How does knowing the Competition's backlinks help you?

[mikepcservice]

So you use SEM Rush or other tool to see which backlinks the competition is using but how does that actually help you please? I mean since it's not like you can get the same backlinks.

 

[Greg Schueler]

Ideally, you want to see if you can get some of the same links for yourself. A lot of times you may find a niche directory or site that you can get listed on too.

For the ones you can't it just gives you a guideline as to how strong the competition is and how many links you may need to overtake them. (Although the number of links isn't as important as the quality of the link).

 

[mikepcservice]

Great answer thank you!

I have heard over the years that one can buy backlinks from top authority sites like Reddit, is this true and if yes, is it worth it?

 

[Tony Wang]

Definitely not worth paying for backlinks, Google won't like that. The only links worth "paying" for are probably sponsorships to charities. In which case you're technically not "paying" for the link. This is vs. paying someone or a website solely for them to link to you.

 

[mikepcservice]

There is a 74 year old Marketer here in NY who guarantees page one in under 8 days. When I had spoken at length with him, he had said he had purchased a boatload of domains since the early days of the internet and those are now very valuable.

So he does not do any blogging but showed many case studies of clients on page one inside of a week. This has always suggested to me that high powered backlinks have more value than blogging, what do you guys say to this please?

 

[Tony Wang]

The value of truly effective blogging is in the backlinks you can get if you promote your blog. For most local businesses, the blog is just there to give Google some content and hopefully give clients and prospects some decent info, in which case high powered backlinks are definitely more value.

The question is, what constitutes a good backlink. They type you're talking about are not considered quality. Think about it from Google's eyes. If they're using backlinks as a sign that a website deserves to get ranked, what type of backlinks do they want to see? Surely not the type that you can buy easily.

Buying links has been going on for years, and was very effective back in the day, but Google has drastically improved it's ability to detect such links. There are still some schemes that work today, for sure, but if you're hoping for long term success, don't hold your breath.

 

[mikepcservice]

So manual back linking is still the king and best option which I realize but I am wondering if all high authority sites carry the same weight? I have seen some high authority sites which are obscure or with no popularity at all have high page ranking. So is it just as good to try to get backlinks from them as with the more popular high authority sites?

 

[Tony Wang]

Well, a site ranked by SEMRush or any other similar service, does not mean Google ranks it highly. Those tools are largely based on backlinks because they don't have all the data at Google's disposal. They're helpful tools, but you need to use some human intelligence to decide if a site is worth getting a link from, and how much effort it's worth.

No easy formula, but a bit of common sense and experience is helpful.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't.

There was a period of time years ago where we would grab competitor backlinks and shotgun blast to every URL we could find.

That stopped when we realized we were building links on sites you definitely wouldn't want a link on.

So while it can help to know your competitors links from research, you have to be judicious in where you actually build your links.

 

[mikepcservice]

Yes, great advice, thank you!