Backlink analysis: how to check your links and your competitors'

Backlink analysis is reviewing who links to a site and whether those links are relevant and earned. You do it for two reasons: to understand your own link profile, and to find link opportunities by looking at what competitors have earned.

Where backlink data comes from

No index is complete. Each tool finds different links and calculates its own metrics (Domain Rating, Authority Score, Trust Flow, Domain Authority). Those metrics are the vendor's estimates, not Google's. See backlink checkers compared.

How to analyze backlinks

1. Export your linking domains from Search Console and one third-party tool.
2. Group them: industry sites, local sites, directories, news, partners, spam.
3. Note which of your pages earn links and why: usually data, tools or guides.
4. Run the same report for two or three competitors that outrank you.
5. List domains that link to several competitors but not to you. Those are your outreach targets.
6. Look for links to broken pages on your site and redirect them to the right page.

Competitor backlink analysis

Look for patterns, not just lists. If every competitor has links from the same industry association, join it. If their most-linked page is a free calculator, consider building a better one. Copying their links one by one rarely works; copying the reason they earned them does.