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Competitive backlink research is one of the first steps in either building your own link-building strategy or figuring out what it takes to achieve your competitors’ organic rankings.
Links are certainly not the only ranking signal, but they are still one of the most powerful factors (if not the most powerful one).
When selecting your competitors to analyze you will likely choose those that rank particularly well for your target queries, which makes sense because you want to know what has worked for them.
There’s one important thing to keep in mind here: It’s generally best to select your peers (sites directly in your vertical or niche). In other words, stay away from large websites that play within a variety of verticals but happen to rank above you (big box stores, Wikipedia, etc.).
There’s not much you can learn from Amazon’s backlink profile, for example, apart from the fact that being a web giant is working well for them.
Likewise, there’s less to learn from your oldest competitors apart from starting early (and earning all those age and trust signals over time) is certainly a good idea.
Instead, look for sites that have seen a recent growth in rankings to zero in on tactics working well for them. These are the types of sites you can best learn from, and this is what will make your competitive research actionable, i.e....
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