How To Land Competitor Backlinks With Ahrefs & Instantly

What you’ll need to get started

Before we begin, let’s get your toolkit sorted. You’ll need:

• Ahrefs (from £79/month): For competitor analysis and backlink discovery
• Google Sheets (free): For organising your prospects
• Hunter.io (from £49/month): For finding contact details
• Instantly (from £37/month): For scaling your outreach campaigns

Step 1: Find your real competitors

You might think you know who your competitors are, but the data often reveals some surprises. Let’s approach this systematically.

Manual competitor research

Start with a simple Google search for your main keywords or services. If you’re a B2B lead generation company, search for “lead generation services” or “B2B lead generation” and note the domains ranking on page one.

This manual approach catches the obvious competitors, but you’ll likely miss some important players.

Using Ahrefs for competitor discovery

Here’s where Ahrefs becomes invaluable:

1. Enter your domain in Ahrefs
2. Navigate to Organic competitors in the left menu
3. Review the list of sites that rank for similar keywords

This feature reveals competitors based on keyword overlap rather than industry assumptions. You might discover niche players or adjacent businesses that compete for the same search terms.

While Ahrefs occasionally includes irrelevant sites, it’s excellent for identifying competitors you might have overlooked.

Setting up your competitor analysis

Once you’ve identified your competitors on Ahrefs, tick up to 10 of your strongest rivals, click “Open in”, then select “Link intersect”.

If you have fewer than 10 competitors from Ahrefs, add any from your manual research to complete your list.

Step 2: Uncover backlink opportunities

The Link Intersect tool is where the magic happens. You’ll see a comprehensive list of referring domains that your competitors have but you don’t.

Filter for quality opportunities

Not all backlinks are created equal. Apply these filters to focus on the most valuable prospects:

• Link type: Dofollow only
• Domain Rating (DR): 20-70 (sweet spot for achievable yet valuable links)
• Organic traffic: Minimum 1,000 monthly visits

The intersect column shows how many of your competitors have secured backlinks from each domain. If a site links to 8 out of 10 of your competitors but not to you, it’s likely open to linking to businesses in your industry.

Analyse individual backlinks

Click the dropdown arrow next to any referring domain to see:

• Anchor text used
• Destination URL
• Context of the link

This information helps you understand what type of content or approach secured the backlink.

Step 3: Export and refine your prospect list

Export your results to Google Sheets and clean up the data:

1. Remove any referring domains with an intersect score below 5
2. Remove obvious spam or irrelevant sites
3. Prioritise domains with higher DR scores and traffic

Step 4: Find contact details with Hunter.io

Now you need to contact these sites, which means finding the right email addresses. Hunter.io streamlines this process:

1. Go to the Finder section
2. Upload your list of referring domains
3. Set up filters to find relevant contacts (typically editors, content managers, or site owners)
4. Let Hunter process your list

Step 5: Scale your outreach with Instantly

Cold emailing doesn’t have to be a manual slog. Instantly allows you to manage multiple email accounts and automate your outreach while keeping it personal.

Setting up your campaign

1. Create a new campaign in Instantly
2. Upload your contacts from Hunter.io
3. Set up email sequences (more on this below)
4. Configure your sending schedule

Crafting your email sequence 📩

Here’s a proven template structure:

Email 1: Introduction and value proposition

• Introduce yourself and your company
• Mention the specific competitor backlink you noticed
• Explain why your content/service would be valuable to their audience
• Include a clear call-to-action

Email 2: Follow-up with additional value

• Reference your previous email
• Provide additional context or resources
• Offer something specific (guest post, expert quote, case study)

Email 3: Final follow-up

• Acknowledge they’re busy
• Reiterate your value proposition briefly
• Leave the door open for future opportunities

Step 6: Track and optimise your results

Once your campaign is running, monitor these key metrics:

• Open rates: Are your subject lines compelling?
• Response rates: Is your value proposition clear?
• Conversion rates: How many responses lead to actual backlinks?

Use this data to refine your approach for future campaigns.

Rinse and repeat for continued success

This isn’t a one-time strategy. Successful link building requires consistency:

• Monthly competitor analysis: New competitors may emerge
• Quarterly backlink audits: Your competitors are continuously building links
• Seasonal campaigns: Some opportunities are timing-dependent

Set up a recurring process to identify new opportunities every 3-6 months.

Making the most of your investment

Remember, this £150 monthly investment can yield significant returns. A single high-quality backlink from a DR 50+ site could be worth hundreds of pounds in SEO value.

The key is approaching this systematically rather than hoping for lucky breaks. By reverse-engineering your competitors’ success, you’re following a proven blueprint rather than starting from scratch.

Ready to outrank your competition?

Your competitors aren’t winning by accident – they’re executing a systematic backlink strategy. Now you have the same playbook.

The beauty of this approach is that it’s scalable. Once you’ve mastered the process with one set of competitors, you can expand to analyse different keyword segments or geographic markets.