Welcome to our latest post on educational series! In this post, we will tell you how you about the method for using Open Site Explorer for figuring out the linking opportunities on the external inbound links of your competitors. Read the complete post and level up!

In the previous posts, we discussed the techniques for identifying and prioritizing sources of backlinks by utilizing some handful of tools. One of the best techniques for finding high Domain Authority sites in a quick manner is by having a history of linking to the pages that discuss your topic for studying the backlinks of your competitors.

In this post, we will talk about the methods for creating and exporting a list of the backlinks in your computer that can be utilized by everyone for targeting activities. Here, we are assuming that the keyword research is already completed by our readers and have found out competitors who are ranking great in the search results about these queries. You should utilize those competitors for the following analysis.

How the backlinks of a site can be checked

Step One- Navigate to Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is an incredible tool for researching the website’s link profile. It will display the uniqueness of inbound links by utilizing metrics, such as Domain Authority, Spam Score, and Page Authority. The free version will allow you to perform a great amount of research, but still, you require a full access for enjoying all its features. Our readers can enjoy a 30-day trial of Moz Pro for free.

Step Two- Entering the domain URL of your competitor

We strongly advise you to open the site of your competitor in a browser window and then copy that URL. All the spelling mistakes will be reduced due to this and the chances of any incorrect typing the domain name. A perfect example where an error that can be commonly seen is incorrectly adding www to the URL when it isn’t the same way it rendered by the website.

Step Three- Navigate to the Inbound Links window

The Inbound Links window will show every page that is linked to the website of a competitor. We have set some parameters above the list for the identifying the links sources that deliver the link equity.

They are set out in the following manner- Target This- Root Domain, Links Source- Only External, and Link Type- Link Equity. This will display every external link offering link equity to all the pages on the site of your competitor.

Step Four- Export results into .csv

You will be allowed by the majority of reports in Open Site Explorer to export to .csv. You should save them and then repeat it for every competitor.

Step Five- Compiling .csv results from every competitor

After exporting Open Site Explorer from the top 5 to 10 competitors, you have to complete them into a single spreadsheet.

Step Six- Sort all results by Page Authority

Page Authority can be defined as a 1-100 scale created by the Moz, which estimates the credibility of a page’s capability to get ranked in the search results on the basis of the understanding about the major ranking factors. The higher authority is suggested by higher numbers and therefore there is a higher probability of ranking. In addition, there will be better link equity delivered by the higher authority pages to the site of a competitor. Utilization of Page Authority can be used as your sorting method.

Step Seven: Reviewing every linking site for opportunities

After having a big list of sites that link to your competitors for keywords you are focusing, check out the list of high Page Authority links and check out for authors or sites that display up frequently. Then utilize your chosen outreach strategy for contacting these websites and start creating a relationship.