Advertisement
  1. SEJ
  2.  ⋅ 
  3. SEO

Advanced Link: Operator to Explore Your Competitor’s Backlinks

Advanced Link: Operator to Explore Your Competitor’s Backlinks

I for one do backlink research almost daily. Why is that so essential in SEO to know how to properly analyze backlinks?

  • It educates. The established sites in your niche set an example to follow and give you an idea of how link building is done.
  • It inspires. The more you know about pages linking to your competitor, the more ideas you get for link building for your own website. That shouldn’t be copying the competitor’s strategies – but this analysis gives you an idea in which direction to move forward.
  • It keeps you up-to-date. Who’s my friend? (Learn who your partners are and do them a favor in return.) Where am I discussed? (Reputation management: participate in threads discussing you site.) And plenty of more important questions the analysis will be able to answer.


Thus this time I will be looking into the ways to explore the site’s backlinks using link: operator in Yahoo:

  • Find most relevant pages linking to a site/page: [linkdomain:http://www.domain.com/ -site:domain.com keyword]

Sample search: [jewelry related sites linking to Amazon.com]

  • Find pages containing your keyword in the URL (another relevance-focused search): [link:http://www.domain.com/ -site:domain.com inurl:keyword]

Sample search: [jewelry related sites linking to Amazon.com]

  • More variations of the above one (blog and social media specific): [link:http://www.domain.com -site:domain.com inurl:keyword inurl:tag]

Sample search: [jewelry related blogs linking to Amazon.com]

  • More variations of the above one (to find discussion boards and forums): [link:http://www.domain.com -site:domain.com inurl:keyword inurl:forum OR inurl:forums]

Sample search: [jewelry related forums linking to Amazon.com]

  • Find pages containing your keyword in the page title [link:http://www.domain.com -site:domain.com intitle:keyword]

Sample search: [jewelry related sites linking to Amazon.com]

  • Find .edu or .gov sites linking to the page [link:http://www.domain.com site:.edu OR site:.gov]

Sample search: [.edu or .gov sites linking to Amazon.com]

  • Find pages of various file types [link:http://www.domain.com originurlextension:xml] (file types: HTML, PDF, Excel (.xls), PowerPoint (.ppt), Word (.doc), RSS/XML (.xml), and text format (.txt))

Sample search: [.xml pages linking to Amazon.com]

  • Find pages of different geographic location [link:http://www.domain.com region:europe]

Sample search: [European based sites linking to Amazon.com]

Available country options:

  • region:europe
  • region:africa
  • region:asia
  • region:centralamerica
  • region:downunder
  • region:mediterranean
  • region:mideast
  • region:northamerica
  • region:southamerica
  • region:southeastasia
Category SEO
ADVERTISEMENT
Ann Smarty Brand amd Community Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas

Ann Smarty is the blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. Ann’s expertise in blogging and tools serve as ...

Advanced Link: Operator to Explore Your Competitor’s Backlinks

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.