Here's a technique to gain insight into how your competitors are using off-page optimization to get better page ranks than you are. This information is not specific to the keywords you are targeting but, it will definitely help you achieve better rankings for those keywords through better off page optimization.

Step one: find out who is currently getting top ranks for the keywords you want

This step is simple. Simply enter your chosen key word into your favorite search engine such as Google, Yahoo! Search, or Ask.com and observe the page listing results. These are the pages currently getting top page rank for the keywords you are targeting. It is likely to be a list containing many of your competitors.

Copy the URLs for each of the top ranking pages that are closest in nature to your site and paste these URLs into a word processor like Microsoft Word or Notepad. Make sure to copy the complete URL including all the funny characters you see at the end!

http://www.competitordomain.com?variable=1234 etc.

Step two: find out who is linking to the pages getting top break for your chosen keywords

This next step is also surprisingly simple. But, it requires a little bit of secret knowledge. Search engines offer a unique a service that allows you to check who is linking to the site you want to investigate.

You can perform this check at any of the major search engines but right now your best resource is probably Yahoo! Since they gave you a more complete list and better filtering options.

Go to www.yahoo.com  as if you were performing a search just like any other user. Paste one of those URLs into the input box you find the yahoo search engine. Copying and pasting in the exact URL from the search will tell you about the acutal landing page on the site that is gettign the ranking. You  could also just use the home page URL which will give you a broader look.

Before you press ENTER,  type link: in front of the URL you just pasted in.
For example... link:http://www.competitordomain.com?variable=1234 etc.

Now you can press ENTER. The results page will show you something very interesting. You are now looking at a complete listing of all the websites currently linking to the page represented by the URL you just pasted in. Cool, huh?

You can also do this for the website home page for a broader look link:http://www.competitordomain.com

What’s more, Yahoo allows you to filter the results to omit internal links from the site domain you are investigating. Choose the option all omit links from this domain. What remains is now a listing of all the websites linking to the URL you are investigating.

Here’s what you see at first, includes all the links the target site has to its own pages.

Select the drop down says except from this domain and…
Now only shows other sites linking to the site you are investigating!

At the top of the page Yahoo offers you the option to save this list as a tab separated value *.tsv file. Click that button and save the file on to your desktop. You now have some very cool information about your keyword competitors.

Repeat this process for all the other URLs you are interested in.

Step three: take a look at who is linking to whom

Open the file that you just saved to your desktop in Microsoft excel or your favorite spreadsheet. What you will see is a mini-database of the websites that are linking to your competitors pages and contributing to your competitors page ranking success.

You now have a list of link friendly web sites, you should contact about getting your site linked. Getting qualified external links is one of the most important factors to getting great page ranking for your chosen keywords. It’s called off-page optimization.

Many of these sites, such as directories, allow you to suggest or setup links to your page online, others such as informational sites, blogs, press releases and so forth may require a more formal request (but, these could prove to be the most valuable things that you get).

Happy hunting!