When most of us think about our competitors, we think “competition.”
It may surprise you, then, to realize that your competitors can actually help you with your backlink and SEO needs.
This was touched upon in my recent podcast conversation with Mark Samms of Ninja Outreach.
3 Ways Our Competitors Can Help Us Get Awesome Backlinks
Here are three ways to utilize your competitors’ actions or their expertise in order to get great backlinks to your website.
1. Your Competition Can Provide You with Sources
If you’re having a difficult time trying to figure out who to reach out to in order to put your message in front of more people – follow your competitors.
Where are they guest blogging? Which companies use their services?
When you find the answers to these questions, you can contact these companies. Tell them what you do and ask if they will let you contribute a guest post. Or, maybe they will reference your company in a future blog.
In some cases, they may choose to replace links to your competitors with links to your website.
2. Ask Your Competitors to Be Part of a Roundup
Not everything is a competition. Your so-called competition might actually be influencers in your niche who can prove to be an ally in the business world.
One of the ways this can happen is to host a roundup.
Contact the influencers in your industry for their opinion on a topic that is of interest to the readers/followers.
Mark did this and ended up with comments from 55 influencers. He wrote a 10,000-word blog and told them about it. They were thrilled and let their readers/followers know about it, backlinking to Mark’s blog.
You can imagine how great the exposure was for Ninja Outreach with this tactic – and it can be the same for you.
3. Watch for Broken Backlinks
Sometimes, competitors go away. They take their business in another direction or they experience link breaks and don’t want to expend the time or money to fix them.
This could be good news for you.
If you read an article and see a link to a company that provides similar services to you but the link is broken, take some action!
Contact the company whose blog you were reading and inform them that they have a broken link on their blog. Then, tell them that you offer a similar product or service. They might decide to use a link to your website instead.
Whatever You Choose to Do – Be Consistent
One of the worst things you can do is try something once or twice and then give up. Remember – there’s no such thing as an “overnight success.”
To achieve success in anything – including business – you have to put in a lot of time and effort. But if you’re consistent with your efforts, you will start to see success.
It won’t happen in a few days, but after a few weeks and months, the needle will start to rise – as Mark says. Slowly but surely, you will see your rankings rise over time.
Mark has all kinds of helpful outreach and marketing tips on his Ninja Outreach blog.