The Hard Part

Keeping up with the competitions links

[shaggy]

I have recently been handed a page of competitor websites. My mission is to find out where links are coming into these competitor sites, and have our site listed there also, if it is not already.

My question is this. Is there any software or online resources that will collect this information? Or do I have to run the "link:www.competitordomain.com" search on google and write in each site that links to the competitors? Does this have to be the hard part?

[agerhart]

A quality link popularity campaign is time consuming.......dedicate time each day.

[Nicu_Alecu]

I'm new to webmasterworld.com so please bear with me until I fully get the rules.
Back on topic:
Shaggy, I have a suggestions for you: URL snipped. I do not want to comment on the quality of their services but it does save you the time for checking links from three search engines: Google, Altavista and Hotbot (this last one is slightly relevant for Lycos, actually).

Hope it helps.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Nicu, we try and shy away from posting URL's and discussing specific products where possible

(edited by: NFFC at 12:54 pm (gmt) on Dec. 11, 2001)

[shaggy]

Getting this project off the ground is the hard part. I do dedicate some time each day now to collecting these links.

[paynt]

Hi shaggy and Nicu_Alecu,

Welcome to Webmaster World. You’ve been handed a rather large task. To begin with this discussion may help

Discovering inbound links [webmasterworld.com] via Google, AV, and Lycos - others?

I suggest you get organized. We’ve talked a bit about that here

Reciprocal Links Pages [webmasterworld.com] Effective Link Building Strategy
and
Keeping Track of my Reciprocal Links [webmasterworld.com]
does anybody know of a simple way of keeping track of all the links?
and
Link Exchanges
Let's share our productive how-to's... [webmasterworld.com]

Then I think you want to read these discussions

Prompting sites to reciprocate links [webmasterworld.com] the all-important follow-up letter
and
Methods to research specialized search and vortals links [webmasterworld.com]
and this
Link-Swapping & Theme Dilution [webmasterworld.com] Will linking off-theme hurt my rankings?

Hope this helps you get going. Keep the questions coming. Feel free to respond to any of these discussions.

[billy fullerton]

Shaggy,

There is no shortcuts here I'm afraid if you want to do it right. You'll have to visit every one of these sites individually.

You can however download the Google toolbar, it helps evaluate the websites and presents all the inbound links in one click of the mouse.

You also have to bear in mind that Google will only list the links of those websites that are listed with google. The same applies to other SE's and directories.

A website may have a popularity count of 1000 in total but may only show 200 in google. That means that in order to target these competitors effectively you will have to adopt the same strategy with the other SE's that list the other 800. :)