It will be tough to outrank your competition if you don't know where you stand. But it’s also not uncommon to wonder how you’re being outranked by a newer or smaller competitor when you feel like you’ve done everything right. Conducting competitor analysis seo reports can be a huge asset, and it can often be beneficial to look into the relevant keywords for your business, as well as, competitor keywords and competitor web traffic analysis in order to better understand how your keywords are working within a google search.
What many business owners fail to realize is that the search engines can’t necessarily experience your organization in the real world. So they have to rely on a variety of online factors. This is where performing a detailed SEO competitor analysis can give you the information you need to make decisions about your digital marketing strategy with organic keywords through effective keyword research. It is also smart to do competitors keywords research, because when you analyse competitor keywords you can learn how that newer or smaller competitor is ranking above you! The answers are often found within the research and analysis you take the time to do.
What is SEO Competitor Analysis?
An SEO competitive analysis involves a detailed dive into your digital marketing presence to see how you stack up against the competition. An seo competitor analysis checklist includes:
- SEO keyword competition analysis
- Top content analysis
- Keyword gap analysis
- Competitor backlink analysis
This checklist is such a great starting point to analyse competitors to help you see how you compare to the competition in the eyes of the major search engines.
Why You Need to Analyze Your Competitors
Competition is healthy. It encourages innovation and prevents complacency. But, it’s sure more fun when you’re the one on top, and people are trying to figure out how to get the best of you instead of the other way around.
Whether you’re achieving your goals or not, you might wonder why it’s important to analyse competitors keywords. Competitor keyword analysis is a valuable exercise for several reasons:
- Identifies what you’re doing well. There will generally be some things you do better than your competitors. When you identify them, you can do more of them and widen your lead. An example of this would be to own a particular keyword for your industry that helps you to be on top of the search engine results pages.
- Highlights weaknesses in your strategy. No SEO strategy is flawless. When you look at what your competitors are doing, you identify any gaps in your own strategy and begin to take care of those deficits.
- Gives you new ways to reach your audience. Competitors might be using tactics that are completely new, giving you fantastic opportunities to improve your results. That is why simple things like knowing your competitor's url and running a website competitor checker can be a great help in surpassing your competition and reaching your audience quicker and more effectively.
Simply put, a competitive analysis will help your business grow. It can be the catalyst for identifying and adopting new strategies that help you improve online visibility, gain a larger search volume, and increase your bottom-line results.
Who Are Your Actual Competitors?
Interestingly, one of the first things a competitor analysis will do for your business is help you identify who your true competitors are. You can achieve this with what we call an seo competition checker which applies keyword data to figure out who owns the main keywords and key phrases that you use for your business. You might think it’s the guy down the street when it’s really the business in the next town over that is truly dominating the search engines.
Your competitive analysis will be incredibly skewed if you only focus on rankings for “money keywords.” In truth, many people search for local and long-tail keywords, and a business can dominate a market if they rank for these terms. We help you sift through all that keyword difficulty and can apply a competitor keyword checker so that way your competitive analysis report contains real time accurate data on main keywords/phrases to help you learn how to put your company in a better position to dominate your individual markets.
Before you begin your competitor analysis, take a close look at your buyer persona and target market. You might want to exclude some businesses, like big box stores and generic sites like Pinterest, and focus instead on actual competitors for your target audience.
How to Do An SEO Competitor Analysis
Now that you understand why you should do an SEO competitor analysis, here are some of the steps you can take to get a clear picture of your online competition.
1. Keyword Gap Analysis
Keyword gap analysis, also called competitive keyword analysis, is the process of identifying valuable keywords that your competition ranks well for but that you don’t. When you analyze your competitor’s websites, see what keywords they rank highly for and decide if those are terms of value to your organization. If they aren’t, move on.
This is an excellent opportunity for you to discover new ways to reach your target audience. You can make a list of valuable keyword phrases to begin targeting with fresh content, with the goal of eventually outranking your competition.
2. Top Content Pages
When analyzing the competition, you’ll also want to take a close look at their content. Digital SEO relies heavily on quality content, so this step is vital.
Do your competitors stick with one type of content or is it varied? If it is mostly written, are they focusing on long-form pieces or frequent short posts? What topics do they cover? If they stick close to the same topics, this could give you opportunities to create unique content that will reach more users. Finally, are your competitors using the right SEO strategies with their content, such as adding proper title tags and metadata?
3. Analyze Web Design and UX
Next, check out the quality of your competitor’s web design and the user experience. Factors that have a significant impact on organic search engine rankings include things like site speed, security, and mobile friendliness.
How fast does your competitor’s site load? Is it easy to navigate, and does it have a responsive design? Does the site provide a valuable experience by providing useful and engaging information? If not, you might have an advantage. But if your competitor’s site hits all these marks and yours doesn’t, you might have some work to do.
4. Examine Backlink Profiles
One of the most important parts of a competitive SEO analysis is figuring out where your competition is getting its backlinks from and using the information to your advantage.
Quality backlinks are like endorsements for your website, and they can help your organic rankings. This is a difficult step to do manually, generally requiring a specialized SEO tool to extract the best data.
5. Look at Google My Business Listings
Many businesses today target a local audience. If you fall in this category, it’s vital that you also analyze how well your competition is using their Google My Business listing compared to you.
Have your competitors filled out and optimized their listings? Do they have photos and additional information about their business to drive traffic? Finally, how well are they doing at encouraging customers to leave online feedback?
Want to Find Out How You Rank Against Your Competitors?
This is all good information, but your business may not have time to perform an in-depth SEO competitor analysis. Fortunately, we can help! We can perform for you an seo competitor report, seo competitor audit, and help you understand and fine tune your seo competitor research.
Connection Model can tell you how you stand up against your main competitors and provide recommendations, as well as, a free website competitive analysis for results-driven solutions to take your business's digital marketing strategy to the next level. Contact us today to learn more.
Written By: David Carpenter
