👋Why this matters
- An advanced way to determine what anchor text to use is to copy top ranked competitors
- Since Google ranked these sites, whatever anchor text they're using is working
- Backlink profiles are messy, so it's hard to know what the true percentages are
- Linkio automates all the analysis and comparison steps for you
T.L.D.R.
1️⃣ Add competitor(s)
2️⃣ Check their backlinks
3️⃣ Check their percentages
4️⃣ Compare percentages to yours
5️⃣Decide if they're worth copying
Step 1: Add competitor(s)
➡️ Go the the anchor text planner for your brand
➡️Expand the page you want to analyze competitors for
➡️Click "Add New Competitors" tab
➡️Click "Autodiscover competitors" for the easiest method
👉Note: If you have specific competitors in mind, you can add them manually using the "Manually add competitors" button.
➡️Select the keyword you want to find competitors for and click submit
➡️The system will import the Top 10 results of Google for that keyword into a table.
👉Note: If you paired your Ahrefs API, we will also pull DR and RD metrics.
👉Note: We will guess the brand name by using what's in the root domain
👉Note: We will apply the same keywords for the competitor that you have in your page
➡️Select only the competitors who match your website type and page type
👉Note: For example, if you are trying to rank your blog post, don't select a competitor whose homepage is ranking. Or if you are trying to rank a product sales page, don't select a competitor's blog page.
👉Note: If you are a local business, don't try to copy the percentages of a site like Yelp or Amazon. Only import competitors who have a similar type of site as yours
➡️Update the Brand Name column with the most correct version of the competitor's brand name
👉Note: You can add multiple brand name variations via comma separation i.e. violanorbert,viola norbert
➡️Once you're satisfied, click the Green button to add the competitors to the anchor text planner
🥳You've successfully added competitors to the anchor text planner!
Step 2: Check Their Backlinks
⚠️This is where the software has 2 paths:
PATH 1️⃣ You have paid Ahrefs account:
- All data imports is 100% automated
- Pair API on this page
PATH 2️⃣: You don't have a paid Ahrefs account:
- You have to manually import your backlink data
- Message me for more options
➡️ PATH 1️⃣ (✔️Ahrefs) Linkio will automatically import competitor backlinks
➡️ PATH 2️⃣ (❌Ahrefs) You can import competitor backlinks manually with the "Import Backlinks" button
👉Note: Only import the backlinks for that particular page
➡️Once import is complete, Linkio will perform several background checks on each backlink
- Verify referring page status (200, 404, etc)
- Verify backlink is on the page
- Determine Dofollow/Nofollow status
- Check if referring page is indexed in Google or not
- Confirm anchor text of backlink
- Categorize anchor text into 1 of 13 categories
👉 Note: These checks can occur instantly, or it can take up to a couple of hours depending on the currently system load. You can check the Crawler queue in the top right header to determine how long it should take
Once analysis is complete, you're ready for step 3.
Step 3: Check Competitor Anchor Text Percentages
You need to ensure the percentages are accurate and to decide what competitors to copy. Linkio makes this possible with just a few clicks.
Once the checks are complete, you'll get an email notification.
➡️Review to "COMPETITOR ANCHOR TEXT PERCENTAGES VS. YOURS" Table in the "Analyze Competitors" tab.
- Referring Domains That Count: These are all of the dofollow and indexed backlinks we identified
- Link Icon: You can click this to review each of the competitor's links
- Count Towards Averages toggle: This lets you finetune which competitors you wish to include in your analysis
- "Consider not counting if less than 10 RD": If there is not enough link data, the percentages might be random. I prefer using the data from competitors who have at least 10 links
- Average: The average anchor text percentage distribution of the competitors
- Ideal From: _ dropdown: Let's you decide which ideal percentage you'll choose
➡️ You should make sure these percentages are correct by clicking the "Link icon" to auto-scroll to the competitor's backlinks and then clicking the "Categorization Settings" button to make adjustments.
Perform the same checks for every competitor you wish to analyze.
➡️Once satisfied, go back to the "COMPETITOR ANCHOR TEXT PERCENTAGES VS. YOURS" table and toggle off any competitors you will not include in your percentages
👉Note: I will usually uncheck anyone with less than 10 "Referring Domains that Count".
👉Note: I may also uncheck competitors whose percentages are too aggressive with a particular anchor type. It's probably an outlier, not a rule.
Step 4: Compare Their Percentages to Yours
➡️Compare the competitor average percentages, your actual percentages, and what is currently set as the ideal
- Competitor average
- Your actual current percentages
- What the system currently has as your ideal
- Dropdown for changing the ideal percentage
In my screenshot, we can see the competitor average keyword percentages are more aggressive than what the system default suggestions (65% vs 43.37%).
Step 5: Decide if They're Worth Copying
➡️If you would like to use the Competitor average as your ideal percentage, you can do so using the dropdown
👉Note: If the competitor percentages are especially keyword aggressive, you can choose "Reduce KW by 10-25-50" to be more conservative.
👉Note: If the competitor percentages are too skewed on just 1 anchor text, consider sticking to Linkio's defaults.
👉Note: If the competitors don't have enough referring domains that count (< 5), stick to Linkio's default suggestions.
👉Note: If none of the competitors share your website type and page type, stick to Linkio's default suggestions.
