SEO: Steal Google ranking from your competitors!

February 19, 2007 • Glenn Murray

One of the best ways to build the link popularity of your site (thereby increasing your search engine rank) is to check where your competitors’ links are coming from, and try to get links from those sites yourself. (You’ll be surprised where some of their links come from.)

Yes, it’s a simple idea, but when you actually try to do it, it takes time and you need to be organised. Below is a guide that’ll help you complete the task efficiently and effectively.

To check on the links of your competitors:

STEP 1) Go to Google and search for your target keyword.
STEP 2) Make a note of the top 5 competitors who appear (write down their domain name).
STEP 3) Return to Google and search for the first domain name in the list (i.e. type “www.competitorsdomainname.com” in the search field, including the quotes).
STEP 4) Google will display all the pages it can find that contain the string, www.competitorsdomainname.com. In most cases, these instances will be actual links to your competitor’s website. (TIP: If there are many results, bookmark the search results page as this process will take a long time – possibly months.)
STEP 5) Visit each page (TIP: Right click on the first result and select “Open in New Window”. By opening a separate window to see the page, you won’t lose your search results page.)
STEP 6) Try to think of a way to get a link to your website on the same page (TIP: Avoid sending them an email as webmaster receive a lot of SPAM and your email will likely go unnoticed. Try calling them instead.)
STEP 7) Repeat for each of your top 5 ranking competitors.

TIP: In the list of results, the sites which appear high up in the list of results are likely to have a higher Google PageRank (PR – see Glossary) than the sites which appear toward the end of the list. You should be more interested in obtaining links to sites with a high PR (assuming they’re also relevant).