Search engines research inward bound links to your website as a part of their ranking standards. Understanding how many inward links your competitors have, will give you an amazing edge. Naturally, you still need to discover your competitors before you can research them.

Your research of competitors should include these very important linking factors (super SEO tips), for example:

* Competitor rank in the search engines

* Quantity AND quality of backlinks (prioritized)

* Percent of links containing explicit keywords in the link text

* What keywords are in the title of linking page?

* The approval for the linking domain and the linking page ( measured by links & touches on )

* The Google Page Rank or MozRank of linking pages

Except for using some of the grand SEO software discussed on this website, these are some things I do when researching a competitor:

* Click link to their Site Map page and see what keyword you find in the links

* Get a knowledgeable web person to find and parse their XML Site Map to find keywords in page names

* View the HTML title and Meta tags also of your top competitors to compile a catalogue of required content.