How to Easily Find Backlink Opportunities With Moz — Next Level

Welcome to this refreshed installment of our educational Next Level series! Together we’ll uncover how to find backlink opportunities for any site.

Updated insights*: Originally published in August 2017 by [Brian Childs](https://moz.com/community/q/user/brianchilds), we’ve updated this blog to include new tools and refreshed workflows.*

Explore more*: Looking for more Next Level posts? Previously, we explored [the world of long-tail keywords](https://moz.com/blog/diving-for-pearls-guide-long-tail-keywords-next-level).*

Getting Started

Throughout Moz’s educational resources, like the Beginner’s Guide to Link Building and SEO Essentials Certification, we discuss how to identify and prioritize sources of backlinks using a mix of tools. One tactic to quickly find high Domain Authority® sites with a history of linking to pages discussing your topic is to study your competitors' backlinks.

In this article, I’ll show how to create and export a list of your competitor’s backlinks that you can use for link targeting activities.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Getting a comprehensive list of top competitors

• Identifying domains or pages linking to your competitors but not to you

• Exporting data to .csv for filtering and distribution

• Prioritizing backlink opportunities sorted by authority

Backlinks are still important

Before we discuss how to find backlink opportunities, let’s briefly discuss why we should do so. A lot has changed in the SEO industry over the years, and sometimes, it can feel like it’s hard to keep up. But one thing has remained the same — backlinks are still important.

With shifts in the way links and link building have been perceived, SEOs looked on with great intrigue when the recent Google Leaks revealed that PageRank was still present in some capacity when ranking pages in the SERPs. It’s important to remember that link quantity and search traffic likely come into play here. As Tom Capper, Moz’s Senior Search Scientist, notes, having a lot of links can look suspicious if no one is actually looking for and navigating to your site. This indicates that quality, quantity, and traffic are all key factors when analyzing a site’s backlink profile. Adding to that, Moz’s Senior Content Marketing Manager, Chima Mmeje, explains that topical links are the key to success — suspecting links that are more topically aligned are given higher priority when assessing their value. Taking this into account, building links (and building the right links) is still important.

Aside from being a ranking factor and driving organic search traffic, links can also increase traffic as people click from other sites. Yes, having more backlinks could equate to your site being seen as more “popular,” but they also provide additional ways for your content to be discovered by real people. Internet users who are exploring other content may find a link to your site and find just what they are looking for. This further supports Chima’s assumption that topically relevant links are key — we want people to find our content in the right place at the right time.

Now, let’s dive into how to find opportunities to build more of those important links!

Step 1: Identify your competitors

As with any task, you want to maximize your efforts and find the best opportunities. So, before we dive into link prospecting, we need to identify competitors to compare our backlink profile to. If you already have a list of competitors you’d like to work with, you can move on to step two. However, it never hurts to verify your assumptions and possibly find additional competitors you may not have considered.

The Domain Analysis tool is a great place to start when looking to identify search competitors. This tool gives you ungated access to three searches per day so you can quickly identify your direct search competitors. The Top Search Competitors module will show you the competitors that compete for the same keywords as the site entered, ranked by visibility.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to see a more extensive list and do additional competitive research, our True Competitor tool can help. Just enter your site’s URL, and the tool will populate with a list of your top 25 competitors.

Although we won’t be covering it in depth in this article, we do have a comprehensive guide that walks through How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis. The guide dives into all aspects of the process and includes a free template.

Now that you’ve identified key competitors, you can use those for the following backlink analysis. Let’s jump in to find some backlink opportunities.

Tool Highlight: Domain Analysis Use the Domain Analysis tool to identify search competitors. This tool allows three free searches per day, showing direct search competitors ranked by visibility.

Further Research: True Competitor For an extensive list, use the True Competitor tool. Enter your site’s URL to see your top 25 competitors.

Step 2: Navigate to Link Explorer

Any research is only as insightful as the data it’s based on. In SEO, the quality and breadth of your data directly impact your insights and strategies. Having a comprehensive and accurate dataset is crucial when analyzing backlinks. With Moz's tools, you gain access to our extensive link index, allowing you to identify high-quality link opportunities and benchmark against competitors effectively. This ensures your link-building efforts are informed, strategic, and ultimately more successful.

Moz’s link research tool Link Explorer gives you easy access to our link index and is used by many marketers to research any site's link profile. This tool shows the quality of inbound links using metrics like Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score. The free version allows you to do a good amount of backlink research, but to enjoy all its capabilities, you'll need full access; you can get that access for free with a 30-day trial of Moz Pro.

Tool Highlight: Link Explorer Moz’s Link Explorer provides easy access to a vast link index. The free version offers substantial research capabilities, and a 30-day free trial of Moz Pro gives full access.

Step 3: Access Link Intersect

Let the tools do the leg work for you! Rather than manually comparing backlink profiles to cherry-pick opportunities, this is where you can lean on the tools to do the labor.

Link Intersect is a handy tool within Link Explorer that allows you to enter your site and up to 5 competitor sites to see what domains or pages are linking to them but not to you. This tool cuts down on the manual effort of merging multiple CSV files and sorting through (possibly) hundreds of potential link opportunities to find the ones you’re missing out on.