Discover how you can gather an extensive list of your online competitor's incoming links (backlinks) using just 2 inexpensive online tools. You will also learn some of the ins and outs of beating domain privacy when you really need to know who owns a particular site. This slide deck was presented this at SES Toronto 2011 by search industry veteran Ross Dunn, CEO & Founder of StepForth Web Marketing Inc. His Twitter handle is @RossDunn

1. Competitive Analysis of
Offsite Success Factors
By Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
“Increasing your bottom line online”
@rossdunn
Presentation at: http://slidesha.re/offsiteAnalysis

2. Have you worked
somewhere this is familiar?

3. About Me
• Proud father & lucky
husband, (no she’s not here)
• I have been in SEO since 1997,
• I love working with small & medium sized
companies,
• I am a regular writer for The Search Marketing
Standard print magazine & various online blogs,
• Host of SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM
• I am a regular speaker at conferences and I teach
SEO and competitive analysis at my local college,

4. What is Offsite Analysis?
A review of factors which may have a positive or
negative effect on:
• the competitor’s organic rankings
i.e. links to their site, social media buzz
• and overall online success.
Today I am covering backlink analysis.

5. Identifying Worthy Competitors
Each competitor:
• Ranks well for the core phrase
i.e. “mountain bike parts”
• Has top rankings for a wide range of top
keyphrases and longtail searches
i.e. “<brand> mountain bike parts”, etc.
• Has a large number of inbound links

6. Your Link Analysis Toolkit
What I used in this presentation:
• Majestic SEO
in‐depth competitor link profile reports
• DomainTools.com
website network detection
Other Great Tools:
• SEMrush.com
competitor keyword intelligence
• SEOmoz LinkScape
in‐depth competitor link profile reports
Find the list of these tools & more here: http://bit.ly/comptools

7. #1) Majestic SEO
• Prices start at £ 9.99 per month.
• "the largest commercially available Link
Intelligence map on the planet."
Majestic SEO users have access to:
• 70 billion unique URLs in it's Fresh index
• 3.5 trillion available in it's historical index
http://bit.ly/comptools

8. #2) Domain Tools
• Starts at $29.95/mo.
Handy tools include:
• Domain Monitor
• Reverse IP
• Whois History
• Hosting History
• Alerts for trademarks, name servers, and
registrants
http://bit.ly/comptools

9. #3) SEMRush
• Starts at $69/mo
• Shows Google organic and AdWords keywords
• allows up to 10,000 results per query
• Export results into Excel or CSV (organic &
AdWords)
• Access to organic & AdWords databases for
US, UK, DE, FR, ES, RU, IT, BR, AU
http://bit.ly/comptools

10. #4) SEOmoz Pro
• Membership starts at $99/mo.
• Open Site Explorer & LinkScape to conduct
link analysis within a “proprietary web index
of over 9.2 trillion links”.
• Access to a veritable fountain of other great
tools.
http://bit.ly/comptools

11. Competitive Backlink Analysis
A WALK THROUGH USING 3 TOOLS
Majestic SEO, Domain Tools and Excel

12. Our Competitors for the Core Phrase: “mountain bike parts”

13. The Goal
Intelligently consolidate link data from all three competitors
(“C”) to supplement your link building strategy
C2 C1
C3
Link Data You Can Leverage

14. The Task: Create Order from Backlink
Data for Each Competitor
Merge MjSEO Run MjSEO’s
Create MjSEO
Reports into Master CliqueHunter &
Reports
Excel Sheet Merge
Highlight
Identify Other
Competitor Owned
Competitor‐Owned Mine that Data!!
Sites in Master
Sites
Excel Sheet

15. Step 1) Majestic SEO Link Report
• Create Advanced Reports for each competitor
• Download Top Backlinks list in CSV format
excluding no links (only flagging) using the
Download tab.

16. MjSEO Link Report in Excel

17. Step 2) Manually Review Top 50 Links
Create notes on each competitor’s link profile:
• Relevant anchor text
• Relevant on page content
• Quality of page content
• The reason for each link
• The type of link
editorial, blog, blogroll, paid, comment, social
network, charity, etc.

18. Step 3) Combine Results in Excel
C1 Links
C2 Links Merge
into
Master
C3 Links

19. Step 4) Find the Hubs
Use CliqueHunter in Majestic SEO
to find shared links among the 3
competitors; AKA link hubs.

20. 4.1) Highlight Link Hubs in the
Excel Master Link List

21. Step 5) Looking for Biased Links
Look for signs of similar design and layout on
sites linking suspiciously to a competitor.
Is the same anchor text & surrounding text used
repeatedly across supposedly different sites?
Are the links site wide?

22. 5.1) Reverse IP
A lucky find!
Otoponer.com is another domain on that
server and it is a duplicate of bikeparts.com

23. 5.2) Is Otoponer.com Redirected?
After a quick check on Google it is clear now,
BikeParts.com has duplicate content issues.

24. 5.3) We Want More! Time to Spy
Conduct a Whois on
BikeParts.com
Uh oh, it’s private!

25. Search their Whois
History for past openings

26. This is the
email address
to research
further

27. Eureka! Time to Cough Up the Dough

28. 5.4) Highlight Competitor‐Owned
Sites in Master List

29. Step 6) Drawing Conclusions
Your Link Building Master List is now primed!
You can now sort data any number of ways
looking for quality links for yourself:
• Sites with high ACRank that provided
particularly strong, followed anchor text.
• Find sites that provided mentions of
competitors which may help with local SEO
• Forums provide links with relevance & weight

30. 6.1) Drawing Conclusions
Examples of many possibilities:
• Lots of competitor owned backlinks:
= precarious ranking advantage
• Many .edu links:
may point to a concerted link building effort,
and/or high quality onsite content worth
copying
• Many links nofollowed: possible low quality
link building tactics such as commenting

31. 6.2) Dealing with Dirt
What if you discover your
competitor(s) are blatantly
violating Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines?
What do you want to do with that information?
Report them to Google? Not necessarily smart.
You deserve to know the dirt but be careful to use
the information wisely.

32. To Recap: One Way to Create a
Competitive Link Building Master List
Merge MjSEO Run MjSEO’s
Create MjSEO
Reports into Master CliqueHunter &
Reports
Excel Sheet Merge
Highlight
Identify Other
Competitor Owned
Competitor‐Owned Mine that Data!!
Sites in Master
Sites
Excel Sheet

33. 6.2) Prepare for Link Building
What you do next with high
quality competitive backlink intelligence:
1. Avoid making the mistakes they did!
2. Start building links from Hub pages.
3. Tackle relevant, high ACRank websites..
4. Build content/articles based on the content
which earned links for your competitors.

34. 6.3) Track the Campaign with Raven
Internet Marketing Tools
http://bit.ly/comptools

35. Social Media Competitor Analysis
Another 15 min is needed at least.
But here are some handy tools:
• SocialMention.com
excellent free social competitor analysis tool
• Klout.com
see how your competitors measure up
• Bit.ly (just add + to the end of their bit.ly url)
Track the content your competitors share to
see what gets the most attention!

36. SEOLinkReports.com
It is offline temporarily but look at this!
• Total Number of Backlinks
• Unique Domains linking in
• Unique IP's linking
• Front Page Links
• Run of site links
• Links Lost
• Broken Links
• Anchor Text
http://bit.ly/comptools

37. Example of an SEO Link Report

38. Questions? Ross@StepForth.com
Tune in to SEO 101 on
WebmasterRadio.FM
live every Monday at
2pm PST, 5pm EST or
get it on iTunes:
SEO101radio.com
Twitter:
@RossDunn
Presentation at: Ross Dunn’s Contact Details in QR Format
http://slidesha.re/offsiteAnalysis