Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?

[djingel1]

By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found)

I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior...

Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck.

The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research?

thnx

[TheEspresseo]

Yes, Xenu Link Sleuth is supposed to be able do this. Here is a helpful post that includes a section on redirects.

It looks like the Yahoo Site Explorer and Open Site Explorer also report the 301s they are aware of as backlinks.

I'd love for someone else on here to confirm.

Like you I've also seen 301's significantly positively impact rankings.

Good luck with your research!