There are mainly two questions your clients would want the competitor research to answer:
- What are my competitors doing to be (more) successful (than me)?
- Which (new) tactics used by my competitors can I consider for my link building?
Keeping that in mind you might want your report to also conform to the following criteria:
- It should be well-organized and easy to understand;
- It should contain only important information.
Here are essential steps to take when compiling the report on competitors’ link building tactics:
- Use your favorite backlink checking tools to compile the list of backlinks;
- Sort the links into two large groups:
- Links to home page;
- Deep links.
- Single out some notable tactics and create sub-groups, for example:
- Directory links;
- Sponsored ads;
- Blog reviews;
- Article distribution;
- Press release, etc.
(add a few example to each group).
- Calculate deep link ratio;
- Include your conclusions:
- How the above link building tactics can be characterized (in a couple of words)?
- What should be taken note of (Which tactics should be avoided? Which tactics might be considered and why)?
- What tactics prevail?
- What are the most frequent anchor texts used?
Anything to add? Please share your tips on competitors’ link building report.
Hi Ann,
Looks good idea for competitors research. I use the most points as you have mentioned.
I will also add how the competitors websites are being designed and developed to attract the customers. I think this will also help to improve the website performance.
Ann,
thats such a awesome idea about grouping their links into groups so you can help plan budgets.
It is also useful to measure # of follow vs # nofollow links
Fantastic. Have just emailed this to all my staff!
Hey Ann…..Its really a good article.
I have sent you an article on you mail id annsmarty@gmail.com for publishing on SEJ.
Please let me know how i can publish my articles on SEJ.
Im not adverse to giving this ago, however i am a little bit sceptical about the time vs reward factor to going so deep into the analysis of links. I know links are incredibly important, but just how much work you do for a single link and how much preperation to make sure its the right type of link are debatable factors
The link to backlinks checkers is really useful! thanks
Recently we have been using the top pages tool on SEOMoz to identify the key pages competitors are optimising then look at the back links to them specific pages. It seems to work pretty well.
http://www.seomoz.org/labs/toppages
Also the back link analysis in their labs is useful to identify if there is any over optimisation in the back links.
Granted linkscape does a lot of that for you but the lab tools don’t use your credits so they are useful for some initial diagnostics
Useful checklist Ann Smarty, as usual.
really useful checklist thansk for update
Really good checklist to use.
Very useful checklist, thanks Ann.