A Link Gap Analysis is an off page audit designed to give you an “SEO roadmap” of the links you need to build in order to rank in the top 3 positions in Google.
A link gap analysis plays a vital role in search engine optimization (SEO) competitor analysis, as it allows you to discover opportunities to strengthen your SEO efforts by examining your competitors’ backlinks. Each one of those websites is going to have a backlink profile, so what we need to do is find the average of all 3 in order to get the number of links we need as a target. Simple, right?
A link gap analysis is a strategic process used to identify the differences in the number and quality of backlinks between your website and your competitors’ websites. By examining the backlink profiles of your competitors, you can uncover opportunities to enhance your own backlink profile and boost your search engine rankings. Essentially, a link gap analysis helps you pinpoint where your website is lacking in terms of backlinks and provides actionable insights on how to acquire high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources. This process is crucial for understanding the competitive landscape and developing an effective link building strategy.
Link gap analysis plays a vital role in SEO competitor analysis, as it allows you to discover opportunities to strengthen your SEO efforts by examining your competitors’ backlinks. Backlinks are a significant ranking factor for search engines, and websites with a higher number of quality backlinks generally achieve better positions on search engine result pages. By conducting a link gap analysis, you can identify specific websites that are linking to your competitors but not to you. Reaching out to these websites to request backlinks can significantly improve your search engine rankings, enhance your online visibility, and drive more traffic to your site. This proactive approach to link building can give you a competitive edge in the digital landscape.
The issue is that not all inbound links, also known as backlinks, are the same. Some might be from websites which have been around for years, some might be on sites that are brand new, or some on a blog which has been around for a while but hasn’t got much traction yet. The well established sites which have a lot of traffic will generally have a bit more power than the others and can make a lot more of a difference when you receive a link from them.
Good news, it’s not rocket science! It just requires you to summon a bit of your inner data nerd.
Most business owners have at some stage of their lives implemented an SEO campaign to get their websites onto the first page of Google in order to increase their traffic. Generally what happens is an SEO team will come in, they’ll optimise the pages for certain keywords, they’ll point a few backlinks and boom, your website is up there in a month or two.
Being on the first page is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to receive traffic. Where you want to be is in the top 3 positions, but, how do you get there? And how long does it take?
Well, it’s kind of the same process, only we need to go into a little more detail to find out exactly what your 3 competitors have that you don’t to rank higher on search engine results pages.
We look at something called DR (Domain Rank). DR Is a general guide that helps us categorise websites using a score. Generally speaking, the higher your DR, the more weight your website has in the SEO world.
Competitor backlink gap analysis involves identifying top competitors, analyzing their backlink profiles for potential opportunities, and formulating a link building strategy focused on both dofollow and no-follow links.
Ok, so we can see a websites link profile, and we can score each one of those links, so how do we work out the average needed for a top spot? Well, we put each link into something called DR Buckets.
DR buckets help us group together different websites so we can find the average number needed for each group. Say I had a website with 10 backlinks. 5 of those had a DR of 15, 2 had a DR of 21, 1 had a DR of 28, 1 had a DR of 40, and 1 had a DR of 52. We would take all of those links and put them in buckets with the following specs.
On this occasion we would put 5 links in the first bucket, 2 in the second, 1 in the 3rd and 1 in the 4th.
Conducting a link gap analysis involves several key steps, including identifying your competitors, using a backlink gap tool, and analyzing the data to uncover backlink opportunities.
The first step in conducting a link gap analysis is to identify your competitors. Start by searching for keywords related to your business and noting the top-ranking websites. Additionally, you can use SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to find your competitors and analyze their backlink profiles. These tools provide valuable insights into who your main competitors are and how their backlink strategies are structured, setting the stage for a thorough gap analysis.
Once you’ve identified your competitors, the next step is to use a backlink gap tool to analyze their backlink profiles. A backlink gap tool is an essential SEO tool that helps you identify the backlinks your competitors have that you don’t. Popular backlink gap tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz offer detailed reports on your competitors’ backlink profiles, including the number and quality of backlinks, referring domains, and anchor text. By leveraging these tools, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitors’ backlink strategies and identify high-quality backlink opportunities to enhance your own SEO efforts.
Well now we need to do this for the top 3 websites which appear in Google for the keyword that you’re trying to target. Once we’ve got those 3, we can then find the average number of links in each bucket which then gives us a goal post of the amount and score of links needed to appear in those positions. Simple.
Once we’ve identified your competitors, the next step is to use a backlink gap tool to analyze their backlink profiles and identify backlink gaps. There’s a few other metrics we need to take into consideration such as things like anchor text ratio, domain authority, content and on page optimisation. But by using the above data we can create a timeframe and strategy on how to move our website into the top 3 positions.
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