tool, click on the blue “+” button to create a new analysis.

Backlinks Explorer 2

To explore competitor backlinks, click on the “Start” button under “Backlink Gaps”.

Backlink Gaps 1

Fill in all the fields. At the top, add your website URL; on the bottom fields, add three competitors that specialize in the same product or service that you sell.

Backlink Gaps 2

Now, once you’re done, click on “Find Backlink Opportunities” to run the analysis. As you can see, this search will cost you 4 credits – one for each website analyzed. And here are the results:

Open Links

In this screen, you’ll see the number of matches (number of websites out of the total four that have backlinks from that specific domain). Under each website you analyzed, you’ll see another number: this is the number of backlinks that each website has from the domain on the left.

To find out the exact link, hover on the number and a “+” sign will appear. Click the “+” sign and you’ll see the exact URL for those backlinks.

We always recommend “100 links from 100 domains” rather than “100 links from one domain”. Variety is also key in backlink strategies.

Open Links 2

When it comes to matches, you can order the results to start with the domains that link to one of your competitors only. At the right of “Matches”, you’ll find a tiny arrow. Click on it to re-order match numbers.

Backlink Matches 1

You can click one each website URL to visit the websites and determine whether that’s a link you should have as well or not and how hard it would be to get this link.

Open Links

Wrapping Up

Using backlink gap analysis, you can improve your rankings by getting a list of highly authoritative links that your competitors already have but you do not.

Competitive analysis is part of SEO, and using SERPed.net you can make sure your off-page SEO is on point. On-page SEO is also important, and the best approach you can take when doing SEO is to think about each task as part of a whole.

SEO is a lot of work, but a boost in your ranking on Google SERPs (search engine result pages) will help you get more visitors to your website, and, therefore, more sales.

However, you must remember that SEO does not bring results overnight. Patience (and a bit of stubbornness) is the best trait you can have when doing SEO work.

What are your thoughts? Did we forget something? You can send suggestions or questions our way using the comment box. If you prefer to reach out on social media, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Source: Vanessa Marcos

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 11, 2024

Published

2 hours ago

September 11, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google is testing a new ad label header, it makes the ads stick out more. Google Search ranking volatility is still incredibly heated, even over a week after the core update finished. Google is sending out verification notices to Local Service Ads advertisers. Bing is testing a local pack with review source icons. Google AdSense is expanding auto ads to more languages. Google Search has a new video property for ineligible regions.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Search Ranking Volatility Still Heated A Week After Core Update

I sound like a broken record, but the Google Search ranking volatility is still incredibly heated and has not let down, even over a week after the Google August 2024 core update was completed on September 3rd.

Google Tests New Ad Label / Design That Makes Ads Stand Out

Google is testing a new ad label and interface that really make the ads way more noticeable in the Google Search results. The ad label still is a black sponsored label, but Google is testing it on a tall gray background, with subtitles like “promoted products” and “promoted results.”

Google Emails Advertisers On Local Services Ads Verification Requirements

In March, Google announced a new verification process for its Local Service Ads program. Well, now, Google has started to email advertisers that need to take the steps to verify their advertising accounts.

Bing Local Pack Tests Review Source Icons Instead Of Review Stars

Microsoft is testing adding the source of the reviews in the Bing Search local pack, instead of showing review stars. So if the Bing Search local pack is showing reviews from Yelp, it would show the Yelp logo, and if it is showing them from Facebook, it would show the Facebook logo.

Google Expands AdSense Auto Ads To French, Spanish, and Japanese

Google is expanding AdSense’s Auto ads to support French, Spanish, and Japanese languages. Previously, Auto ads were worked for English and German languages only.

Google Search Supports Ineligible Regions Property For Videos

Google Search now supports specifying where (which regions) a video is not allowed to be viewed in its video structured data and video SEO documentation. A new ineligibleRegion property was added to the Google video structured data documentation.

Google Chelsea Market Tile Backsplash

At the Google office in New York City, the Chelsea Market location, they have this kitchen area that has the old Google logo, with the location, Chelsea Market, tiled into the wall.

Other Great Search Threads:

Check scores on perplexity!, Aravind Srinivas on X

Data suggests that if Google does not recrawl a URL after 129 days URL it falls out of the index, Mic King on X

Google Loses €2.4bn Appeal In E.U. Over Market Dominance, WebmasterWorld

Looking at your URL placement in Google’s AI Overview’s isn’t just for SEOs… It’s for anyone trying to gauge brand presence and brand power Run your site vs your competitors in @semrush & see the relative level of URL placement, Mordy Oberstein on X

On the video from O’Keefe Media Group: The claims here are completely false — they were made by a junior sales rep, secretly filmed while on a date, who has never worked on these topics. As we’ve shared before, we do not manipulate our products or m, Google Communications on X

The time has come (after being replaced by INP as a CWV) -> Chrome ends support for First Input Delay (FID) “In January, Chrome announced its intention to officially end support for FID. Well, that time has finally come, and as of to, Glenn Gabe on X

GSC Issue, Reddit

You randomly stumble across a new website crawler / scraper service – it turns any website into a CSV file (just for sake of something to discuss, I don’t have one for you). Isn’t that cool?, John Mueller on LinkedIn

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 10, 2024

Published

1 day ago

September 10, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Apple Visual Intelligence is Apple’s version of Google Lens but it uses Google, ChatGPT, Yelp and others. Google AI Overviews are showing for commercial queries again, showing product and shopping results. A new report on AI Overviews says about half of the links in the AI Overviews overlap with the traditional organic results. Google is showing Business Profile photos on its review sentiments. And Bing Search has a footer message to search again.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Apple Visual Intelligence – Local, Shopping & More

Apple had its big event yesterday, and during the iPhone talk, they announced Apple Visual Intelligence. Where you can take photos of anything, and it will use Apple Intelligence for local search, shopping, homework help, and more.
Google AI Overviews Show Shopping Results For Commercial Queries Again

Google is bringing back shopping and product results in the AI Overviews for commercial queries. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember them going away but I am told they have now returned. Maybe they went away with the Ray update, when Google restricted how often AI Overviews showed.
Report: Half Google AI Overviews Links Overlap With Top Search Results

A new Google AI Overview study says that about half of the links displayed in the AI Overviews overlap with the links shown in the traditional Google Search results. Plus, the most linked to sources are YouTube and Wikipedia, according to the new report.
Google Maps Showing Business Photos On Review Sentiments

Google is now showing business submitted photos from Google Business Profiles in the Google Local and Maps review sentiments section. So above the reviews, Google may show photos submitted by the business, related to those reviews.
Bing Search Footer Message To Encourage More Searches

Microsoft is testing, showing a notice at the bottom of the Bing search results that says, “Search by typing anything on the keyboard.” This happens when you reach the footer of the Bing Search results. When you start typing, your characters appear in the search box for a new Bing Search session.

Google Flying Dutchman Cafe In Netherlands Office

Here is a photo from the Google Netherlands office, they have a cafe there named the Flying Dutchman cafe. This is the salad station in that cafe and you can see the art on the walls.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 9, 2024

Published

2 days ago

September 9, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Ads will sunset enhanced CPC in March 2025. Google Business Profiles sends out broken appointment link notifications. Bing doesn’t yet use ProductGroup markup, but may use it soon. Bing treats 308 redirects like 301 redirects. Bing is testing a button for shopping results named “see details.”

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Ads Saying Goodbye To Enhanced CPC In March 2025

Google Ads emailed advertisers using Enhanced cost-per-click (eCPC) to let them know that in March 2025, Enhanced CPC will be sunset and any campaigns using Enhanced CPC will be migrated to Manual CPC bidding.

Google Business Profile Appointment Link Broken Notifications

Google is emailing some businesses when it detects that their Google Business Profile appointment link is not working. Google’s email says, “Fix your business Google link.”

Bing Treats 308 Redirects Same As 301 Redirects

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said that Bing Search treats 308 redirects the same as they treat 301 redirects. This is the same as what Google said back in 2021, although Google has been a bit wishy-washy on redirects over the years.

Bing May Use ProductGroup Markup In The Future

Microsoft Bing may use ProductGroup markup in the future for its “captions” in the Bing Search results. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said while they do not support it yet, “it’s on our radar” and “the team is closely monitoring its adoption.”

Bing Product Search Results With See Details Button

Bing is testing a big blue “see details” button for some of the product listings in its search results. Normally when you hover your mouse cursor over the products, they expand a little but now they are also showing a blue button to “see details.”

Google European France Fence

Here is the fence in front of the Google office in Paris, France, I believe. It is one of those European castle-like fences, but the polls are in the Google red, blue, green, and yellow colors.