Here is how to find out competitor backlinks without SEO Tools

Check competitor backlinks with out SEO Tools

Creating high quality backlinks is most effective marketing method if you are working towards website online presence. We all know that having a good number of quality backlinks give us better ranking in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). But after reaching on certain level, you need to keep an eye on your competitors and their activities. After getting into SERP race, you need stability so that your competitors would not steal your rankings. There are thousands of methods spying on competitor but the best one is to keep an eye on their backlinks.

When it comes to finding out the competitor backlinks, most of the marketers rely on different tools. Some most commonly used tools as ahref, semrush, linminer, seo powersuit and similarweb. But what if you are not interested to purchase a paid subscription of these tools? In this situation, you have to use your brain and work manually to find out competitor backlinks. Today I am going to share some google tips and tricks which will help you to learn how to spy on competitors and find out competitor backlinks without seo tools. By the help of these tips and tricks you can easily monitor your competitor backlinks and fasten your belts to compete with them.

Finding out the comment backlinks

Blog commenting is a good backlinking method. If you are using it correctly, you can get good results in SERP. We all know that generating backlinks by posting on blogs/forums always helps in a positive way. In order to find out your competitor backlinks which are built by using blog commenting method, try the following google trick.

Method: 1 Keyword/anchor text in comments

• Open browser
• Open Google in an incognito tab
• Type : keyword “domain” “comment” -“Comments have been disabled for this post”
• Hit enter

PS: Here you need to avoid typing https or .com/.in/.edu/org and so on domain extensions. For example if your competitor has a website https://theseoguy.in and you want to spy on backlinks generated by blog commenting then use trick and remove https:// and .in just type theseoguy.

I am sharing a case study for the client where my client was dealing in education and running a computer education center. Their competitors were gaining ranks on even on my clients brand keywords. The moment I get this project, I start digging out about the competitors. And finding out their website strength is the first point to start with. I followed method 1 to find out backlinks which are generated by comments.

Refer the screenshot below

In the above image you can see the URL’s where my client’s competitor has put their URLs and used comment box to generate backlinks. After reviewing all 10 pages with 100 results, I was able to find out the platforms which are providing backlinks to my client’s competitor.

Method 2: Keyword in URL, Citations, Blog posts and Meta data

• Open browser
• Open Google in an incognito tab
• Type: inurl:domain
• Hit enter

Similar to method 1, but little simple method to find out the backlinks. It is pretty common to check number of cached url’s by typing site:https.//www.domain,com/ but here in this technique, you can avoid the https and .com both to find out the url’s which have competitor name in it.

Refer the screenshot below.

In the above screenshot you can see the domains which either has the competitor name in it or has citations. Method 1 and Method 2 are relative but the only difference is, you can only find comments platform by using method 1 but method 2 will give you results or URLs which has your competitor name, citation, profile or comment.

Method: 3 Keyword/anchor text in social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking is a common and effective practice while building quality backlinks. And if you could spy on your competitor bookmarks without using any tool would be an advantage for you. In order to do that you can follow given below steps.

• Open browser
• Open Google in an incognito tab
• Type: keyword “add to this list” site: mix.com (mix.com is written just for an example. You can change it according to your choice)
• Hit enter

If you follow this practice, you can find out the bookmarks created for particular keyword. You can switch the keywords and bookmarking site according to your choice. The only flaw in this method is, you can spy within one bookmarking website at a time. You have to switch the site after finding the results. Given below is one example of this method.

In above image you can see all the bookmarks created on mix.com for particular keyword.

Method 4: Finding out the platform

Apart from all the above competitor backlinks analyzing techniques, you can also monitor if any of your competitor is using particular CMS for website or blog. This method is little different and used to find out the competitor CMS rather than backlinks. By using this method you can analyze the CMS platforms such as wordpress, expressonengine, blogger, wix, penzu, strikingly, drupal, joomla and many more. Follow the steps given below to use this method.

• Open browser
• Open Google in an incognito tab
• Type: keyword “powered by expressionengine” (Expressionengine is just an example. You can switch to another CMS according to your choice.)
• Hit enter

You can use this method to find out third level domains and blogs as well.

Hope these tips and tricks would help you to find out competitor backlinks without SEO Tools. If you can add more value to this information or have suggestions and feedback for this post, then do comment below.

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