How To Legally Steal Your Competitors Backlinks
Yep… nothing illegal… nothing shady going on here.
In fact, the strategy I want to share with you comes from my Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) studies I took a few years back.
One of the big elements of NLP is modelling.
In essence, the theory is...
"If you want to be something/someone - model their behaviours, their actions, how they do things and the traits that make them successful."
So in terms of business, the most successful business owners read books, and they continue to sharpen their sword - the REAL smart ones invest in SEO, Web Design & Paid Traffic with Websites That Sell of course… bahahahah… bit of self-promotion there, but I think you get my point.
Your actions determine your outcomes (we're getting pretty philosophical here... but I'm getting to my SEO point) so by modelling "successful action" we too can duplicate this success.
And here's where this is important for your journey in ranking and banking with Google.
Your competitor somehow got to the first page on Google…
Right?
Well, they didn't do that by luck… specific actions were taken… specific strategies were employed.
We all know there is a heap of ranking factors that determine a Page 1 ranking and this post is not about ranking factors.
But 1 ranking factor which Google has built its entire algorithm around and which is not going away anytime soon is….
LINKS!
That's right, links pointing to your website (aka Backlinks) are still the No.1 determining factor to your ranking on the first page or not.
So here's where you can apply my NLP wisdom to your SEO campaign.
Steal Your Competitors Successful BackLinks!
It's easy… and I'm going to show you how in 3 easy steps!
OK, so you readers still with me?
Good!
Here are the 3 Quick & Easy Steps To Modelling Your Competitor's Backlinks
STEP 1) Identify Your Model
What you want to do is go to Google and type in your most competitive keyword.
In my example, I used "Dentist Brisbane"
You should use your most competitive keyword as this will give you the best chance of getting "model websites" that are outranking the others because of their link profile.
With non-competitive keywords sometimes all you need is a great article and good onsite optimisation - however with competitive keywords 99.99% of the time it's the number of quality backlinks that will determine rankings.
So once you've found your model website simply copy and paste it and step 1 is complete.
Here are a few things to remember (outlined on the image below):
- Don't use the paid ads as your model website
- Don't use websites in the local pack as your model website
- Don't use directory sites, youtube videos or other non niche specific sources as your model website
STEP 2) Use the Right Tools
A FREE and easy-to-use tool to find the exact backlinks your competitors are using is Moz's Open Site Explorer.
You can also use a tool called Majestic SEO or SEM Rush - we use all of them in our agency, however, for this example, we simply used Open Site Explorer as it gives you enough data with their free service.
So just to give this strategy a go, you don't need to sign up to anything and take on any further overheads - and that's gotta be a good thing.
Doncha think?
OK so let's get to step 2.
All you need to do when you get to this tool is paste in the URL of the model website you found in step one and hit enter.
Open Site Explorer will then give you a full list of websites that are linking back to the model website.
And yes you guessed it!
These are part of the links and factors responsible for the rankings this website has achieved.
Therefore the picking leads us into step 3.
STEP 3) Model Your Competitor's Backlinks
Now that you have the URLs of your competitor's backlinks the last step is easy.
Find out exactly how they got the backlink on the particular website.
It could be any of the following ways:
- In a local market, it will be through a business listing.
- It could be a testimonial.
- It could be a featured article about the business.
- Or it could be like in the video example above a Guest Blog post.
Whatever it is… all you need to do is identify the action your competitor has taken to get them backlink and then model this action.
If they wrote a guest blog post, you simply go to the contact page of the website they are featured on, let them know you also would like to provide a featured article for them and await their response.
Your email could be as simple as this:
Dear Webmaster of XYZ.com.au,
I stumbled across your site as I was researching XYZ's topic.
I see you covered a story about XYZ topic on this page: URL of the page you found.
We have covered a similar topic, however with totally different results.
I would love to share this info with your readers and would be happy to give you full rights to the article and post it on your website.
We've never posted this article in the public before and all I would ask is that we get a mention of our website in return as the source of information.
Looking forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Joe Doe
- - - -
And that's how it's done!
It's as simple as 1-2-3.
This is a strategy too many SEOs just overlooked, but it is very powerful and many times you can really give your campaign a kick start and the foundation it needs.
On top, you know these links are PROVEN to be successful because Google has rewarded your model site with 1st page rankings - probably mostly because of these links.
So now is the time to take action...
Follow the above 3 simple steps and go out, hijack your competitor's best backlinks.
This is a FREE strategy - all you need to do is take action and model my process above 😉
Hope this tutorial has helped.
I would love to hear how you're looking to use this strategy.
See you around.
But for now, I'm out.
Ciao.