Research a competitor's domain and your backlinks

Competitors shows what any domain ranks for in Google, and who links to your own site. Select Analysis > Research in the sidebar, then the Competitors tab. The domain lookup is at the top. Backlinks is below it.

Opening the tab is free. It shows results you already fetched. These buttons fetch new data, and each press is a paid lookup:

• Look up
• Look up top pages
• Keywords on a row of Top pages
• Refresh backlinks

Opening an entry in Recent lookups is free.

Look up a domain

1. Enter a domain like example.com in Domain, or paste a URL. The line under the box shows the domain Mark will look up.
2. Keep or change Location and Language. The form starts from the lookup on screen. With no earlier lookup, it starts at United States and English.
3. Select Look up.

Rank by sorts the keywords by Traffic, Search volume, or Position. Keyword contains is optional. It keeps only keywords with that word in them.

If you change a field after a lookup, you'll see "Settings changed — look up again to apply." The results on screen stay as they were until you select Look up again.

Read the results

The line above the results shows when the data was fetched. The data updates weekly.

Three cards sit at the top:

• Estimated organic traffic: estimated visits per month from Google.
• Organic keywords: how many keywords the domain ranks for, with counts of new, lost, up, and down.
• Position spread: a bar chart of ranked keywords by Google position, so it shows how many rank near the top and how many sit further down.

Below the cards, the table lists up to 100 ranked keywords:

• Position is where the domain ranks in Google for the keyword.
• Volume is how many people search for the keyword each month.
• Difficulty is "How hard it is to reach the top 10 for this keyword, from 0 to 100. Under 30 is easy, 70 and up is hard." Point at the score to see Easy, Medium, or Hard.
• Traffic is "Estimated monthly visits this ranking brings the domain, from search volume and the click rate at its position."
• URL is the domain's page that ranks.

Save keywords

1. Select the box next to each keyword you want, or the box above the table to select all.
2. Select Save selected.

The keywords save to the location and language shown next to the button. A line confirms how many were newly saved and how many were already saved. Find them under Research > Keywords > Saved, where new ones show Domain as their source.

Look up top pages

1. Optionally enter part of a URL in URL contains, like /blog, to see only matching pages.
2. Select Look up top pages. It uses the same domain, location, and language as the form.

Top pages lists the domain's pages by estimated traffic per month, with how many keywords each page ranks for.

To see one page's keywords, select Keywords on its row. A panel opens with that page's ranked keywords, by traffic.

Reopen an earlier lookup

Recent lookups lists your workspace's 25 most recent domain lookups, with each one's location, language, Rank by, Contains, and date. Select one to show its stored results. Showing marks the one on screen.

Check your backlinks

Backlinks shows who links to your own site. If you haven't added a site yet, it says "No website yet." Add one under Settings > Websites first. See Manage websites.

1. If you have more than one site, pick it from the row of site buttons.
2. Select Refresh backlinks. Until the first refresh, the line next to the button says there's no backlink snapshot yet for your site.

When the refresh finishes, you'll see "Updated just now." The line next to the button shows when the snapshot was captured.

Read your backlinks

Overview shows the totals for your site: Backlinks, Referring domains, Referring pages, Rank, Broken backlinks, Broken pages, and Spam score.

Two charts sit next to it:

• Backlink growth plots backlinks and referring domains at each refresh. It needs at least two refreshes to draw a line.
• Links first seen counts the links in this snapshot by the month they were first picked up.

Under the charts, two tabs split the links:

• Backlinks lists each link: Source, Target, Anchor, Flags, Link rank, Domain rank, Spam, and First seen. Flags shows Nofollow when the link is nofollow. Spam is the link's spam score.
• Top pages lists the pages on your site that get the most links, with Referring domains and Best domain rank for each.