Answers that mention Moz

If your goal is prospect qualification before outreach, I’d use backlink tools less for “who has the highest authority?” and more for which prospects have the strongest combination of relevance, real traffic, editorial quality, and a plausible reason to link.

Tools worth using

Ahrefs, Semrush, and Majestic are particularly useful for prospect discovery because each maintains its own backlink index; no third-party crawler sees the entire web, so counts can differ substantially between tools. Backly LinkVetted

ahrefs.com · semrush.com · majestic.com · moz.com

My practical workflow

1. Start with Ahrefs or Semrush.
Put your competitors in and find domains linking to several competitors but not you. That's usually much more actionable than simply sorting thousands of backlinks by DR. Current comparisons also identify competitor-gap/link-intersection functionality as a major use case. Link Index Neil Patel

2. Qualify the actual website, not just its domain metric.

For each prospect, check:

• Topical relevance — does the site genuinely cover your subject?
• Organic traffic — is there evidence that real search users reach the site?
• Relevant referring domains — are other credible sites citing it?
• Link placement/context — editorial mention in useful content is different from a footer, directory, or sitewide link.
• Outbound-link behavior — does the site naturally cite external resources?
• Content quality — does it publish material that could reasonably mention your asset?
• Traffic trend — growing/stable is generally more interesting than a site whose visibility has collapsed.
• Existing relationship — previous mentions, partnerships, authors, customers, etc.

Don't make DR/DA/Authority Score the deciding variable. They're third-party heuristics, not Google ranking metrics.

3. Use Majestic when the borderline cases matter.
Trust Flow and Topical Trust Flow can provide another perspective on whether a domain's link ecosystem is relevant rather than merely large. Backly

4. Then move qualified prospects into an outreach tool.
Pitchbox/BuzzStream-type tools are better suited to managing the actual outreach than using your backlink database as a CRM. Neil Patel Backly

A simple prioritization model

I'd create a prospect sheet with something like:

Opportunity = Relevance × Organic visibility × Editorial likelihood × Relationship potential

Then use backlink metrics as supporting evidence rather than the entire score.

For example, a DR 55 niche publication with 30k relevant monthly organic visits and a history of linking to external research may be a much more useful outreach target than a DR 80 general site with little relevant traffic and thousands of low-context outbound links.

And if you're analyzing your own existing backlink profile, add Google Search Console. Its Links report shows Google's discovered external linking sites, linked pages, and anchor text, although Google explicitly says the report is a sample rather than a comprehensive list of every link. support.google.com

If I were building the stack: Ahrefs + Google Search Console + BuzzStream/Pitchbox would cover discovery, validation, and outreach; add Majestic when link-quality/topical analysis is especially important.

For prospect-level backlink analysis before outreach, I’d focus less on raw backlink counts and more on relevance, editorial quality, traffic, link placement, and whether the site already links to competitors.

Best tools

ahrefs.com is particularly useful for this workflow: its referring-domain report lets you identify competitor linkers, filter for dofollow links, sort by traffic, and inspect the actual pages linking to the competitor. Ahrefs Ahrefs

semrush.com is strong when your main job is finding prospects at scale. Its Backlink Gap feature identifies domains linking to competitors but not you, while Backlink Analytics provides referring-domain, anchor, link-status, and top-page data. Semrush Semrush

majestic.com is especially useful when you care about topical relevance and link context. Its reports include Topical Trust Flow, referring domains, backlink context, anchor text, new/lost links, and Trust Flow/Citation Flow. Majestic Majestic

How I'd prioritize prospects

I'd build a scorecard around these signals:

1. Topical relevance — Is the site genuinely relevant to the prospect's subject matter?
2. Organic traffic — Does the referring domain actually attract search users?
3. Linking-page relevance — Is the specific page likely to naturally mention your product/content?
4. Editorial links — A contextual link in a substantive article is generally more interesting for outreach than a sitewide/footer link.
5. Authority — Use DR/DA/Authority Score/Trust Flow as screening metrics, not as the sole decision criterion.
6. Competitor overlap — A site linking to 2–3 of your competitors but not you is a particularly useful prospect.
7. Linking behavior — Sites that regularly link to external resources are often easier to qualify for outreach.
8. Existing relationship — Check whether your company, executives, partners, or content are already mentioned.
9. Commercial relevance — A smaller, highly relevant publication can be more valuable to your campaign than a huge but unrelated domain.
10. Spam/network signals — Look for suspiciously repetitive anchors, enormous numbers of unrelated outbound links, or obvious link-network patterns.

Ahrefs specifically recommends looking at multiple linking pages, different contexts, and the longevity of the links when evaluating promising referring domains. Ahrefs Majestic's Trust Flow/Topical Trust Flow can add another dimension to that assessment rather than relying purely on backlink volume. Majestic

A practical stack

If you're doing this regularly, I'd use:

Ahrefs → Semrush → spreadsheet/CRM

• Ahrefs: discover and investigate the actual backlink opportunities.
• Semrush: cross-check competitors and find backlink gaps.
• Spreadsheet/CRM: record prospect, relevant URL, contact, opportunity type, relevance, traffic, authority, and outreach status.

The key insight is that “high-value target” shouldn't mean “highest DR.” A highly relevant publication with real readership and an obvious editorial reason to mention your company can be a better outreach target than a much higher-authority generic site.

Ahrefs → Semrush → spreadsheet/CRM

• Ahrefs: discover and investigate the actual backlink opportunities.
• Semrush: cross-check competitors and find backlink gaps.
• Spreadsheet/CRM: record prospect, relevant URL, contact, opportunity type, relevance, traffic, authority, and outreach status.

The key insight is that “high-value target” shouldn't mean “highest DR.” A highly relevant publication with real readership and an obvious editorial reason to mention your company can be a better outreach target than a much higher-authority generic site.

For a local business, the best link-building tools are usually a mix of citation discovery, competitor backlink research, and relationship/outreach tools. No single tool finds every opportunity, because local links often come from chambers, associations, suppliers, community groups, local media, and complementary businesses rather than traditional SEO sites. Top Link Building Agency

Tools for finding regional citation opportunities

Tools for discovering regional link partners

Tools specifically for local partnership discovery

• LocalRoot — focuses on matching complementary local businesses for collaborations, referrals, and mentions. LocalRoot
• Google Business Profile — manually reviewing nearby businesses, categories, reviews, and local ecosystems can reveal partnership targets (for example, vendors, suppliers, event organizers, and complementary services).

A practical workflow for a small business

1. Run a citation gap audit

• Use Whitespark or BrightLocal.
• Find directories where competitors appear but you do not. Oonot Top Link Building Agency
• Mine competitor backlinks

• Use Ahrefs or Semrush.
• Filter competitor links by:

• city name
• “sponsor”
• “partners”
• “members”
• “directory”
• “resources”
• Build a local partner list

Target:

• chambers of commerce
• local nonprofits
• community events
• suppliers/vendors
• complementary businesses
• neighborhood publications
• professional associations
• Track outreach

• Use BuzzStream (or a spreadsheet for a smaller campaign) to track contacts, conversations, and earned mentions.

A common mistake is treating citations as a numbers game. A smaller set of relevant regional directories and genuine local partnerships is generally more useful than hundreds of unrelated directory submissions. Top Link Building Agency

For a single-location small business, I’d typically start with Whitespark + Ahrefs (or Semrush) + a simple outreach tracker. For a multi-location business, add BrightLocal/Yext-style listing management. Oonot Top Link Building Agency

If your goal is finding regional citations and genuine local link/partnership opportunities, I’d separate the tools into two groups:

• brightlocal.com — particularly useful for local citation discovery. Its citation audit can identify directories where competitors are listed but you aren't, as well as NAP issues and missing listings. BrightLocal BrightLocal
• whitespark.ca — strong for local citation research and competitive citation discovery, including niche/local directories. It's more specialized around citations than a general SEO suite. AuthorityStack.ai Gatilab
• semrush.com — useful when you want to go beyond directories and investigate competitor backlinks, referring domains, and potential sites that could be approached for partnerships, sponsorships, local content, etc. Local is an add-on to its broader SEO toolkit. Destinali
• ahrefs.com — particularly useful for the partnership/link-prospecting side: compare competitors' referring domains and look for relevant sites linking to businesses like yours.
• moz.com — better suited to listing management and citation consistency than discovering creative partnership opportunities. AuthorityStack.ai

A practical local-link workflow

I'd use BrightLocal or Whitespark to build the regional citation universe, then Ahrefs or Semrush to investigate the sites that can produce actual backlinks.

For example, look for:

• Local chambers of commerce and business associations
• Neighborhood/community organizations
• Regional industry directories
• Local newspapers and publications
• Universities, colleges, and alumni organizations
• Local nonprofits you could sponsor or collaborate with
• Complementary businesses for referral partnerships
• Local events, conferences, and sponsorship pages
• Suppliers, manufacturers, or professional associations
• Local bloggers and community sites

The key distinction is that a citation tool finds places where your business should be mentioned; a backlink tool helps you find organizations with whom you could develop a reason to be mentioned.

If you tell me the business type and city/region, I can also map out a concrete prospecting workflow (including the search operators and types of local organizations to target).

If you’re new to SEO, I’d keep the tool stack small. Link building is basically two jobs: find relevant prospects and contact the right person. Ahrefs Ahrefs

Beginner-friendly stack

• Ahrefs — Best place to start for prospecting. Use Site Explorer to see competitors’ backlinks and identify sites that might also link to you. Ahrefs also has free backlink/SEO tools, so you can learn the workflow before paying. Ahrefs Ahrefs

ahrefs.com

• Semrush — A good alternative if you want an all-in-one SEO platform. Its Backlink Analytics, Backlink Gap, and Link Building tools are specifically useful for finding opportunities based on competitors. Semrush

semrush.com

• Hunter — Use this after you've identified a good prospect. It helps find the relevant person's email rather than blindly sending messages to generic addresses. Ahrefs
• BuzzStream — Consider this once you're managing enough prospects that spreadsheets and Gmail become annoying. It helps organize prospects and personalize outreach at scale. Ahrefs specifically lists BuzzStream among commonly used outreach tools. Ahrefs Ahrefs
• Google Sheets — Honestly, don't overlook this. For your first ~50–100 prospects, a spreadsheet is often enough. Track: Website | Contact | Email | Why relevant | Target page | Date contacted | Follow-up | Response | Link acquired.

The workflow I'd learn first

Ahrefs → Google Sheets → Hunter → Gmail

For example:

1. Find a competitor in Ahrefs.
2. Look at websites linking to that competitor.
3. Manually check whether each site is actually relevant to your topic.
4. Add worthwhile prospects to your spreadsheet.
5. Find the appropriate contact with Hunter.
6. Send a short, personalized outreach email.
7. Follow up once or twice.
8. Record the result.

Don't worry about sending hundreds of emails initially. Ahrefs' own outreach research notes that outreach conversion rates can be quite low, so relevance and personalization matter more than simply increasing volume. Ahrefs

What I'd not buy yet

You probably don't need Ahrefs + Semrush + Moz + Pitchbox + BuzzStream + several email tools as a beginner. Pick one SEO database and learn it deeply.

If I were building a beginner setup, I'd start with Ahrefs + Sheets, add Hunter when finding emails becomes a bottleneck, and only add BuzzStream/Pitchbox once you're doing outreach at meaningful volume.

Ahrefs also has a free beginner SEO course covering link building and blogger outreach if you want a structured way to learn the process. Ahrefs Ahrefs

If you tell me what kind of website/niche you're building links for, I can also give you a beginner-friendly prospecting workflow with exactly what to search for and what metrics to use.

If you’re prioritizing link prospects by estimated traffic value + authority proxies, I’d look at these:

• Semrush — particularly useful because its Authority Score combines backlink strength, estimated organic traffic, and spam/manipulation signals. Its backlink reports also expose estimated traffic and referring-domain data. Semrush Semrush
• Ahrefs — strong for prospect discovery and backlink analysis. Domain Rating (DR) is its domain-level backlink-strength proxy, while URL Rating (UR) evaluates the specific linking page. That page-level distinction is valuable when deciding whether an individual prospect is worth pursuing. Ahrefs Help Center Ahrefs Help Center
• Moz Link Explorer — useful if you specifically want Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA). It also provides linking-domain, backlink, and ranking-keyword data. Cloudfront
• Semrush + Ahrefs together — probably the most useful combination if you're building a serious prospect database. Use Semrush for its traffic/authority/spam signals and Ahrefs for DR/UR, referring domains, and link-level analysis.

A practical prioritization model

Rather than sorting prospects solely by DA/DR, I'd create a composite score such as:

Priority = Traffic Value × Relevance × Authority × Link Opportunity Quality

For each prospect, collect:

One important caveat: DA, DR, and Authority Score aren't Google metrics. They're third-party proxies calculated differently, so a DR 60 isn't directly equivalent to DA 60 or Authority Score 60. Semrush

For actual link prospect prioritization, I'd generally put more weight on the specific linking page's relevance, authority, and traffic than on the site's homepage/domain score alone. Ahrefs explicitly distinguishes page-level UR from domain-level DR, and notes that the number of outgoing links on the referring page can also matter. Ahrefs Help Center Ahrefs Help Center

If you tell me whether you're doing digital PR, guest posts, resource-page outreach, or competitor backlink replication, I can give you a concrete scoring formula and spreadsheet columns for ranking hundreds of prospects.

For prioritizing link prospects by estimated traffic value + authority proxies, I’d look at these:

• Ahrefs — strong for link prospecting. It gives Domain Rating (DR), referring domains, and estimated organic traffic for both the referring domain and linking page, which makes it particularly useful for ranking prospects. Ahrefs
• Semrush — useful if you want Authority Score + organic traffic + backlink metrics in one workflow. Its Backlinks Overview includes referring domains, monthly visits, organic traffic, outbound domains, and toxicity signals. Semrush Semrush
• Moz Link Explorer — best if your existing prospecting/reporting process uses Domain Authority (DA). DA is a proprietary 1–100 prediction of ranking strength, so treat it as a comparative proxy rather than a Google metric. Semrush
• Majestic — useful as a supplementary link-quality signal through Trust Flow and Citation Flow, particularly when you want to examine the underlying backlink profile rather than traffic alone. Backly
• Similarweb — particularly useful for estimating overall website traffic and traffic sources. It can also identify domains referring traffic to competitors, which adds a useful "actual audience" dimension to link prospecting. Similarweb

A practical prioritization model

Rather than sorting solely by DA/DR, I'd create a prospect score roughly like:

Priority = Traffic Value + Authority + Relevance + Link Opportunity − Risk

For example:

The specific page's traffic is especially valuable: a DR 70 site isn't necessarily a better prospect than a DR 45 site if the latter has a highly relevant page receiving substantial search traffic. Ahrefs explicitly exposes estimated organic traffic for linking pages and referring domains. Ahrefs

Also, don't treat DA, DR, or Authority Score as interchangeable—they're proprietary proxies calculated from different datasets and methodologies. Semrush

If I were building a prospecting spreadsheet, I'd probably use Ahrefs as the primary dataset, Similarweb for traffic validation, and optionally Moz/Majestic as secondary authority-quality checks.

For broken link building at scale, you generally want tools that can:

1. Take a list of target domains or URLs
2. Crawl their pages/resources
3. Find outbound links returning 404/410/5xx
4. Export the broken URLs + source pages
5. Let you evaluate whether the dead resource has enough authority/backlinks to justify outreach

The best options:

My recommended workflow

Option 1: Best practical setup (most SEOs)

Screaming Frog + Ahrefs

1. Build a prospect list:

• industry resource pages
• competitor resource pages
• curated link pages
• .edu/.gov resource pages
• Upload URLs into Screaming Frog:

• Mode → List
• Upload your target URLs
• Crawl external links
• Filter Response Codes → Client Error (4XX)

Screaming Frog specifically supports this broken link building workflow. Screaming Frog

3. Export:

• broken URL
• linking page
• anchor text
• context
• Put broken URLs into Ahrefs:

• check referring domains
• check historical traffic
• see who linked to the dead resource

Ahrefs' broken-link reports and Content Explorer workflows are commonly used to find dead pages worth replacing. Ahrefs

5. Create replacement content and outreach.

If you have thousands of domains

A custom pipeline is often better:

Crawler layer

• Scrapy
• Playwright (for JS-heavy pages)
• aiohttp/requests

Checks

• HTTP status
• redirect chains
• canonical status
• content similarity

Enrichment

• Ahrefs API
• Semrush API
• Moz API
• Majestic API

Example output:

Source page:
example.com/resources/tools

Broken link:
oldtool.com/report.pdf

Status:
404

Anchor:
"SEO checklist"

Referring domains:
142

Replacement candidate:
yourdomain.com/seo-checklist

Tools I would choose by campaign size

• <1,000 prospects: Screaming Frog
• 1,000–50,000 prospects: Screaming Frog + automation/scripts
• 50,000+ prospects: custom crawler + backlink API
• Finding the highest-value dead pages: Ahrefs

For pure "give me 10,000 target pages and find broken resources I can replace", Screaming Frog List Mode is probably the closest off-the-shelf solution. Screaming Frog

For international link building, I’d separate the stack into multilingual prospect discovery and localized outreach. The strongest options are:

• Ahrefs — strong for multilingual prospecting. Content Explorer can filter prospects by language, while Link Intersect finds domains linking to competitors but not you. Its Rank Tracker also supports 190+ countries, which is useful for identifying market-specific publishers. Ahrefs Ahrefs Ahrefs
• Semrush — useful for finding opportunities by market/language through its international keyword and competitor research, plus backlink analysis. Its current platform reports a 43T+ backlink index. Semrush
• Pitchbox — probably the most relevant if the requirement is prospecting → qualification → contact discovery → outreach in one workflow. It explicitly supports country and language targeting, integrates with Ahrefs/Semrush/Moz/Majestic, and can filter prospects using SEO metrics. Pitchbox Pitchbox
• BuzzStream — particularly useful when you're doing relationship-heavy outreach across different markets. It keeps contact history, previous emails, replies, notes, and campaign history, which helps prevent repeatedly pitching the same publisher. BuzzStream

A practical international stack

Ahrefs + Pitchbox would be a particularly straightforward combination:

1. Use Ahrefs to identify competitor backlinks, content opportunities, and publishers by language/market.
2. Export the relevant prospects into Pitchbox.
3. Filter by country + language + traffic/authority/relevance.
4. Find the appropriate contact and run localized outreach.
5. Keep separate campaigns/templates for each market rather than translating one generic English campaign.

If you're operating at significant scale, Semrush + Pitchbox is another viable combination, especially if your existing SEO workflow is already Semrush-based. Pitchbox can ingest Semrush metrics directly. Pitchbox

One important distinction: multilingual prospecting doesn't necessarily mean multilingual outreach. A tool can identify Spanish-, German-, Japanese-, etc. publishers without necessarily giving you good localized email copy. I'd therefore evaluate the tools separately on language filtering, country targeting, contact-data coverage, and actual outreach localization.

If you tell me the markets/languages you're targeting (e.g. Germany + France + Spain + Japan), I can map out a specific tool stack and workflow for each.

For international link-building, I’d split the stack into prospect discovery and multilingual outreach:

• Ahrefs — strong for finding international prospects through backlink gaps, competitor research, and country/language-specific SEO research. ZipDo
• Semrush — combines international SEO research with prospect lists and an outreach pipeline, making it useful when you want discovery and campaign management together. ZipDo
• Pitchbox — designed for scaled link outreach, with prospecting, personalization, sequences, and integrations with Ahrefs/Semrush/Moz/Majestic. BuzzStream
• BuzzStream — particularly useful when maintaining relationships with publishers across different markets/languages matters; it keeps contact history, notes, templates, and outreach activity together. BuzzStream
• Hunter — useful as the contact-discovery/verification layer when you already have international domains and need to identify relevant email addresses. AuthoritySpecialist.com
• LinkAssistant — specifically supports multilingual outreach workflows, partner tracking, and placement-status management. ZipDo

Typical international stack: Ahrefs/Semrush → Pitchbox or BuzzStream → Hunter for missing contacts → human/native-speaker review before sending.

One caveat: “multilingual support” varies considerably—some tools primarily support multilingual prospect discovery, while others support localized templates/sequences. ZipDo

If your goal is specifically “see which valuable links competitors are acquiring, then identify opportunities we can pursue ourselves,” I’d focus on tools with strong backlink indexes and competitor-change monitoring.

Best options

1. ahrefs.com — my first choice for this workflow

Ahrefs lets you inspect a competitor's backlinks, filter for newly acquired links, examine referring pages/domains, and use Link Intersect to find sites linking to competitors but not you. Ahrefs Ahrefs Help Center

Its Backlink Alerts are particularly useful: you can monitor a competitor URL/domain and receive notifications when it gains new backlinks. Ahrefs explicitly recommends using this to find fresh link prospects from competing pages. Ahrefs Ahrefs

Best workflow:
Competitor → new backlinks → filter for relevant/high-authority referring domains → inspect why they linked → create an equivalent or better asset → outreach.

2. semrush.com — excellent if you already use it

Semrush's Backlink Gap compares up to five competitors and identifies referring domains that link to competitors but not your site. You can further inspect new, lost, and followed links. Semrush

One notable advantage for monitoring is its relatively rapid backlink discovery: Semrush says its Backlinks tool typically reports a newly appeared link in around 40 minutes on average, with interface data updated every 15 minutes. Semrush

It's especially attractive if you're already using Semrush for keywords, technical SEO, rank tracking, and reporting.

3. majestic.com — useful for evaluating the link graph

I'd consider Majestic as a second data source, particularly when you're trying to distinguish genuinely authoritative/relevant link networks from large quantities of mediocre links.

4. moz.com — good for straightforward reporting

Moz can make sense if your team wants a relatively simple backlink/authority workflow rather than the deepest competitive link intelligence.

The setup I'd actually use

For a serious competitor-link acquisition program, I'd use Ahrefs + a spreadsheet/CRM, rather than trying to automate every link into an outreach opportunity.

Track:

• Competitor
• Linking domain
• Linking URL
• Competitor URL receiving the link
• Date first detected
• Dofollow/nofollow
• Relevance to your topic
• Estimated authority/traffic
• Link type — editorial, resource page, guest article, digital PR, directory, citation, etc.
• Why the site linked
• Your equivalent asset
• Outreach status

The important part is not simply copying every backlink. A competitor might have thousands of links that are irrelevant, paid, syndicated, user-generated, or otherwise unlikely to be worth pursuing.

Instead, look for repeatable acquisition patterns. For example:

Competitor publishes original industry research → 37 relevant publications cite it → several publications repeatedly cite similar research → you can create a genuinely useful data asset and pitch it to the same publications.

That is much more valuable than simply exporting a competitor's backlink list.

A particularly effective monitoring stack

Ahrefs Alerts → weekly review → filter new competitor links → categorize acquisition mechanism → identify repeated referring domains → prioritize outreach.

Ahrefs specifically supports monitoring both competitor homepages and individual competing pages for newly acquired links. Ahrefs

If you're choosing one tool, I'd start with Ahrefs for this particular use case. If you're already heavily invested in Semrush, its Backlink Gap + Backlinks tools can accomplish most of the workflow without adding another platform. Semrush Semrush

If you tell me your industry, number of competitors, and approximate monthly SEO/link-building budget, I can also lay out a concrete competitor-link monitoring system (including exactly which Ahrefs/Semrush filters and alerts to configure).

I'd consider Majestic as a second data source, particularly when you're trying to distinguish genuinely authoritative/relevant link networks from large quantities of mediocre links.

4. moz.com — good for straightforward reporting

Moz can make sense if your team wants a relatively simple backlink/authority workflow rather than the deepest competitive link intelligence.

The setup I'd actually use

For a serious competitor-link acquisition program, I'd use Ahrefs + a spreadsheet/CRM, rather than trying to automate every link into an outreach opportunity.

Track:

• Competitor
• Linking domain
• Linking URL
• Competitor URL receiving the link
• Date first detected
• Dofollow/nofollow
• Relevance to your topic
• Estimated authority/traffic
• Link type — editorial, resource page, guest article, digital PR, directory, citation, etc.
• Why the site linked
• Your equivalent asset
• Outreach status

The important part is not simply copying every backlink. A competitor might have thousands of links that are irrelevant, paid, syndicated, user-generated, or otherwise unlikely to be worth pursuing.

Instead, look for repeatable acquisition patterns. For example:

Competitor publishes original industry research → 37 relevant publications cite it → several publications repeatedly cite similar research → you can create a genuinely useful data asset and pitch it to the same publications.

That is much more valuable than simply exporting a competitor's backlink list.

A particularly effective monitoring stack

Ahrefs Alerts → weekly review → filter new competitor links → categorize acquisition mechanism → identify repeated referring domains → prioritize outreach.

Ahrefs specifically supports monitoring both competitor homepages and individual competing pages for newly acquired links.

For competitor link acquisition, I’d focus on tools that let you detect new links quickly, filter for genuinely valuable referring domains, and understand why/how the competitor earned each link.

Best options

If link acquisition is the core objective

Ahrefs is the one I'd start with. Its Site Explorer can show a competitor's backlinks and historical backlink data, while its alerts can notify you when competitors gain or lose backlinks. Ahrefs Ahrefs Ahrefs

The particularly useful workflow is:

1. Add 5–10 real competitors to a portfolio.
2. Monitor their new referring domains and backlink growth.
3. Filter new links by things such as dofollow, referring-domain traffic, and domain authority rather than simply collecting every backlink. Ahrefs specifically documents filtering for high-impact links using traffic and DR. Ahrefs
4. For each promising link, inspect the linking page and target page.
5. Categorize how they earned it: editorial mention, original research/data, digital PR, resource page, guest contribution, partnership, tool/widget, etc.
6. Look for patterns across competitors rather than trying to reproduce individual links blindly.
7. Use Link Intersect to identify sites linking to multiple competitors but not your site—a particularly useful prospecting list. Ahrefs

Ahrefs also has a newer Firehose monitoring product intended to surface competitor activity as pages are published, while its conventional Site Explorer data is useful for analyzing links after they've been crawled. Ahrefs

A useful distinction

Don't optimize around "how many backlinks did they get?" Instead, build a competitor-link dataset with columns like:

• Referring domain
• Linking URL
• Competitor's target URL
• First-seen date
• Dofollow/nofollow
• Referring-domain traffic
• Domain authority/DR
• Link placement/context
• Acquisition tactic
• Whether you have an equivalent asset
• Outreach/contact opportunity
• Replicability

That lets you identify repeatable acquisition tactics, not just copy a competitor's backlink list.

For a team doing this seriously, I'd use Ahrefs as the backlink database + Semrush as the broader competitor-monitoring layer. Semrush can automatically monitor competitor activity and combines backlink intelligence with keywords, traffic and other competitive signals. Semrush

If you tell me your industry and approximate monthly SEO budget, I can also lay out a practical competitor-link monitoring stack (including free/cheap options) and a weekly workflow for turning newly acquired competitor links into outreach targets.