How to Analyze a Cannabis Competitor's Backlink Profile

Pick competitors that actually rank

The useful comparison set is not the biggest brand in your state. It is whoever sits above you for the searches you care about. Run your five most important terms, note which domains keep appearing, and take the three or four closest to your own size. A multistate operator earns coverage a single-location dispensary cannot replicate, so its link profile teaches you very little.

Export referring domains, not raw backlinks

In Ahrefs Site Explorer, open the Referring domains report rather than the Backlinks report. One site linking from 400 footer placements is one relationship, not 400. Export the list, then thin it: drop nofollow-only domains, drop anything with a Domain Rating in the low single digits, and drop the obvious filler like scraper sites and stat aggregators. Semrush and Moz Link Explorer paint the same picture with their own authority scores, so use whichever you already pay for.

Run the gap analysis across all of them

Ahrefs calls it Link Intersect, Semrush calls it Backlink Gap. Feed in three competitors plus your own domain and the tool returns every site linking to them but not to you. This is the highest-value output of the whole exercise. A domain that has already linked to two dispensaries has answered the question that kills most cannabis outreach — whether they will link to a cannabis business at all.

Work out why each link exists

Go through the gap list and tag each domain: industry directory, local press, guest post, resource page, podcast, sponsorship. The tag tells you the move. A directory means you submit a listing. A resource page means you pitch your best guide. Local news coverage means you need something newsworthy of your own. Some tags mean walk away entirely. If a competitor's profile is padded with off-topic blogs all using exact-match anchors, those are almost certainly paid placements, and Google's link spam policy treats paid links that pass PageRank as spam. Copying that footprint buys their risk along with it.

A worked example

Say you run a seed retailer and pull three competing seed banks. The intersect report shows 60 domains linking to at least two of them. Tagging takes an afternoon and sorts the list roughly in half: a dozen grow forums and blogs, eight directories, five strain-review sites, a Ganjapreneur article, and about 30 domains of link-network filler. Your outreach sheet is the first group. Submit the directories this week, pitch the review sites your best-documented strain pages, and note which writers covered competitor launches so you can email them before your next drop. The filler domains go nowhere near your list.

Frequently asked questions

Which tool do I need for this?

Ahrefs Site Explorer is the standard, and Semrush or Moz Link Explorer cover the same ground. All three are paid, but one month of the cheapest plan is enough to run this analysis on every competitor you have and export the lists.

What if most of a competitor's links look purchased?

Skip them and study a cleaner rival instead. Bought profiles are common in cannabis, and they tell you nothing except which sellers your competitor used. Copying that footprint imports their penalty risk into your own site.

How many competitors should I analyze?

Three to five that rank for your target terms. Fewer than three and the intersect report has little to intersect; more than five and the list fills with one-off links you cannot learn from.