A backlink gap analysis is a list of the sites that link to your competitors but not to you. In Ahrefs, you build it with Link Intersect: your site goes in the top field and up to 10 competitors go in the fields below. The report then shows every referring domain or page you’re missing.
That list is a starting point, not a to-do list. The strongest leads are sites that link to several of your competitors, because they have already shown they cover your topic and link out to businesses like yours. The rest of the work is filtering, checking each site and matching your pitch to how the competitor earned the link.
What a backlink gap analysis shows you
You’ll see “backlink gap” used two ways. Some use it for the difference in referring domain counts between you and a rival. That number tells you how far behind you are. The analysis itself is the list behind that number: named domains and pages that link to competitor sites, which you can review and contact one by one.
Each row answers three questions. Who links to the competitor? Which of your competitors do they link to? Which page on the competitor’s site gets the link? The third answer matters most, because it tells you what kind of content earned the link and which of your pages could deserve one from the same site.
Before you start: access and the right competitors
Ahrefs lists Link Intersect as available on all subscription plans. The free Ahrefs account covers Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics for websites you verify, while analysing competing sites needs a paid subscription. So you can check your own backlinks for free, but not run the comparison.
Pick competitors from the search results, not from your sales deck. Search the keywords your money pages target and note which domains keep appearing on page one. A review site or an industry blog that outranks you is an SEO competitor even if it sells nothing like your product. Three to five sites is a practical range: enough overlap to show patterns, small enough to review by hand.
How to run a backlink gap analysis in Ahrefs
- Open Link Intersect. Find it under Competitive Analysis in the top navigation. Choose Referring domains to see whole sites or Referring pages to see the exact articles that carry the links.
- Enter your site, then your competitors. Your domain or URL goes in the top section. Competitors go in the section below, up to 10 of them. Click Show link opportunities.
- Sort by overlap. Use the Links to competitors filter and select All competitors to see sites that link to every competitor you entered.
- Open the linking pages. Work out how each competitor got its link before you write a word of outreach.
- Check each site. Remove the ones you wouldn’t want a link from.
- Export and plan. Move the shortlist into a sheet with one pitch angle per row.
1. Choose referring domains or referring pages
Referring domains gives you one row per site, which suits a first pass across a whole competitor. Referring pages is better when you want specific targets such as listicles, resource pages or roundups. Ahrefs’ own walkthrough uses referring pages to find listicles that mention competitors but leave you out.
2. Enter your site and your competitors
Order matters here. The top field is the site you want links for. The bottom fields are the sites whose links you want to find. Put them the other way round and the report answers a different question. For each URL, choose the scope that matches your goal: the whole domain for a broad sweep, or Exact URL for a single page.
3. Filter the results by overlap first
Open the Links to competitors dropdown and select All competitors first. Then clear it and look at how many of your competitors each remaining site links to. A site that links to three rivals has a pattern, while a site that links to one may have linked for a reason that has nothing to do with your topic.
Then use the upper filters. Ahrefs’ example combines Do-follow with DR: From 50 to cut a long list down quickly. Treat the DR floor as a sorting tool rather than a quality rule. A relevant DR 40 trade blog with real readers can be a better target than a DR 80 site that links to everyone. Filtering by the linking page’s traffic helps you spot pages that people actually find.
4. See how the competitor earned each link
Click the number in any row to see the individual backlinks from that domain. Then open the linking page itself. The page type tells you what to offer:
| What the linking page is | What to offer |
|---|---|
| A “best tools” list or roundup | A case for adding your product, with the detail the author uses for the other entries |
| A resource or links page | A guide or tool that fills a gap in their list |
| An article citing the competitor’s data | Newer or more specific data the writer could cite |
| A link that now points to a dead page | Your live page as the replacement |
| A guest post by the competitor | A pitch for a different angle the site hasn’t covered |
| A partner, customer or integration page | Nothing to pitch: the link comes from a business relationship you don’t have |
This step also explains why one competitor has links you can’t easily match. Event sponsorships, integrations and press coverage of a funding round all produce links that outreach can’t recreate.
5. Check each site before you contact it
A site linking to your competitors isn’t automatically a site you want. When we vet a site for client placements, we check its Ahrefs data first. We look for at least 2,000 real monthly organic visitors, mostly from tier-1 English-speaking countries. The traffic trend should be stable or growing with no severe recent drop. The site should rank for real keywords rather than torrent, brand-hijacking or login terms. We also want a real product or service behind the site, a human editor, a clean outbound link profile and no posts promoting CBD, casinos or gambling.
Those are our placement criteria, not a Google rule, so adjust the numbers to your niche. We also prefer linking pages that have their own search visibility in Ahrefs and that have been updated within the last two years. Age alone doesn’t make a page weak, though. Relevance, current usefulness and site quality still decide whether it stays on the list.
6. Export the shortlist and plan the outreach
Click Export in the top-right corner of the report. Ahrefs exports the intersecting referring domains in one file. The backlinks behind them are exported per domain, so pull those only for the sites you keep. A simple sheet with these columns turns the export into a plan:
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Domain and linking page | Where the competitor’s link sits |
| Competitors linked | The overlap count from Link Intersect |
| Page type | Roundup, resource page, citation, broken link or guest post |
| Your matching page | The URL on your site that deserves the link |
| Pitch angle | One line on why the editor would add you |
| Contact and status | Editor or author, date contacted, reply |
The “Your matching page” column is the easiest one to leave blank. If you can’t name a page on your site that is better than or different from the competitor’s, the pitch has nothing to offer yet. That’s a content task first. For the outreach itself, our guide to link building outreach covers the emails. Our link prospecting guide covers sources beyond competitor links. If you’d rather hand the whole process to a team, that’s what our link building service does.
Run the gap for one money page with Exact URL
A domain-level gap mixes links to competitors’ homepages, blog posts and tools into one list. When you need links for one specific page, such as a comparison page or a feature page, run Link Intersect at page level instead.
- Enter the URL of your page in the top section and set its scope to Exact URL.
- Search the main keyword for that page and copy the URLs of the competitor pages ranking for it.
- Enter those URLs in the bottom section, each set to Exact URL.
- Choose Referring pages, then click Show link opportunities.
The result is a short list of pages linking to the exact articles you compete with. These targets are highly relevant, because each linking page has already chosen to cite content on your exact topic.
Mistakes that waste a gap list
Copying links that shouldn’t be copied. A competitor’s profile can include links you don’t want to repeat. Google’s spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, including exchanging money, goods or services for links. They also list excessive link exchanges and partner pages made only for cross-linking. A paid link is not a violation when it is qualified with rel=”sponsored” (Google’s preferred value) or rel=”nofollow”. So a sponsored link on a competitor’s profile tells you about an advertising deal, not about a page that would cite you editorially. To read these attributes in a link profile, see our guide to dofollow vs nofollow backlinks.
Pitching your homepage. If the competitor’s link points to a guide, the site linked to a guide. Pitch the page on your site that does the same job.
Treating the gap as a one-off. Competitors keep earning links, so a list built months ago misses the newest ones. Rerun the same comparison every quarter to keep the list current. For your own profile, a regular backlink audit is the counterpart: the audit reviews links you already have, while the gap finds the ones you don’t.
Other tools that run the same comparison
The method doesn’t depend on Ahrefs. Semrush’s Backlink Gap compares your site plus up to five competitors. Its Best tab shows domains that point to all of your competitors but not to you, which matches the “all competitors” filter in Ahrefs. For a quick free check, the Keywords Everywhere Backlink Gap Analyzer compares your site with one or two competitors and sorts sources by how many of them they link to. Its free plan has a daily backlink limit, so it suits a single page or a small niche better than a full audit. For a wider view of the options, see our backlink checker tools comparison.
Want to see your own gap before you build the sheet? Send me your site and two or three competitors through the free link gap analysis form. I’ll come back with the sites I would contact first.
