This is Episode One in my series of my experimental & creative link building ideas for SEO, which I have cheesily coined the PiccasEo Series.
This evening curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to do a bit of research on Dad’s latest project, Select A Gym.
Specifically what I wanted to explore, after recently listening to his approach to sourcing organic traffic, was who his major competitors were from an SEO perspective.
I know more often than not that Dad is right, but heck, I figured I may as well lift the lid and take a look inside anyway. Mainly because it was an excuse to revisit a suite of tools I haven’t tinkered with in ages….competitor backlink analysis tools!
As uber-nerdy as the term ‘competitor backlink analysis’ sounds, I really get a kick out of seeing what competitors are doing, for three key reasons:
- Proves who your real competitors are (not who you assume they are)
- Provides some authentic insights into consumer preferences, particularly which content being shared the most
- Uncovers huge backlink ideas and opportunities that you may never have thought of
Before diving into the cloud-based tools themselves, I first jumped onto trusty Google to put myself in the shoes of the consumer. I searched for a few generic phrases such as ‘best gyms Brisbane’ and ’24 hour gyms in Sydney’ to get a feel for which (non-franchise) websites were ranking well (TIP: when trying to emulate the view of a ‘standard’ consumer, avoid the skew of personalised search results by using Incognito mode. This will disengage Google’s ability to tailor results specifically to your personal interests and recent search history).
The websites that appeared most frequently for searches such as these were:
My weapons of choice (thanks to a quick refresher courtesy of Saijo George’s epic SEO & marketing tools directory on-a-page) were Moz Open Site Explorer & Openlinkprofiler.
After about 30 minutes of tinkering with e-familiarising myself with a few of the choice back-link apps (Moz backlink analysis and xxx), I
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