How to steal your competitors' backlinks

You cannot take a link off someone else's site. What you can do is earn a link from the same place — and in a few specific cases, replace them. Here is the honest version, tactic by tactic, with how to actually run each one.

What "stealing" a backlink really means

Nobody can remove a link from a page they do not control. When SEOs talk about stealing competitor backlinks, they mean one of two things: earning your own link from a site that currently links only to a competitor, or persuading an editor to swap an existing link for yours because yours is a better resource.

The first is just link building with excellent targeting. The second is narrower than most guides admit, but it does work in specific situations. Both start from the same place: knowing which sites link to your competitors and not to you. If you have not built that list yet, start with how to find your competitors' backlinks — everything below assumes you have it in front of you.

Three tactics that actually work

1. Broken link replacement

When a competitor kills a page, every link pointing at it breaks. The publisher now has a dead link they almost certainly do not know about. Tell them, and offer a live equivalent of your own. This is the cleanest version of the tactic because you are genuinely fixing something for them — the success rate reflects that.

To find these, look at a competitor's broken or removed pages that still have links pointing at them — most backlink tools flag them under "broken" or "lost" backlinks. Each one is a publisher with a gap to fill. Make sure your replacement genuinely covers what the dead page did, or the pitch falls flat the moment they click through.

2. Outdated content replacement

A roundup citing a competitor's 2021 figures is a liability for the publisher. If you have current data, that is a real reason for them to update the link. Note the requirement: you need something genuinely more current or more complete — a fresher dataset, a wider sample, the number their cited source no longer reports. "Mine is also good" is not an argument anyone acts on; "yours is three years out of date and here is this year's" is.

3. Same outlet, different angle

By far the biggest share of the opportunity, and the least glamorous. The outlet covers your market and has already linked to a competitor. You are not replacing anything — you are giving them a second story. Most "stolen" backlinks are really just this: your own placement on a site that has already proven it will publish one for a business like yours.

Because nobody has to be talked out of an existing link, this is also the fastest to act on — and for the many outlets that openly run contributed and sponsored content, you can skip the pitching and book the placement outright. That is what Bazoom is for: a marketplace of media that already accept this kind of content, so a site your competitor sits on becomes a placement you arrange in days rather than a cold email you hope gets answered. It will not cover the genuine editorial links — those you still have to earn — but for the "same outlet, different angle" openings, which are the bulk of the list, it is the quickest way to actually land one.

What does not work

• Asking an editor to remove a competitor. It reads as exactly what it is, and it burns the relationship.
• Copying every link they have. Competitor profiles contain plenty of low-quality placements. Replicating those buys you their problems.
• Mass-mailing the whole list. A generic pitch to 400 media converts worse than fifteen specific ones, and it torches domains you may want later.

Start with the overlap

Whichever tactic fits, the target list is the same: sites linking to your competitors but not to you, sorted by how many of your competitors they cover. An outlet linking to four rivals has proven it covers your market on a regular basis. That is where the openings are.

Keep reading

• How to get your competitors' backlinks — the full playbook for turning the list into placements.
• How to find your competitors' backlinks — building the gap list in the first place.