How to Do a Backlink Gap Analysis (With Template)

In this article, you’ll learn how to find the high-quality backlinks your competitors have earned that you haven’t. You’ll get a step-by-step process for identifying those gaps, filtering out low-value links, prioritizing the best opportunities, and building a prospecting list you can hand off to your outreach team. You’ll also learn how to run the same gap analysis for AI search citations — because the sites that AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini cite as sources function a lot like backlinks, and your competitors are earning those, too.

What Is a Backlink Gap Analysis?

A backlink gap analysis is the process of comparing your backlink profile against your competitors’ to find domains and pages that link to them but not to you.

The logic is straightforward. If a site links to three of your competitors and not to you, there’s a good chance you could earn a link from that site too. The content is already relevant to their audience. The editorial relationship already exists. You just need to give them a reason to link to you.

This matters for three reasons.

First, it surfaces high-quality link prospects faster than manual research. Instead of cold-emailing random sites, you’re targeting domains that already link to similar businesses in your space. That means higher response rates and more relevant links.

Second, it helps you close authority gaps. If a competitor’s Domain Rating is significantly higher than yours, backlinks are usually a major reason why. Finding and closing those gaps directly improves your ability to rank.

Third, it reveals patterns in your competitors’ link building strategies. Are they earning links from industry directories? Guest posting on niche blogs? Getting cited in roundup articles? Once you see the pattern, you can replicate and improve on it.

Backlinks vs. AI Citations: Why Both Matter Now

Here is something most backlink guides miss entirely: the concept of a “link gap” now extends beyond traditional search.

When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Google AI Mode a question about your industry, these models cite sources in their responses. Those citations function like backlinks — they drive referral traffic, build brand awareness, and signal authority. And just like backlinks, your competitors are earning citations that you’re not.

A traditional backlink gap analysis tells you which domains link to your competitors in Google. A citation gap analysis tells you which sources AI models reference when answering questions about your space — and whether your competitors are being cited while you’re absent.

Both analyses follow the same core logic: find where competitors appear and you don’t, then build a plan to close the gap. The tools are different, but the strategic thinking is identical.

We’ll walk through the traditional backlink gap analysis first, then show you how to run the AI citation equivalent using Analyze AI.

How to Do a Backlink Gap Analysis (Step by Step)

1. Identify Your Real SEO Competitors

Before you can find link gaps, you need to know who you’re competing against. And your SEO competitors aren’t always the companies you’d name in a sales pitch.

Your SEO competitors are the sites ranking for the same keywords you’re targeting. A B2B SaaS company selling project management software might compete against Asana and Monday.com in sales conversations, but in search results, they might also compete against review sites like G2 or content publishers like Zapier’s blog.

Here’s how to identify them.

Use Google Search Console. Look at the queries driving the most impressions to your site, then search those queries in an incognito window. The domains consistently appearing in the top 10 alongside you (or above you) are your SEO competitors.

Use a keyword research tool. Enter your domain into any SEO tool with an organic competitors report. This shows you domains that share the most keyword overlap with your site, ranked by how many keywords you compete on.

Filter for realistic targets. You’re looking for competitors that are roughly in your league — not sites with ten times your domain authority. If your Domain Rating is 35, focus on competitors in the 30-60 range. A site with a DR of 90 probably has link sources you can’t realistically access.

Pick 3-5 competitors. More than that and your analysis becomes unwieldy. Fewer than that and you’ll miss important patterns.

Pro tip: Use Analyze AI’s free Website Authority Checker to quickly assess the authority level of each potential competitor before committing them to your list.

2. Find Domains Linking to Your Competitors (But Not to You)

This is the core of the analysis. You need a tool that can compare referring domains across multiple sites and show you the gaps.

Most SEO tools offer some version of this report. The feature is typically called “Link Intersect,” “Competitive Analysis,” or “Backlink Gap.” The setup is the same regardless of which tool you use.

Here’s the process:

Step 1: Open the link intersect (or competitive analysis) tool in your SEO platform.

Step 2: Set the mode to “referring domains.” This shows you full domains that link to your competitors, not individual pages. You’ll look at individual pages later.

Step 3: Enter your domain as the “target” — the site that doesn’t have these links.

Step 4: Enter your 3-5 competitors as the comparison sites.

Step 5: Run the report. You’ll see a list of domains that link to at least one of your competitors but not to you.

This list is your raw starting point. It will contain thousands of domains — many of them irrelevant. The next step is filtering.

3. Filter Out Low-Quality and Irrelevant Links

The raw list from a link intersect report is noisy. It includes spam directories, foreign-language sites, irrelevant industries, and domains that simply aren’t worth pursuing. Filtering is what turns a raw data dump into a usable prospecting list.

Apply these filters in order.

Filter by number of linking competitors. Start by looking at domains that link to all of your competitors but not to you. If a site links to every competitor in your space, it’s almost certainly relevant — and the probability of earning a link from that site is high. These are your highest-priority targets.

After working through those, expand to domains linking to at least two competitors. These are your medium-priority targets.

Filter by link type (dofollow only). Nofollow links can drive referral traffic, but for the purpose of closing an authority gap, focus on dofollow links first. Most tools let you filter for this with one click.

Filter by Domain Rating (DR). Set a minimum DR threshold to remove low-authority sites. A minimum of 30 is a good starting point. If your list is still too long, raise it to 50.

Filter by domain traffic. Sites with zero organic traffic are often abandoned, PBN-style, or otherwise low-quality. Set a minimum domain traffic threshold of 500-1,000 to filter these out.

A note on over-filtering: Don’t stack too many filters at once. Each filter removes candidates, and some strong prospects might have a lower DR but high relevance. Start broad and tighten only if your list is unmanageable.

4. Evaluate Each Domain for Relevance

Filters handle the obvious junk, but they can’t assess relevance. That requires human judgment.

For each remaining domain in your list, open the site and assess it against three criteria:

Is the site relevant to your industry? A SaaS link building campaign doesn’t benefit from links on a recipe blog, even if that blog has a high DR. The domain needs to be in your niche or an adjacent one (tech publications, business media, industry blogs).

Is the site high-quality? Look for signs of a real editorial operation: original content, named authors, consistent publishing cadence, real contact information. Avoid sites that are obviously link farms, thin-content directories, or sites that sell links.

Could you realistically earn a link? Some sites might be relevant and high-quality but completely unrealistic. A link from the New York Times is great in theory, but if you’re a 20-person startup, your outreach efforts are better spent elsewhere.

Here’s a simple framework for making the call:

For each domain that passes this test, add it to your spreadsheet. For each one that fails, move on.

5. Build Your Link Gap Prospecting Spreadsheet

Every domain you identify as relevant goes into a structured spreadsheet. This spreadsheet becomes the working document for your outreach team.

At minimum, track these columns:

Domain/URL. The site you want a link from.

Domain Rating (DR). The authority score. Pull this directly from your SEO tool.

Domain Traffic. How much organic traffic the site gets. Higher traffic means more potential referral value.

Priority. High, Medium, or Low — based on how many competitors have links from this domain.

Status. Start with “To Qualify.” Your outreach team will update this as they work through the list (Contacted, Replied, Link Earned, Rejected, etc.)

Link Target. The page on your site you want the link pointing to. If you’re not sure, default to your homepage or your most relevant pillar page.

Contact Info. Email address, LinkedIn profile, or contact form URL for the site’s editor or webmaster.

Notes. Any context that helps the outreach team: what type of content the link appeared in, what angle might work, whether the site accepts guest posts.

Template: You can build this in Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, or whatever your team uses. The structure matters more than the tool. If you want a head start, create a simple Google Sheet with the columns listed above and share it with your team.

6. Repeat the Analysis at the Page Level

The domain-level analysis tells you which sites to target. But for some outreach strategies, you need to know which specific pages on those sites contain the links.

Why? Because some of the most effective outreach approaches involve getting added to an existing page rather than creating new content. If a competitor was included in a “Top 10 Tools for [Your Category]” roundup post, you want to pitch the editor on adding your product to that same list.

To find these pages, switch your link intersect report from “referring domains” to “referring pages.”

Now, instead of seeing that example.com links to your competitors, you’ll see the exact URL — like example.com/blog/top-10-project-management-tools — and can assess whether your product or content fits.

Repeat the same filtering and evaluation process from steps 3 and 4, but this time, note the specific page URL in your spreadsheet alongside the domain.

Common page-level link opportunities include:

Listicle/roundup posts. “Best X tools,” “Top Y resources,” “Z alternatives to [Competitor].” These are the most straightforward outreach targets because the editorial format already accommodates additional entries.

Comparison and review posts. Articles that compare multiple products in your space. If you’re missing from a comparison that includes three competitors, you have a strong pitch.

Resource pages. Curated link lists maintained by industry organizations, educational institutions, or niche publishers.

Guest posts by competitors. If a competitor wrote a guest post on a relevant blog, that blog likely accepts external contributors — and you can pitch your own article.

7. Prioritize and Plan Your Outreach

You now have a spreadsheet full of qualified link prospects. But not all opportunities are equal. Before you start sending emails, prioritize.

Tier your prospects. Sort by priority (High > Medium > Low), then within each tier, sort by DR and traffic. Start with the highest-priority, highest-authority prospects.

Match outreach angles to opportunity types. Different link types require different pitches:

Set realistic expectations. A 5-10% success rate on cold outreach is normal. If you have 100 qualified prospects, expect to earn 5-10 links. That’s why building a large, well-qualified list matters.

Use Analyze AI’s Broken Link Checker to scan your target domains for broken outbound links. If you find a broken link pointing to a competitor’s page, you have a natural opening for outreach: offer your own content as a replacement.

How to Run a Citation Gap Analysis for AI Search

The process above covers traditional backlinks — the links that influence how Google ranks your pages. But there’s a parallel gap that most teams aren’t tracking yet: the citation gap in AI search.

When someone asks ChatGPT “What are the best project management tools?” or prompts Perplexity with “Compare CRM platforms for small businesses,” these AI models generate answers and cite sources. Those cited sources get referral traffic, brand exposure, and a compounding authority advantage — just like backlinks in traditional SEO.

The difference is that most teams don’t even know which sources AI models are citing, let alone how to close the gap. Here’s how to run the AI search version of a backlink gap analysis using Analyze AI.

Step 1: Identify Your AI Search Competitors

Your competitors in AI search may differ from your SEO competitors. AI models pull from different source pools and weigh different signals.

In Analyze AI, navigate to the Competitors tab. The platform automatically surfaces suggested competitors — entities that appear frequently alongside your brand in AI-generated responses but that you haven’t tracked yet.

Review this list. Click Track on the competitors that are relevant to your space. You can also manually add competitors by clicking “Add Competitor” and entering their name and website.

Once your competitors are tracked, Analyze AI monitors their mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Mode — giving you a rolling view of who appears where.

Step 2: Find Where Competitors Are Cited and You’re Not

This is the AI search equivalent of the link intersect report. Instead of asking “which domains link to my competitors?”, you’re asking “which prompts and sources cite my competitors but not me?”

In Analyze AI, go to the Sources tab. This shows every URL and domain that AI platforms cite when answering questions about your industry.

Click into the Top Cited Domains chart to see which websites AI models reference most frequently. These are the AI equivalent of high-DR referring domains — the sites that AI models trust as authorities.

Now switch to the URLs table below the charts. This shows every specific webpage cited by AI platforms, along with which brands each URL mentions.

Look at the “Mentioned” column. If it says “No” for your brand but lists competitors in the “Mentions” column, you’ve found a citation gap. That source is informing AI responses about your space, mentioning your competitors, and leaving you out.

These are your high-priority citation gap targets.

Step 3: Analyze the Prompts Driving Those Citations

Understanding why AI models cite certain sources requires looking at the prompts that trigger those citations.

Switch to the Chats view in the Sources tab. This shows the actual AI conversations that referenced sources in your industry — including which prompts triggered citations, which brands appeared, and which sources were used.

Now go to the Prompts tab to see your tracked prompts with visibility, sentiment, and position data for each one.

Look for prompts where your visibility is low (or zero) but competitors appear consistently. These are the prompt-level gaps — the specific questions where AI models talk about your competitors and not about you.

Step 4: Use the Perception Map to Visualize Your Position

Analyze AI’s Perception Map gives you a visual snapshot of where you stand relative to competitors across two dimensions: visibility (how often you’re seen) and narrative strength (how positively you’re portrayed).

Brands in the “Visible & Compelling” quadrant are winning both the visibility and narrative game. If your competitors sit there and you don’t, the citation gap is real — and it’s driven by both content depth and source authority.

This map helps you prioritize: should you focus on getting more citations (visibility) or improving what AI says about you (narrative)?

Step 5: Close the Citation Gap

Closing a citation gap is different from closing a backlink gap. You can’t email ChatGPT and ask for a link. Instead, you need to influence the sources that AI models already trust.

Here’s the playbook:

Get featured on the sources AI models already cite. If G2, Wikipedia, or an industry blog is frequently cited by AI models in your space (you can see this in the Sources dashboard), focus your efforts on earning presence on those specific sites. Write comparison content, earn reviews, contribute guest posts, or get listed in their directories.

Create content that answers the prompts you’re losing. If Perplexity cites a competitor’s blog post when someone asks “best [your category] tools,” you need content that answers that exact question — with more depth, more specificity, and better structure. Use the prompts from your Analyze AI dashboard to guide your content calendar.

Double down on pages already earning AI traffic. In Analyze AI’s AI Traffic Analytics section, you can see exactly which of your pages receive referral traffic from AI platforms.

The Landing Pages report shows which specific pages AI engines send traffic to, along with engagement metrics and the prompts that triggered citations.

If a page is already being cited and receiving AI traffic, optimize it further. Add more depth, update statistics, improve structure, and make sure it comprehensively answers the prompts driving traffic to it.

Monitor weekly changes. AI models update their source preferences constantly. What gets cited this week might not get cited next month. Analyze AI sends weekly email digests highlighting competitor pages gaining citations — including specific threats and opportunities.

Common Backlink Gap Analysis Mistakes

Even experienced SEOs make these errors. Avoid them and your analysis will produce better results.

Mistake 1: Targeting competitors way above your weight class. If your DR is 25 and you’re analyzing the backlink profile of a DR 85 competitor, most of their link sources won’t be accessible to you. Stick to competitors within a 20-30 point DR range.

Mistake 2: Ignoring link context. A domain-level analysis tells you that example.com links to a competitor. But it doesn’t tell you why. Before adding a domain to your outreach list, check the actual page and link. Is it an editorial mention? A paid placement? A footer link from a web design agency? Context determines whether the opportunity is worth pursuing.

Mistake 3: Running the analysis once and never again. Your competitors earn new links every week. A backlink gap analysis from six months ago is already outdated. Schedule this analysis quarterly at minimum. The same applies to citation gap analysis in AI search — AI models update their source preferences constantly.

Mistake 4: Treating all links as equal. A single link from an authoritative, relevant industry publication is worth more than 50 links from random blogs. Prioritize quality over quantity in your prospecting list.

Mistake 5: Skipping the AI search dimension. Traditional backlink gap analysis only shows you half the picture. If your competitors are consistently cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity and you’re not, you’re losing an organic channel that’s growing fast. Run both analyses together to get the complete view.

How Often Should You Run a Backlink Gap Analysis?

The right cadence depends on how competitive your space is.

Quarterly is the minimum for most businesses. This gives you enough time between analyses to act on findings, run outreach campaigns, and measure results before reassessing.

Monthly makes sense for highly competitive niches (fintech, SaaS, ecommerce) where competitors are actively building links and the SERP landscape shifts quickly.

After major competitor moves. If a competitor launches a new product, raises funding, or publishes a major research report, they’ll likely earn a wave of new links. Run a fresh analysis to catch those opportunities while they’re still warm.

For AI citation gap analysis, a monthly cadence is ideal — AI models shift their citation preferences more frequently than Google shifts its rankings. Tools like Analyze AI automate this by running daily prompt checks and surfacing changes in weekly email digests, so you don’t need to manually rerun the analysis.

Putting It All Together

A backlink gap analysis is one of the highest-ROI activities in SEO. Instead of guessing which sites might link to you, you’re working from proven data: these sites already link to businesses like yours.

The process is simple:

1. Identify 3-5 real SEO competitors.

2. Find domains linking to them but not to you.

3. Filter out low-quality and irrelevant domains.

4. Evaluate each remaining domain for relevance and reachability.

5. Build a structured prospecting spreadsheet.

6. Repeat at the page level for specific outreach angles.

7. Prioritize and execute outreach.

And if you want the complete picture, run the same analysis for AI search. Use Analyze AI to find the citation gaps — the sources, prompts, and pages where competitors appear in AI-generated answers and you don’t. Then close those gaps by earning presence on the sources AI models trust, creating content that answers the prompts you’re losing, and doubling down on the pages already earning AI traffic.

Backlinks and AI citations are two sides of the same coin. Both represent third-party signals of authority and relevance. Both require systematic analysis to find gaps. And both compound over time when you close them consistently.

The teams that run both analyses — and act on the findings — will build the most durable competitive advantages in organic search.

Related resources:

• 6-Step SEO Competitor Analysis (+ Track AI Search Rivals)

• The 9 Best Backlink Building Tools in 2026

• Off-Page SEO: 11 Strategies That Work + AI Tracking

• How To Outrank Competitors in AI Search (Based on Real Citation Data)

• How Do LLMs Cite Sources? What 83,670 AI Citations Tell Us

• Free Website Authority Checker

• Free Broken Link Checker

• Free SERP Checker