How to Find Your Competitors’ Best Backlinks and Turn Them Into Opportunities

Rankings stuck while a competitor keeps pulling ahead? Nine times out of ten, part of the answer is sitting in their backlink profile. Competitor backlink analysis isn’t a new idea, but it’s still one of the most reliable shortcuts to real link-building opportunities in 2026.

The reasoning behind it is almost embarrassingly simple: a site that linked to a page like yours once is far more likely to do it again for you than a random site pulled from a cold-outreach list.

I’ve run this process for dozens of sites now, and it holds up almost every time. Below is how to actually find competitor backlinks, sort the useful ones from the noise, and turn what you learn into a plan, along with a few things that matter more if you’re building links for businesses across the UK, DACH, Benelux, the Nordics, or Southern Europe.

Why This Still Works in 2026

Search algorithms have changed a lot, sure. But referring domains haven’t lost their weight as a trust signal, and honestly I don’t expect that to change soon.

A strong backlink profile still tells Google, and increasingly the AI-driven search systems layered on top of it, that other real websites are willing to vouch for your content.

What you actually get out of a competitor backlink analysis: fewer wasted outreach emails, a much clearer picture of which content formats earn links in your niche, and usually a few gaps your competitors haven’t gotten around to filling.

Where Europe Changes the Playbook

If you’re chasing links for a European audience, copying a US-style outreach strategy word for word tends to underperform.

Search behavior shifts by country and trusted publications, and so does what counts as a normal, non-spammy pitch. What works for a .co.uk site editor can land completely wrong with someone reading it in Munich or Lyon.

A few things worth paying attention to: Country-code domains (.de, .fr, .nl, .it, .es, .co.uk) tend to carry real local trust that a generic .com doesn’t automatically get.

Publications and directories that publish in the local language usually beat an English-only equivalent for regional visibility, even with less overall traffic.

And keep outreach GDPR-conscious, especially around how you collect and store contact details for lists spanning EU countries.

This isn’t complicated, but it’s the part people skip when they’re in a rush, and it’s exactly what separates a one-off campaign from something that earns real trust with European clients over time.

 Pick the Right Competitors

Before you go digging for a single backlink, be honest with yourself about who you’re actually studying.

Your biggest brand name isn’t automatically the right pick after sites rank for the keywords you’re trying to win instead.

Three to five direct competitors is usually enough. Any more and you’re just drowning in data you won’t act on.

Run a Backlink Gap Analysis

This is the step that finds you the quick wins.

A backlink gap analysis lines up your referring domains against your competitors’ and shows exactly who’s linking to them but not to you.

Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz all let you drop in several competitor domains side by side and pull a list of sites linking to two or more of them, minus you.

Those overlapping domains should go to the top of your list; they’ve already proven they’re willing to link out to businesses like yours.

When sorting through results, prioritize domains with a decent authority score (or domain rating), obvious topical relevance, and actual organic traffic.

A high score with nobody visiting the site isn’t worth much.

Look at the Whole Backlink Profile, Not Just the Gap

Once you’ve narrowed things down, pull each competitor’s full backlink profile, not just the gap report.

You’re hunting for patterns: which pages pull in the most referring domains, what anchor text keeps showing up, whether links tend to come from guest post sites, industry directories, resource pages, or something else you hadn’t considered.

This is really the step that tells you why people link to them, not just who’s doing it.

That “why” is worth more than most people give it credit for, because it’s what you’ll actually replicate.

Sort the Opportunities Into Buckets

Not every competitor backlink deserves the same pitch. Splitting them into categories makes life a lot easier for whoever’s running outreach.

Guest Post Sites

If a competitor got a guest article published somewhere, check whether that site takes pitches from other brands too. Plenty do, and a genuinely useful, well-written piece can land you the same spot.

Industry Directories

These still matter for European audiences, particularly the smaller, country-specific ones.

Chambers of commerce and national trade associations carry more weight than most SEOs give them credit for, and they’re almost always ignored by teams that only think in English.

Getting listed doesn’t take much effort and can be a solid SEO backlink, especially if the directory has a decent reputation in your sector.

Resource Pages and Listicles

Pages rounding up “best tools” or “top resources” are genuinely worth chasing. If a competitor made it onto one, reach out and make your case for why your product or article belongs there too.

Expert Round-Ups and Podcast Interviews

If your competitor’s founder showed up in an expert round-up or did the rounds on a few podcasts, that tells you the publication is open to outside voices.

Pitch yourself for the next one.

Broken Link Building

Check whether any of a competitor’s backlinks point to pages that no longer exist.

Find those broken pages, build or repurpose something similar on your own site, then ask the linking site to swap the dead link for your live one.

It’s one of the more efficient tactics out there, mostly because you’re solving a real problem for the site owner rather than asking for a favor.