How to Run a Backlink Gap Analysis in Under an Hour

A backlink gap analysis finds the sites that link to your competitors but not to you. Done properly, you end up with a short, ranked prospect list. Not a 3,000-row export nobody opens again. The trick is what happens after the report runs, not the report itself.

I’ve watched plenty of people run one and stall at the export. Thousands of domains, no idea where to start. So this walkthrough spends most of its time on the part tools don’t do for you: deciding which rows matter, and how each link was actually earned.

What a Backlink Gap Analysis Shows You

A backlink gap analysis is a simple idea. Line up your site against a few competitors and ask: who links to them but not to me? Every domain on that list has already linked to a site like yours. Far warmer than a random prospect from a search.

Why bother? Because links still separate the top result from the rest. Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million Google results found the number one result had, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than positions two to ten. A gap report shows you exactly where that difference comes from.

One thing it isn’t: a count. Knowing how many links you need is a different question, about numbers. A gap analysis is about names. Which specific sites, which pages, and which of them you can realistically get. You’ll want both, but don’t mix them up.

Before You Start: Pick the Right Competitors

Most bad gap reports go wrong here, before any tool is opened. People plug in their business rivals. But the sites you’re actually up against are whoever ranks for your target keyword. Sometimes that’s a rival. Often it’s a blog, a magazine, or a comparison site.

So search your main keyword and take three to five results from page one. Skip the giants like Wikipedia, Amazon or Reddit, because their links come from sheer fame and you won’t replicate them. Pick sites roughly your size. That takes about ten minutes, and it changes everything downstream.

Then decide on domain or page level. For a single target page, compare the ranking pages, not whole domains. For a broad site-wide push, domain level is fine. Page level gives a tighter, more relevant list. Domain level gives a bigger one. Neither is wrong.

Step 1: Run the Gap Report

Any decent backlink tool can do this. Ahrefs, Semrush, and SE Ranking all have a gap or link intersect report, and there are free versions with smaller limits. Enter your domain or page, add your competitors, and set the view to referring domains rather than individual backlinks.

Now, the most useful filter of the whole process. Show only domains that link to at least two of your competitors. A site linking to one competitor might be a fluke. A site linking to three of them is telling you something about who it links to.

Export that list. Five minutes, maybe less. Don’t start filtering inside the tool for too long, because every tool hides data differently. Get the raw referring domains into a spreadsheet, then work there. That’s also your record if you rerun it later.

Step 2: Clear Out the Noise

Your export will be full of junk. That’s normal. Spend fifteen minutes stripping it down before you look at anything closely. Delete scrapers, auto-generated directories, forums, comment links and anything obviously spammy. Then drop nofollow-only domains if followed links are your goal.

Next, check strength. A bulk domain rating checker gets through a whole column in seconds. Don’t lean on the number alone, though. Fake domain authority is common, so glance at each site’s traffic too. A high score with no visitors usually means the score was built, not earned.

And here’s the step people skip. Some of your competitors’ links are ones you shouldn’t copy. Paid posts with followed links, private networks, link swaps. Google’s link spam policy covers all of these. If a competitor got a link that way, leave it with them.

Step 3: Work Out How Each Link Was Earned

This is the step that turns a list into a plan, and the one almost every guide skips. Open the linking page for each remaining domain. Ask one question: how did my competitor get this? The answer tells you exactly what to do next.

A few of those deserve their own playbook. Dead links on resource pages are a classic broken link building opportunity. And if a competitor’s study gets cited everywhere, a better version is the skyscraper link building approach. Spend about twenty minutes here. It’s worth it.

While you’re looking, watch for one bonus. Sometimes a page in your gap list already mentions your brand, just without a link. Those unlinked brand mentions are the easiest wins in the whole sheet. Move them straight to the top.

Step 4: Build the Prospect Sheet

Now turn what’s left into something you can actually work through. One row per domain. These are the columns I’d use, because each one answers a question you’ll have the day you sit down to send emails:

Keep it in one shared sheet, not five tabs. It becomes your outreach tracker as well, and later it feeds straight into your monthly report. Ten minutes to set up. After that, it just grows.

Step 5: Decide What to Chase First

Sort the sheet by three things, roughly in this order. How many competitors the site links to. How relevant it is to your page. And how easy your play is. A relevant site linking to four competitors with an open resource page? That’s a Monday morning job.

Sites with big numbers but a hard play, like national news coverage, go lower down. They’re worth having. They’re just slower, and they belong in your campaign planning rather than this week’s to-do list. Work the easy, relevant wins first and build momentum.

Mistakes That Waste the Whole Exercise

I see the same few errors again and again. Using business rivals instead of ranking pages. Chasing every row instead of filtering. Sorting by DR alone. Copying links competitors probably paid for. And the big one: never working out how each link was earned, so the list just sits there.

The other quiet mistake is running it once. Competitors keep earning links. Rerun the report every quarter, or monthly if your niche moves fast, and only look at new referring domains. Five minutes of review beats rebuilding the whole sheet from scratch each time.

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