Studying where a competing firm's links come from is one of the most consistently useful research steps mentioned throughout discussions of this topic, yet the actual process of doing this well often gets glossed over in favor of higher-level strategy. Walking through the specific steps involved rounds out a practical approach to link building for lawyers with something firms can actually execute rather than just conceptually understand.
Choosing the Right Competitors to Study
Rather than analyzing every firm that shows up in a general search for a firm's practice area, focusing specifically on two or three firms that consistently rank well for the exact local searches a firm cares most about tends to produce more relevant, actionable findings than a broader, less targeted analysis. Firms operating in a genuinely different market or practice area, even if they show up somewhere in search results, generally aren't useful comparison points for this specific exercise.
Running the Actual Backlink Analysis
Various tools, both free and paid, allow a user to enter a competitor's domain and generate a list of sites linking to that domain, along with basic metrics about each linking site's authority and relevance. Running this analysis for each of the two or three chosen competitors produces a raw list that then needs to be reviewed and filtered rather than treated as an immediately actionable roadmap on its own.
Filtering the Raw Results for Genuine Relevance
Not every link showing up in this analysis will be worth pursuing, some may come from low-quality or clearly irrelevant sources that happened to link to the competitor for reasons unrelated to genuine authority or trust. Reviewing the list and specifically flagging sources that appear genuinely credible, relevant to law or the local area, and reasonably accessible for a firm to also pursue helps narrow a potentially long, unfiltered list into something genuinely useful.
Identifying Patterns Across Multiple Competitors
Looking specifically for sources that appear across the backlink profiles of multiple analyzed competitors tends to reveal the most valuable, likely accessible opportunities, since a source linking to several competing firms is probably open to similar outreach from additional firms in the same space, rather than having some exclusive relationship with just one particular competitor.
Distinguishing Between Realistically Accessible and Difficult Opportunities
Some sources appearing in this analysis represent realistic, accessible opportunities, a legal directory any firm could reasonably join, a local media outlet open to expert commentary, while others might reflect relationships that are difficult to replicate without the same specific history or personal connections a competitor happens to have. Being realistic about which opportunities are genuinely pursuable helps prioritize effort toward the findings most likely to translate into actual results.
Turning the Analysis Into a Prioritized Outreach List
Once the raw results have been filtered and reviewed, organizing the most promising, accessible opportunities into a simple prioritized list, starting with sources appearing across multiple competitors and offering clear relevance, gives a concrete, actionable starting point for outreach rather than leaving the analysis as an interesting but unused spreadsheet.
Repeating This Analysis Periodically Rather Than Once
Competitor backlink profiles continue evolving over time, which means a single analysis conducted at one point becomes progressively less useful as competitors continue earning new links and a firm's own profile develops. Revisiting this analysis every few months helps identify new opportunities that have emerged since the original review, keeping the outreach pipeline informed by current, rather than outdated, competitive information.
What This Analysis Can and Can't Tell You
This kind of research reveals where competitors have secured links, but it doesn't necessarily reveal how those links were secured, some may reflect genuine long-standing relationships, sponsored placements, or organic recognition that would be difficult to replicate through cold outreach alone. Treating this analysis as a starting point for identifying promising categories of opportunity, rather than a guaranteed roadmap to identical results, keeps expectations realistic about what this kind of research can actually deliver.
Making Research Time Worthwhile
A properly conducted competitor backlink analysis, filtered thoughtfully and turned into a genuinely prioritized action list, tends to be one of the more efficient uses of research time within a broader outreach strategy, replacing considerable guesswork with a concrete, evidence-based starting point drawn directly from what's already working for firms competing in the same specific market.
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