Stop Paying for Backlink Tools — Here's How to Steal Your Competitors' Link Strategy for Free

Let's be real: Ahrefs and Semrush are great. They're also $100+ a month, which is a tough sell when you're running a lean operation and already juggling a dozen other expenses. The good news? Your competitors' backlink strategy isn't locked inside a paywall. It's sitting out in the open, spread across a handful of free tools that most people don't bother combining.

That's the key word: combining. No single free tool gives you the full picture. But string the right ones together, and you've got a competitive intelligence setup that punches way above its price tag — which, again, is zero dollars.

Here's how to build that chain from scratch.

Step 1: Figure Out Who You're Actually Competing Against

Before you dig into anyone's backlinks, you need the right target. Your SEO competitors aren't always the same as your business competitors. A local hardware store might compete with Home Depot for foot traffic but lose search rankings to a home improvement blog that's never sold a single drill bit.

Start with Google. Type in your top five money keywords — the ones you're actually trying to rank for — and note who shows up on page one consistently. Those are your real SEO rivals. Grab three to five of those URLs and keep them handy. You're going to run each one through the tool chain below.

Step 2: Pull Backlink Data with Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools

Most people only use Google Search Console to check their own site. But here's a move that gets overlooked: Bing Webmaster Tools has a free "Link Explorer" feature that lets you look up backlinks for any domain — not just sites you own.

Head over to Bing Webmaster Tools, create a free account, and drop your competitor's domain into the Link Explorer. You'll get a solid list of inbound links, including the linking page URL and the domain it's coming from. It's not exhaustive, but it surfaces real data and it costs you nothing.

While you're at it, if your competitor is naive enough to have their Google Search Console data exposed (rare, but it happens through third-party integrations), some tools like Ubersuggest's free tier will surface GSC-connected data too. Worth checking.

Step 3: Cross-Reference with Ahrefs' Free Backlink Checker

Yes, Ahrefs has a free version — most people don't realize it. Go to ahrefs.com/backlink-checker and plug in your competitor's URL. The free tier shows you the top 100 backlinks by Domain Rating, which is honestly the most valuable slice of the data anyway. High-DR links are the ones moving the needle.

Note the domains linking to your competitor. You're not just collecting URLs here — you're building a target list. For each linking domain, ask yourself: Is this a blog? A directory? A news outlet? A niche forum? Start categorizing as you go, because the outreach strategy changes depending on the type of site.

Step 4: Use Moz Link Explorer's Free Allowance

Moz gives you 10 free queries per month on their Link Explorer tool, and each one is worth using strategically. Run your top two or three competitors through it and compare the results against what you pulled from Bing and Ahrefs. You'll start seeing overlap — those overlapping domains are your gold.

Why? Because if three different high-authority sites are all linking to your competitor, those sites have demonstrated they link out to content in your niche. They're warm leads. They've already said yes to someone like you.

Step 5: Find the Gap — What They Have That You Don't

Now comes the part that actually makes money. Take your combined list of linking domains and run your own site through the same tools. Make a simple spreadsheet with two columns: domains linking to your competitor, and domains linking to you.

The ones in column one that aren't in column two? That's your gap list. These are sites already active in your space, already willing to link out, and not currently linking to you. That's your outreach hit list.

For free gap analysis, OpenLinkProfiler (free, no account required) is underrated. It lets you pull link data and filter by industry and region, which is handy if you're targeting a US-specific audience.

Step 6: Qualify Your Targets Before You Reach Out

Don't blast emails to every site on your gap list. Qualify them first. You want sites that are:

• Actually active — check when they last published something. A blog that hasn't posted since 2021 isn't going to help your rankings or send you traffic.
• Relevant to your niche — a link from a cooking blog to a cybersecurity company is SEO noise at best.
• Not link farms — if a site links to 400 completely unrelated domains, skip it.

Use the free version of Website SEO Checker or Small SEO Tools' domain authority checker to get a quick read on each site's authority score before you invest time writing a pitch.

Step 7: Build Your Outreach Hook

Here's where most people blow it. They send a cold email that says "Hey, I noticed you linked to [Competitor] — would you link to us too?" That's not a pitch. That's spam with punctuation.

Instead, look at why they linked to your competitor. Was it a specific piece of content — a study, a guide, a tool? If so, either create something better (the classic Skyscraper approach) or find an existing page on your site that genuinely serves the same need more effectively.

Your outreach email should lead with value: what does the linking site's audience get from your link that they're not getting now? Make that the center of your pitch, not your own SEO goals.

The Free Tool Stack, Summarized

In case you want a quick reference:

• Bing Webmaster Tools → Competitor backlink discovery (any domain)
• Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker → Top 100 links by authority
• Moz Link Explorer → 10 free queries/month for cross-referencing
• OpenLinkProfiler → Gap analysis and filtering
• Small SEO Tools Domain Authority Checker → Quick quality check before outreach

None of these tools alone is a replacement for a paid platform. But together? They give you enough signal to build a real, targeted link-building campaign without spending a dime on software.

The Scrappy Marketer's Advantage

Here's the thing about expensive SEO tools: everyone using them is looking at the same data. When you build your own free tool chain and layer the results together, you're doing manual analysis that most competitors skip because they're relying on a single dashboard.

That extra step is your edge. The links are out there. The sites willing to give them are already linking to people in your space. All you're doing is following the trail they left behind — and that trail is completely free to follow.

Get after it.