How to find and replicate competitors' powerful backlinks

Executive overview

More backlinks doesn't always mean better rankings. A competitor with fewer links can outrank you if their links come from higher-authority domains. The fix is to audit exactly which domains link to your competitor, assess how replicable each link is, then go get them.

Link quality from authoritative domains beats raw link quantity.

Why link quality matters more than count

• A page with fewer backlinks can outrank one with more if the linking domains carry higher domain rating (DR)
• DR 95 (YouTube), DR 83 (Reddit), DR 78 (Chrome Web Store) links each outweigh many low-DR links
• Your own DR vs competitor DR: small gaps rarely decide rank — link source quality does

Finding competitor link sources in Ahrefs

• Open Site Explorer for both your page and the competing page
• Go to Referring Domains under Inbound Links
• Sort by domain rating of the linking domain (not by dofollow count)
• Compare: which domains link to them that don't link to you

Assessing replicability

• Click the Backlinks button next to each referring domain to see the exact linking pages
• YouTube: create a screencast and link to your article in the video description — easy
• Reddit: register an account and post a link — easy
• Google Chrome Web Store: requires publishing a Chrome extension that links to your page — harder

Getting a Chrome Web Store link

• A Chrome extension can be as simple as a shortcut icon pointing to your site
• Hire a freelancer to build a minimal extension related to your keyword
• Publishing it on the Chrome Web Store yields a link effectively from a google.com subdomain
• High DR, low competition for this link type