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How to Find Niche Keywords for SEO in 3 Steps

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How to Find Niche Keywords for SEO in 3 Steps

Niche keywords represent clear and specific topics that appeal to relatively small, often specialized parts of a given market.

In other words, these are the “sustainable” and “recycled” jackets in the overall jacket market. 

Niche keyword examples with "jacket"

Niche keywords can be an opportunity to attract highly targeted traffic in a short time since they typically refer to specific things that don’t have a lot of competition. 

In this guide, I’ll show you how to find niche keywords with Ahrefs in three steps.

Step 1. Create an initial keyword list

Open Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, type in broad terms that point to certain markets, products, or interests (i.e., seed keywords), and hit enter. 

Inserting seed keywords

Then go to Matching terms and set the maximum volume and TP filters to something low for this industry, like 1000. 

Filtering for low-volume and low-TP keywords

Why these two filters? The volume filter will look for keywords with a limited number of searches, while the TP filter will help make sure those keywords are specific topics and not just unpopular ways of looking for popular things.

Sidenote.

Since there is no set value that defines a niche keyword, we can’t tell you the exact volume value here. It depends on the size of the market and how “niche” you want to go. For some markets, it can be 500. While for some very big markets, it may be 2000. So feel free to adjust the volume and TP filters. You can also set the minimum filter right away if you’re not interested in keywords with very low search volume or zero-volume keywords.

Step 2. Refine your list 

After step #1, you already have a very raw list of niche keywords. 

The number of keywords in the initial keyword list

But looking through the entire list manually can take a lot of time. So in this step, we’ll refine our list to make it more manageable. Here are some ideas you can use. 

Low ranking difficulty with a minimum search volume

This set of filters will allow you to find niche keywords with considerable demand and low competition. 

  • Set KD to max 10 
  • Set volume to 100–1000 
  • Set Traffic Potential to 100–1000
  • Click “Show results”
Finding keywords with low difficulty and minimum search volume

Next, browse through the results. When you find a keyword that piques your interest, you can add it to a keyword list right inside the tool. 

Adding a keyword to a keyword list

Use cases, segments, and features 

This filter allows you to find keywords that focus on use cases, segments, and features within your seed keyword. 

For this, add modifying words such as “for,” “alternative,” or “substitute.” You can also use the Terms tab or just add your own modifiers if you know what you’re looking for. 

Sourcing modifier keywords in Terms tab
  • Set the Include filter to “Any word,” type your modifier keywords, and click “Apply”
  • Click “Show results” 
Adding modifier keywords

Next, browse through the results and add interesting keywords to your list. 

Selecting keywords to add to list

PRO TIP

You may spot some additional ideas for modifier keywords as you look through the results. You can use them in the Include filter to show only keywords matching that criteria.

Questions 

This filter can be a good way to find opportunities for informational content with the possibility of featuring your product. 

  • Switch the Matching terms report to “Questions”
Switching to Questions tab in Matching terms report

Next, browse through the results. 

Niche keyword posed as question

Feel free to combine the filters shown above. For example, you may want to look for keywords with specific features and low Keyword Difficulty (KD). 

Combining different keyword filters

And here’s one example of a niche keyword matching those filters. 

Keyword example from mixed niche filtering

Stumbling across keywords out of your wheelhouse too much? Just use the Exclude filter. 

Excluding unwanted keywords

Now, let’s go to the final step of the process. 

Step 3. Analyze the SERPs

Before you start creating content for selected keywords, it’s highly recommended to understand what searchers are specifically looking for. To do this, analyze the top-ranking pages in three aspects: 

  1. Is there a more popular search query that points to the same thing? 
  2. What is the search intent? 
  3. How hard would it be to rank? 

The first aspect is specific to niche keywords. Remember, you’re looking through rare search queries. Some of those queries can have more popular counterparts (yet still niche), and others can be just wrong (i.e., misspellings). 

To illustrate, a better word to target than “diy soap sheets” may be “how to make soap paper”—the latter has more search volume. Keywords Explorer signalizes that through the Parent Topic column found on the right of any given keyword. 

Parent Topic feature suggests a different keyword

And it won’t make sense to target something like “nivia soap.” Obviously, it’s a misspelling. 

Not a niche keyword, just a misspelling

The second aspect, search intent, is about learning what Google recognizes as the dominating reason behind the search. In simple terms, it’s typically one of the three:

  • Learn – If most pages focus on explaining things: guides, tutorials, reviews, comparisons, etc.
  • Buy – If most pages directly offer products: product pages, product category pages, landing pages, etc. 
  • Go to a website or place – More often than not, keywords will contain the name of the product, brand, or place.

If you can match search intent and it makes sense for your website, then the keyword is probably a good choice. But make sure to also optimize your content for search intent.

If you can’t match the search intent or it doesn’t make sense for your website, it’s probably best not to target the keyword for now. 

To illustrate, the keyword “cupcake soap” has a clear transactional intent, with only product pages in the top 10. So your best bet to rank for this keyword is likely with a page that offers soap bars in the shape of a cupcake. 

SERP indicates the search intent

PRO TIP

Sometimes, identifying dominating search intent is not that simple. Google may show mixed intent with different types of content or no dominant content format. This video guide will help you make a more informed decision in such situations.

The third aspect, estimating keyword difficulty, comes from the fact that multiple factors can constitute ranking difficulty. 

You can filter out keywords where competitors have a strong backlink profile using the KD filter (as shown in step #2). For example, we estimate that in order to rank in the top 10 for “why is antibacterial soap banned,” you’ll need backlinks from ~123 websites. That’s a hard keyword to rank for, especially for new websites. 

Keyword with low volume, high difficulty

Judging keyword difficulty through KD is enough in most cases. But if you want a more thorough assessment, look for these things: 

  • Popular brands on the SERP – Results from popular, trusted brands are something that users expect in search results. Google is aware of that. 
  • YMYL topics – Topics like health, finance, and safety will be tough, if not impossible, to rank for a website with no topical authority and content written by people with no real expertise
  • Quality of content – If you can’t add anything useful and original to the information that Google already “recommends” on the SERPs, you may have a harder time ranking. Make sure you can create helpful, reliable, and people-first content
  • See if top-ranking pages target the keyword – If no one is covering the topic directly, Google may show pages that it thinks are relevant. Those pages can come from high-authority websites, and you may have leverage against them by covering the keyword directly. 
Popular brands on SERP ranking for a keyword with low KD
Although the keyword has 0 KD, it may be hard to outrank Amazon and Etsy because they are popular (and therefore expected) brands.

Learn more: Keyword Difficulty: How to Estimate Your Chances to Rank 

Final thoughts 

If you know a website that targets a specific niche, you can use that site for keyword research too. 

To do this, paste the website’s URL in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and adjust the filters to find what you need. 

For instance, a website like mechanicalkeyboards.com can be a gold mine for keywords in the mechanical keyboard niche—almost 5,000 keywords with a volume of 100–1000 and KD up to 10. 

Niche keyword research in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Want to learn more? Check out our other resources:

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter



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Google Launches BARD AI Chatbot To Compete With ChatGPT

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Google Launches BARD AI Chatbot To Compete With ChatGPT

Google has unveiled BARD, an AI chatbot designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s chatbot in their Bing search engine.

In a blog post, Google describes Bard as an early AI experiment to enhance productivity, accelerate ideas, and foster curiosity.

You can use BARD to get tips, explanations, or creative assistance in tasks such as outlining blog posts.

With BARD, Google aims to solidify its presence in the AI chatbot space while maintaining its dominance in the search engine market.

Screenshot from: blog.google/technology/ai/try-bard/, March 2023.

BARD’s Technical Details

BARD is powered by a research large language model (LLM) – a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA.

It will be updated with more advanced models over time. As more people use LLMs, they become better at predicting helpful responses.

BARD is designed as a complementary experience to Google Search, allowing users to check its responses or explore sources across the web.

Operating as a standalone webpage, BARD consists of a singular question box instead of being integrated into Google’s search engine.

This strategic move is to adopt new AI technology while preserving the profitability of its search engine business.

Cautious Rollout Amid Unpredictability Concerns

Google’s cautious approach to BARD’s release is in response to the concerns over unpredictable and sometimes unreliable chatbot technology, as demonstrated by competitors.

Google recognizes LLMs can sometimes produce biased, misleading, or false information.

To mitigate these issues, Google allows you to choose from a few drafts of BARD’s response.

You can continue collaborating with BARD by asking follow-up questions or requesting alternative answers.

Google Launches BARD AI Chatbot To Compete With ChatGPTScreenshot from: blog.google/technology/ai/try-bard/, March 2023.

Google’s Race to Ship AI Products

Since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT and Microsoft’s introduction of chatbot technology in Bing, Google has prioritized AI as its central focus.

The company’s internal teams, including AI safety researchers, are working collaboratively to accelerate approval for a range of new AI products.

Google’s work on BARD is guided by its AI Principles, focusing on quality and safety.

The company uses human feedback and evaluation to enhance its systems. It has implemented guardrails, such as capping the number of exchanges in a dialogue, to keep interactions helpful and on-topic.

Google Launches BARD AI Chatbot To Compete With ChatGPTScreenshot from: blog.google/technology/ai/try-bard/, March 2023.

In Development Since 2015

Google has been developing the technology behind BARD since 2015.

However, similar to OpenAI and Microsoft’s chatbots, BARD has not been released to a broader audience due to concerns about generating untrustworthy information and potential biases against certain groups.

Google acknowledges these issues and aims to bring BARD to market responsibly.

BARD Availability

You can sign up to try BARD at bard.google.com.

Access is initially rolling out in the US and UK, with plans to expand to more countries and languages over time. It’s possible to get around the limited rollout with a VPN.

Google requires users to have a Gmail address to sign up and doesn’t accept Google Workspace email accounts.


Sources: Google, The New York Times

Featured Image: Muhammad S0hail/Shutterstock



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Will AI Kill SEO? We Asked ChatGPT

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Will AI Kill SEO? We Asked ChatGPT

It happens every couple of years.

First, it was Jason Calacanis and Mahalo, then the early social platforms.

We saw it again with voice search and smart assistants. For a minute, it was TikTok’s turn. Then the metaverse jumped the line.

Now, it’s ChatGPT and AI.

I’m talking, of course, about “SEO killers.”

Every now and then, a new technology comes along, and three things inevitably happen:

  • Thousands of SEO professionals publish posts and case studies declaring themselves experts in the new thing.
  • Every publication dusts off its “SEO is dead” article, changes the date, and does a find and replace for the new technology.
  • SEO continues to be stronger than ever.

Rinse, repeat.

It would seem that search has more lives than a cartoon cat, but the simple truth is: Search is immortal.

How we search, what devices we use, and whether the answer is a link to a website will forever be up for debate.

But as long as users have tasks to complete, they’ll turn somewhere for help, and digital marketers will influence the process.

Will AI Replace Search?

There’s a ton of hype right now about AI replacing both search engines and search professionals – I don’t see that happening. I view ChatGPT as just another tool.

Much like a knife: You can butter bread or cut yourself. It’s all in how you use it.

Will AI replace search engines? Let’s ask it ourselves!

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

That’s a pretty good answer.

Many SEO professionals (including me) have been saying for years that the days of tricking the algorithm are long gone.

SEO has been slowly morphing into digital marketing for a long time now. It’s no longer possible to do SEO without considering user intent, personas, use cases, competitive research, market conditions, etc.

Ok, but won’t AI just do that for us? Is AI going to take my job? Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s ask ChatGPT!

ChatGPT promptScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

AI Isn’t Going To Take Your Job. But An SEO Who Knows How To Use AI To Be More Efficient Just Might

Why? Let’s dive in.

I still see a lot of SEO pros writing articles that ask AI to do things it’s simply incapable of – and this comes from a basic understanding of how large language models actually work.

AI tools, like ChatGPT, aren’t pulling any information from a database of facts. They don’t have an index or a knowledge graph.

They don’t “store” information the way a search engine does. They’re simply predicting what words or sentences will come next based on the material they’ve been trained on. They don’t store this training material, though.

They’re using word vectors to determine what words are most likely to come next. That’s why they can be so good and also hallucinate.

AI can’t crawl the internet. It has no knowledge of current events and can’t cite sources because it doesn’t know or retain that information. Sure, you can ask it to cite sources, but it’s really just making stuff up.

For really popular topics that were discussed a lot, it can get pretty close – because the probabilities of those words coming next are really high – but the more specific you get, the more it will hallucinate.

Given the extreme amount of time and resources it takes to train the model, it will be a long time before AI can answer any queries about current events.

But What About Bing, You.com, And Google’s Upcoming Bard? They Can Do All Of This, Can’t They?

Yes and no. They can cite sources, but that’s based on how they’re implementing it. To vastly oversimplify, Bing isn’t asking for a pure chatbot.

Bing is searching for your query/keyword. It’s then feeding in all the webpages that it would normally return for that search and asking the AI to summarize those webpages.

You and I can’t do that on the public-facing AI tools without hitting token limits, but search engines can!

Ok, Surely This Will Kill SEO. AI Will Just Answer Every Question, Right?

I disagree.

All the way back in 2009 (when we were listening to the Black Eyed Peas on our iPhone 3Gs and updating our MySpace top 8 on Windows Vista), a search engine once called Live was being renamed to Bing.

Why? Because Bing is a verb. This prompted Bill Gates to declare, “The future of search is verbs.”

I love to share this quote with clients every chance I get because that future is now.

Gates wasn’t talking about people typing action words into search engines. He meant that people are trying to “do” something, and the job of search is to help facilitate that.

People often forget that search is a form of pull marketing, where users tell us what they want – not push marketing like a billboard or a TV ad.

As digital marketers, our job is simple: Give users what they want.

This is where the confusion comes in, though.

For many queries that have simple answers, a link to a website with a popup cookie policy, notification alert, newsletter sign-up popup, and ads were never what the user wanted.

It’s just the best thing we had back then. Search engines never set out with the end goal of providing links to websites. They set out to answer questions and help users accomplish tasks.

Even from the earliest days, Google talked about how its goal was to be the Star Trek computer; it just didn’t have the technology to do it then. Now, it does.

For many of these queries, like [how old is Taylor Swift?] or [how many megabytes in a gigabyte?], websites will lose traffic – but it’s traffic they were probably never entitled to.

Who owns that answer anyway? These are questions with simple answers. The user’s task is simply to get a number. They don’t want a website.

Smart SEO pros will focus on the type of queries where a user wants to do something – like buy Taylor Swift tickets, get reviews of her album or concerts, chat with other Swifties, etc. That’s where AI won’t be able to kill SEO or search.

What ChatGPT Can Do Vs. What It Can’t

ChatGPT can accomplish a lot of things.

It’s good at showing me how to write an Excel formula or MySQL query, but it will never teach me MySQL, sell me a course, or let me talk with other developers about database theory.

Those are things a search engine can help me do.

ChatGPT can also help answer many “common knowledge” questions, as long as the topic isn’t contested and is old and popular enough to have shown up in the training data.

Even then, it’s still not 100% accurate – as we’ve seen in countless memes and with one famous bank being called out for its AI-written article not knowing how to calculate interest properly.

AI might list the most talked about bars in NYC, but it can’t recommend the best place to get an Old Fashioned like a human can.

Honestly, all SEO pros talking about using AI to create content are starting to bore me. Answering questions is neat, but where ChatGPT really excels is in text manipulation.

At my agency, we’re already using ChatGPT’s API as an SEO tool to help create content briefs, categorize and cluster keywords, write complicated regular expressions for redirects, and even generate XML or JSON-LD code based on given inputs.

These rely on tons of inputs from various sources and require lots of manual reviews.

We’re not using it to create content, though. We’re using it to summarize and examine other pieces of content and then use those to glean insights. It’s less of an SEO replacement and more of a time saver.

SEO Is Here To Stay

What if your business is built around displaying facts you don’t really “own”? If so, you should probably be worried – not just about AI.

Boilerplate copy tasks may be handled by AI. Recent tests I’ve done on personal sites have shown some success here.

But AI will never be capable of coming up with insights or creating new ideas, staying on top of the latest trends, or providing the experience, expertise, authority, or trust that a real author can.

Remember: It’s not thinking, citing, or even pulling data from a database. It’s just looking at the next-word probabilities.

Unlike thousands of SEO pros who recently updated their Twitter bios, I may not be an expert on AI, but I have a computer science degree. I also know what it takes to understand user needs.

So far, no data shows people would prefer auto-generated, re-worded content over unique curated content written by a real human being.

People want fresh ideas and insights that only people can provide. (If we add an I to E-E-A-T, where should it go?)

If your business or content delivers value through insights, curation, current trends, recommendations, solving problems, or performing an action, then SEO and search engines aren’t going anywhere.

They may change shape from time to time, but that just means job security for me – and I’m good with that.

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Featured Image: Elnur/Shutterstock



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How to Find Your Competitors’ Backlinks (And Get Them for Yourself)

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How to Find Your Competitors' Backlinks (And Get Them for Yourself)

If you’re looking to build more backlinks to your website, checking how your competitors built and earned their backlinks is a good starting point.

That’s because understanding how they got links can help inform your link building strategy. 

In this post, you’ll learn how to find, replicate, and learn from your competitors’ backlinks.

How to find your competitors’ backlinks

You need an SEO tool like Ahrefs to do this, which is consistently voted top dog in SEO industry polls

Free method (top 100 backlinks)

Head over to our free backlink checker and plug in your competitor’s domain or URL. You’ll see the total number of backlinks and referring domains (linking websites) and the top 100 backlinks (referring page, anchor, and target URL).

Checking backlinks with Ahrefs' free backlink checker

Paid method (all backlinks)

Sign up for Ahrefs, plug your competitor’s domain or URL into Site Explorer, then go to the Backlinks report. You’ll see all their backlinks. In this case, over 80,000 of them. 

Checking backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you want to hone in on specific backlinks, such as those from English pages on websites with traffic, use the filters.

Filtering backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Not sure who your competitors are?

Enter your website or webpage’s URL into Site Explorer and go to the Organic competitors report. You’ll see a list of websites or webpages that rank for the keywords as your target.

Organic competitors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

How to replicate your competitors’ backlinks

It’s impossible to replicate all of your competitors’ backlinks, but there are ways to get some of them (or similar ones) for yourself:

  1. Find and copy their replicable links
  2. Find and copy the link building tactics that are working for them
  3. Find links that you can loot from them

Let’s take a closer look at how to do these three things.

Finding your competitors’ replicable links

Most of your competitors’ backlinks will be extremely hard to replicate like for like, but it’s usually possible to replicate some of them. Let’s look at a few ways to do this.

Find competitors’ directory links

Directory links are far from the most powerful links, but they’re easy to replicate. Many SEOs believe they help with “map pack” rankings for local businesses too.

Here’s the easiest way to find them:

  1. Enter your homepage into Site Explorer
  2. Go to the Link Intersect report
  3. Enter a few competitors’ homepages in blank fields
  4. Set the search mode for all pages to “URL”
  5. Hit “Show link opportunities”
How to use the Link Intersect report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This will show you the websites linking to one or more of your competitors’ homepages, but not to yours. It’s then just a case of eyeballing the list for sites that look like niche and local directories. 

Results of the Link Intersect report

If you’re not sure whether a site is a directory, click the caret in one of the competing page columns to see the referring page, anchor, and backlink. You can usually tell from this.

Reveal the referring page with the caret

If you’re still unsure, click on the page to check manually. 

Example of a directory link

Replicating these links is usually as simple as signing up for an account and adding your business. 

Sidenote.

Be aware that some directories charge a fee. Don’t be tempted to pay these for SEO purposes, as they won’t be worth it. Only pay if the directory is likely to send you customers.

Find listicles where competitors are mentioned, but not you

If competitors are mentioned in listicles of the best tools/restaurants/whatever your business does, there’s a chance you may be able to get mentioned in that same listicle (and a mention usually comes with a link).

These kinds of listicles are usually easy to spot in a competitor’s Backlinks report. 

Examples of listicles in the Backlinks report

However, the best opportunities come from listicles mentioning multiple competitors because the topic of the page is more likely to be relevant to your business.

Here’s an easy way to find these:

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Search for “competitor 1” “competitor 2” “competitor 3” -“your business name”
Finding competitor mentions in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

Sidenote.

Using this method, there’s no guarantee that the mentions are linked, but they usually are.

It’s then just a case of sifting through the results and pitching the authors of listicles where it makes sense to add your business. 

Here’s what that pitch might look like for Aweber:

Hey [Name],

Just came across your list of the best email marketing tools and noticed Aweber wasn’t included. Is that because you didn’t like our platform or haven’t tried it?

If it’s the latter, I’d love to hook you up with a free account so you can give it a shot.

What do you think?

[Name]

Note that the email doesn’t explicitly ask the author to add anything to their list. It just asks if they’re familiar with the sender’s tool. This is intentional. It’s easier to ask for inclusion after you win folks over. 

Find competitors’ links from interviews and podcasts

Interview and podcast links are more common in some industries than others, so you may not find any among your competitors. But as they only take a minute to search for, it’s well worth a quick check. 

Here’s an easy way to find them:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter the Twitter profile URL of your competitor’s CEO, CMO, or whoever the most prolific marketer is within the company
  3. Go to the Backlinks report
  4. Filter for results where the referring page URL contains “podcast,” “episode,” or “interview”
Filtering the Backlinks report for interview and podcasts links in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You then just need to pitch the same interviews and podcasts. 

Find competitors’ guest posts

Guest posting is the third most popular link building tactic, according to Aira’s 2022 State of Link Building report, so it’s probably a tactic that at least some of your competitors are using. 

However, while you can find them in a competitor’s Backlinks report, they can be hard to spot. 

For example, one of the links below is from a guest post and the other isn’t. But there’s no way to tell this from the link profile itself.

Examples of link that is guest post and another that isn't

With that in mind, here’s an easier way to find a competitor’s guest posts:

  1. Go to Content Explorer
  2. Search for topic + author:“name of your competitor’s prolific marketer”
  3. Filter for one page per domain
Searching for content by a prolific guest blogger in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

Most of the results should be guest posts by that person. Replicating them is as simple as reaching out and pitching the same websites.

Finding and copying link building tactics that work for competitors

If your competitors have lots of backlinks from directories, podcasts, interviews, or guest posts, these link building tactics are clearly working for them. So don’t limit yourself to replicating only the exact links they got. Pursue other links from these tactics too.

Here are some tutorials to help: 

Sidenote.

*Most citations come from directories, so building citation opportunities is pretty much the same thing as finding opportunities to get links from directories.

However, there are two more commonly used tactics worth checking for. 

Check for links from journalist requests

Bloggers and journalists often use services like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and MuckRack to source quotes for upcoming stories—and they usually link to their sources.

For example, here’s someone from “Martha Stewart Living” asking for a quote about how plumbing leaks occur in the home.

Example HARO request

Max Rose from Four Seasons Plumbing was one of the people to respond to this, and he received a quote and backlink from the article in return.

Example HARO link

Here’s how to check if your competitors are building backlinks this way:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter a competitor’s homepage
  3. Set the search mode to “Exact URL”
  4. Go to the Backlinks report
  5. Look for quotes in the “Anchor and target URL” column
Looking for HARO backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you spot a few quotes from the same person, like “Max Rose” in this case, filter for that name in the anchor and surrounding text to hone in on these kinds of links.

Filtering for HARO backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you see a fair number of links from quotes, there’s a good chance your competitor is actively responding to journalist requests—and that it’s working. So it’s probably worth responding to requests via HARO and similar platforms yourself too.

Check for passively earned links from linkable points

Linkable points are things like facts, statistics, and unique ideas that resonate with the linkerati and attract backlinks. Even if your competitors aren’t consciously using this tactic to earn links, it could still be one of the ways they’re earning them—so it’s worth checking.

Here’s how to do that:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter one of the top-ranking pages for your target keyword
  3. Go to the Anchors report
  4. Look for anchors relating to facts, figures, or unique ideas

For example, the Anchors report for a page ranking for “seo copywriting” mentions the “APP” method/formula a few times:

Anchors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This is a term coined by the post’s author, and it has earned him some decent links.

Because of this, when we wrote our own guide to SEO copywriting, we decided to coin a similar term in an effort to earn some passive backlinks.

Coined term from our post on SEO copywriting

If we check the Anchors report for our page, we can see it’s earned us a couple of links so far: 

Backlinks we earned thanks to our coined term, via the Anchors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This is not astonishing by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re two links we wouldn’t have unless we included proven, linkable points.

We had more success with this method when creating our list of SEO statistics (we documented that process in this link building case study), which has earned links from over 1,700 referring domains in under two years.

Backlink growth to our list of SEO statistics

Finding links you can loot from competitors

Your competitors may have links that no longer make sense for them to have. If you can provide linkers with a better alternative, you can often take these links for yourself.

Here are a few tactics that revolve around this idea:

Broken link building

Broken link building is where you find a dead page with backlinks, create your own resource on the topic, then ask linkers to link to that instead.

For example, this page about SEO tips can’t be found:

Example of a dead page

If we plug that URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, we see it has backlinks from 177 referring domains:

This dead page has backlinks from 177 referring domains

If we were to create our own list of SEO tips, we could reach out to these 177 websites and suggest replacing that dead link with a link to our list. 

But how do you find your competitors’ broken pages with backlinks in the first place?

If you have a specific competitor in mind, do this:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Best by links report
  4. Add a “404 not found” HTTP code filter
Filtering for dead pages with backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You’ll see a list of dead pages on their website, sorted by the number of referring domains pointing to them. 

If you don’t have a specific competitor in mind, do this:

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Search for a topic
  3. Filter for broken pages only
  4. Filter for pages with referring domains (the minimum number is up to you)
Searching for dead pages about a topic in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

You’ll see a list of broken pages related to the topic with at least the minimum set number of referring domains.

Regardless of which method you use, the process from there is the same: 

  • Check what the page used to be – To do this, plug the URL into the Wayback Machine. It needs to be something you can create similar content about.
  • Check the quality of the page’s backlinks – To do this, run a backlink audit in Site Explorer. If it doesn’t have good links, it’s not the best opportunity for a broken link building campaign.
  • Reach out to linkers and suggest they swap the link – To do this more easily, use an outreach tool like Pitchbox or BuzzStream.

301 redirect link building

301 redirect link building is where you look for your competitors’ irrelevant redirects, then pitch a replacement to linkers.

For example, this page about the Google Penguin Update on Search Engine Land has backlinks from 1.2K referring domains:

This redirected page has backlinks from 1.2K referring domains

But, for some reason, it redirects to a page about “Google SEO”:

Example of an irrelevant 301 redirect

This is a problem because people clicking through from those 1.2K websites will end up on a completely unrelated page. For that reason, there’s an opportunity here to pitch a link swap to linkers (same as with broken link building).

But how do you find your competitors’ irrelevant 301 redirects in the first place?

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter a competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Best by links report
  4. Add a “3XX redirect” HTTP code filter
Filtering for 301 redirects with backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

It’s then just a case of double-checking what the page used to be in the Wayback Machine, auditing the quality of the page’s links, creating a relevant replacement, and suggesting it to linkers. 

Run a competitor link analysis

Some of your competitors’ “lootable” links won’t fall neatly into the box of a known link building tactic. The process of finding them is quite nuanced and takes some experience, but you’ll often find unique pitches this way.

For example, say we wanted to build links to our list of Google ranking factors. If we check the top-ranking results for this keyword in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, we see that many of them have hundreds of (potentially “lootable”) backlinks from hundreds of domains: 

Referring domains pointing to the top-ranking pages for "google ranking factors"

When I plugged one of those competing URLs into Site Explorer and checked the Backlinks report, alarm bells started to ring when I saw the anchor and surrounding text for this link:

One of the backlinks to a competing page about Google ranking factors

It claims that bounce rate, dwell time, and repeat visits are ranking factors.

Not true.

Given that this link must be based on advice from the linked (competing) page, I decided to take a look myself. What I found was a page giving lots of dangerously bad advice: 

Many of the factors listed on the competing page are misleading
The highlighted ranking factors are not ranking factors at all.

I’m not sure how much linkers would care, but I think there’s an opportunity here to reach out to all worthwhile prospects, explain that they’re linking to an inaccurate post, and suggest linking to our list of ranking factors instead. 

Even if only a fraction of them care, we win a few links while combating misinformation. It’s a win-win. 

Final thoughts

Finding your competitors’ backlinks is easy. Getting the same ones to your site is less easy. 

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Start by replicating the easy ones, then find and copy the link building tactics that work for them, and finally take any links they no longer deserve for yourself.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.



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