How to use the Best by links report

In this report, we show which pages on a target website, subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com) or subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/) have the most backlinks pointing to them (external and internal).

Below are some actionable ways to use this report.

See your competitors’ most linked-to pages

Find out which of your competitors’ pages have the most links.

This is useful for understanding the type of content that attracts links in your industry.

For example, if we analyze speckyboy.com, we can see that list-type articles work very well in the design niche. If you’re in this industry, you might want to consider creating more listicles.

You can also use this report to find Skyscraper link building opportunities. For example, Speckyboy’s post on “responsive HTML web templates” is their 5th most linked-to article with 627 referring domains.

You could potentially create something better, then reach out to those linking to Speckyboy’s post and ask them to link to you instead.

To see the linking sites, click on the number in the Referring Domains column.

Find broken link building opportunities

Broken link building is a tactic where you:

1. Find a broken page with backlinks;
2. Recreate the dead page (and make it better!);
3. Reach out to those linking to the dead resource and ask them to link to you instead.

Find these opportunities by checking which of your competitors' pages have tons of backlinks but are broken.

To do that, enter a competing domain, go to the Best by Links report, then set the HTTP code filter to “404 not found”.

For example, if you were competing with Content Marketing Institute, you could potentially create a better guide about “what is content marketing,” and then ask those linking to the now inferior page to link to you instead.

Want to learn more about broken link building? Check out this video tutorial:

Find and fix broken pages on your site

If you have broken pages with backlinks, then you are potentially losing “link equity" and should aim to fix them.

Follow the same method as above, but this time around, analyze your own site.

In this example, we have a broken page on “going viral.” As such, we’re wasting the “link equity” from the 26 referring domains that are currently linking to that page.

We’ve since redirected that page to another one.

Find dead or nofollowed internal links

Use the Best by Links report to check if:

• You’re linking to broken internal pages;
• You’re adding nofollow tags on internal links.

To see if you’re adding links to broken internal pages, analyze your own site, switch to the Internal links tab and add an HTTP code filter for “404 not found". Sort the report by dofollow links.

Looks like Content Marketing Institute is internally linking to their non-existent “what is content marketing” post from 34 pages on their site!

To see if you’re adding unwanted nofollow tags, analyze your own site, switch to the Internal links tab and sort by the Nofollow column.

If you see pages with a lot of nofollowed internal links, click the number to see where those links come from. Investigate further.

If there is no obvious reason why these links are nofollowed, remove the nofollow tags.

Add internal links from “power” pages to boost other pages

“Power pages" are those with the most "link authority." To give less authoritative pages on your site a boost, you can internally link to them from relevant power pages.

For example, let’s say we want to give our guide to keyword research a boost. Let’s check the “Best by links” report to see if there are any good internal linking opportunities.

Looks like our guide to keyword difficulty is the 5th most authoritative page on our blog. This page definitely presents a great contextual internal linking opportunity.

You can also use the search box to find relevant posts.

Keep learning

Here are some guides that will show you how to make use of the “Best by links” report:

• Internal Links for SEO: An Actionable Guide
• A Simple (But Complete) Guide to Broken Link Building
• How to Find and Fix Broken Links (to Reclaim Valuable “Link Juice”)
• Deconstructing Linkbait: How to Create Content That Attracts Backlinks