For anyone that is thinking about creating a new website, or expanding upon the content for affiliate marketing purposes, it is important to go through some preliminary steps.

What is competitor backlink analysis?

The most important step is to assess what kind of links your competition is using to get to the number one spot in Google. The reason for this is that if they are getting a hold of links that you would never be able to normally secure, then this would be a good point to walk away. Without carrying out this step, it would mean that you could be potentially be wasting time and money on building links and they still wouldn’t reach the potential needed to get to the number one spot.
Moreover, by looking closely at the baclink report, it will give you the information on what links your competition has that you can effectively mimic. This would include web 2.0s and also forum links. Linked to this is that you will be able to see if any guest posts have been made on other sites with a backlink in it to your competitors page. You could then email the site in question and ask them to include your link instead since you would have the better content. This would effectively result in you getting a free link to your site.
There are two ways to assess how strong the backlinks of your competition are; buying expensive software, or outsourcing the work to a freelancer.

Buying software for competitor backlink analysis

Supposing you go down the route of buying the software to do competitor backlink analysis. There are several vendors that sell similar software, with the prices ranging wildly from one provider to another. One of the best in the market is KWFinder. This is a keyword research tool that also gives you information of the backlinks that your competitor has. However, this works out at $50 per month for the basic package which isn’t the cheapest option.

Outsourcing competitor baclink analysis

Alternatively, you could outsource this work instead. There are several people online that will do this work for you. However, a large number of them will be doing this to steal your niche so that they can take it over. There is a seller on SEOClerks that has recently launched a service that offers competitor backlink analysis at an extremely low price. It is an in-depth report which should give you the appropriate information on what links you need to acquire in order to beat your competition. The service was actually set up after the seller had been duped by other people and decided that it was time for a change and to make sure that buyers were protected. It's a great way to check what links your competitor has at an extremely small price point.