The backlink gap with your competitors, in plain language
Which sites link to your competitors and not to you? That list is the most concrete task in SEO. How to build it and how to work through it without spamming.
A link from another site to yours works like a recommendation. Google uses those recommendations to decide who in a market is taken seriously. It has been that way for twenty years and it is still one of the strongest factors.
The trouble with links is that the advice usually stops at “you should do link building”. That is not something you can act on. The backlink gap makes it concrete: a list of names of sites you can approach.
What the gap is exactly
Take three or four competitors who rank well in your market. For each of them, pull the sites that link to them. Put those lists next to the list of sites that link to you. Everything that appears for two or more competitors and not for you is your gap.
Needing two or more competitors is not a detail. A site that links to one competitor could be a friend of the owner. A site that links to three competitors is a place where businesses in your trade belong, and where you are missing.
What you usually find
In practice such a list breaks down into a few kinds, and they differ enormously in difficulty.
| Kind | How you get in | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Trade guides and directories | Sign up, sometimes for a fee | Low |
| Trade associations | Become a member and fill in your profile | Low |
| Suppliers and manufacturers | Ask to be listed on the dealer page | Low |
| Trade journals and news sites | Have something to say that is news | Medium |
| Local news sites | A project, sponsorship or partnership | Medium |
| Blogs and knowledge sites | A piece worth referring to | High |
The bottom category is where most of the gain is and also where most of the time goes. The top three can be done in an afternoon and are forgotten surprisingly often.
How to work through the list
Start with the dealer and supplier pages. If you install or sell brands, there is a good chance the manufacturer keeps a list of installers or resellers. You belong on it, and an email is enough.
Then the directories and associations. Fill in those profiles completely, with your real address, phone number and a link to the right page on your site. Half-finished profiles bring in very little.
For the rest, you need a reason. “Would you link to me” is not a reason. A new project in the region, a small survey among your own customers, an explanation nobody has written yet: those are reasons. This part stays human work, with us too. We deliver the list and the why, you have the conversation.
Where it goes wrong
Buying links from a party that sells a thousand a month is the fastest way to create a problem instead of solving one. Google has become good at spotting networks that sell links, and the sites taking part lose their value. Then you have paid for a recommendation that no longer counts.
Also pointless: links from sites that have nothing to do with your trade or your region. A reference from a travel blog to an installation company means nothing to a reader, and Google sees that too.
The honest answer is that a good backlink profile grows slowly. Ten relevant references with a real reason behind them do more than a hundred you bought.
