Are you constantly seeing your competitor’s blogs rank above yours?
If so, you’re missing out on driving quality traffic to your site.
In this blog, our SEO Strategist, Tanisha Mitchell, walks you through eight steps to complete an effective SEO competitor analysis.
What You’ll Learn:
- Step 1: Determine Your Top Terms
- Step 2: Find Out Who Your Competitors Are
- Step 3: Complete a Competitive Keyword Analysis
- Step 4: Content Analysis
- Step 5: Backlink Analysis
- Step 6: Technical Analysis
- Step 7: Set Up Monitoring Tools
- Step 8: Create a Plan
- Tools for SEO Competitor Analysis
- FAQs: SEO Competitor Analysis
Tanisha’s Expert Insights on SEO Competitor Analysis
SEO competitor analysis isn’t just about keeping pace; it’s about taking the lead. To succeed, it’s crucial to understand your competition’s SEO performance and find ways to outrank them.
Action Item: Start your SEO strategy by identifying top keywords and pages. This foundational step offers insights into your SEO landscape, setting the stage for a comprehensive competitor analysis SEO.
Step 1: Determine Your Top Terms
The first thing that you want to do is identify your top terms. What are those 10, 20, 30 search terms you’d like to target and rank for on Google?
You can uncover search terms with a variety of free research tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. Paid tools like SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs are all great options, as well.
Step 2: Find Out Who Your Competitors Are
After you’ve defined your target search terms, you’ll want to size up the competition.
Your competitors are not just those who sell similar products or services. They are the websites that consistently outrank you across various search terms.
Using tools like SEMRush and Similar Web, you can uncover these competitors and gain valuable insights into their strategies. SimilarWeb even comes with a market mapping and benchmarking tool, designed to spot key players, trends, and rising and falling players. By understanding who your competitors are, you can better assess your position in the market and identify growth opportunities.
Additionally, a simple Google search can help you identify who is ranking for your terms by seeing which domains rise to the top, then tracking your most popular search terms in a spreadsheet. Keep in mind, that taking a manual approach is fine if you’re only tracking 10 or 20 terms at a time; otherwise, this can become a time-consuming, inaccurate process.
The point is, that you’ll want to explore the competitive landscape from multiple angles to get a clear picture of who ALL of your competitors are.
Step 3: Keyword Analysis
Now that you’ve identified your competitors, it’s time to dive deeper into their keyword strategies.
A keyword gap analysis can reveal valuable insights into where your competitors are excelling and where you have opportunities to improve.
Look for keywords your competitors have lost and new keywords they are targeting. Understanding search intent is key here; it’s not just about ranking for keywords but also providing content that meets the needs of your audience.
Step 4: Content Analysis
Content is king in the world of SEO, and analyzing your competitors’ content can provide valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t.
If you’re unsure where to start, take these steps:
Review Page Formats and Content Types
Take a close look at the types of content your competitors are producing. Are they focusing on blog posts, videos, or infographics? Understanding their content formats can give you ideas for diversifying your content strategy.
Evaluate Content Quality
Quality is key in the world of content. Look for well-researched, informative, and engaging content that resonates with the audience. Pay attention to the depth of information, accuracy, and overall presentation.
Analyze Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles and descriptions play a crucial role in attracting clicks from search engine results pages (SERPs). See how your competitors are crafting their meta tags to entice users to click through to their websites.
Spot Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are prime real estate in SERPs. Identify if your competitors are ranking for any featured snippets and analyze the content that helped them secure this coveted position.
Assess Readability
Content that is easy to read and understand tends to perform better. Use tools like the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests to assess the readability of your competitors’ content.
Examine Use of Images and Videos
Visual content can enhance the user experience and improve engagement. See how your competitors are using images and videos to complement their written content.
Consider EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
Google values content that demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Look for signals of these qualities in your competitors’ content, such as citations, references, and expert opinions.
Step 5: Backlink Analysis
Backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites, and analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles can help you uncover valuable link-building opportunities.
This consists of building a PR strategy in tandem with your social media and content strategies. Look for unlinked mentions and outreach opportunities. Analyze links to social shares and identify broken links that you can potentially replace with your own content.
First, see which platforms your competitors are posting on, and understand how they’re using these platforms.
You’ll want to use a tool like BuzzSumo to identify which content is most successful on social media by searching a topic or keyword.
A few areas to examine:
- Are competitors getting more shares from evergreen content versus trending news stories?
- What types of content are competitors consistently creating that keeps getting shares? Put that into your roadmap, so you can take a similar approach.
- Additionally, how are they tapping into trending topics? In this case, pay attention to how well-competing brands leverage current events authentically.
The goal here, overall, is to discover your competitors’ top content, and then create content that improves on their most-shared pieces.
Keep in mind, the idea isn’t to recreate competitive content in your own voice, rather, you’ll want to offer up your own take on a particular topic, and include better visuals, more data, answers to more questions, etc. so that you can provide a more useful resource to readers.
By building a strong backlink profile, you can improve your site’s authority and visibility.
Step 6: Technical Analysis
Technical SEO is the backbone of your website’s performance, and analyzing your competitors’ technical strategies can provide valuable insights. Just like a well-designed home, your website needs a solid foundation and structure to ensure it’s inviting and functional for visitors. Here’s how to assess the technical aspects of your competitors’ websites to improve your own:
User Experience (UX)
Think of UX as the ambiance of your website. Analyze how your competitors’ sites are designed for user-friendliness, ease of navigation, and overall appeal.
Website Performance
Speed matters online. Check how quickly your competitors’ pages load and how smoothly they function, especially on different devices.
URL Structure
URLs are like street addresses for your web pages. Keep a close eye on how your competitors organize their URLs to make them clear, concise, and relevant to the content.
If you’re looking at the URL structure, is it a directory structure, if so, what are the different directories and how are they set up, so you can build folder structures and build the same pages under each one.
If you’re using a crawling tool like DeepCrawl, SEMRush, or Screaming Frog, you can crawl by folder to see the entire structure and recreate it for yourself.
Site Structure (HTML + SSL)
HTML and SSL are like the framework and security system of your website. Examine how your competitors structure their sites to ensure they’re secure, easy to index by search engines, and user-friendly.
- XML Sitemap: You can look at the XML Sitemap and figure out every URL on their website and reveal how your competitors’ are structuring their URLs.
- HTML Sitemap: The HTML sitemap allows you to see all of their most important pages so that you can create them for your own site.
- txt file: The robots.txt file will show you what your competitors are blocking and what they’re allowing into the index, which can be really indicative of any potential issues that they have on their website.
- Code and URL Structure: Is there anything in the code that is bloated–think excessive JavaScript or CSS?
- Hreflang Tags: Another thing you’ll want to look for is something called hreflang tags in their code. So, if you go into the code, then the view source, hit CTRL-F (WIN) or CMD-F (MAC), and type in hreflang, that’s going to show you if a competitor is doing international SEO. Look for tags with different country and language codes to find out where they’re doing business.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is the extra touch that adds context to your content for search engines. It’s a type of microdata that is used to populate rich results into the SERPs. One of the main benefits of using different website schema is taking up even more retail space on the first page of the search engine results.
When doing an SEO competitor analysis, be sure to look for how your competitors use schema markup to enhance their search results. Then, ensure you’re incorporating the same types of markup.
A few types of schema markup include:
- Sitelinks
- BreadcumbList
- FAQpage
- How-To
- Q&A
- Reviews
- And More
Mobile Friendliness
With more people browsing on mobile devices, it’s crucial to see how mobile-friendly your competitors’ sites are. Check if they use responsive design or have a dedicated mobile site.
Internal Linking
Internal links are like pathways that guide visitors through your site. Explore how your competitors use internal linking to connect related content and improve the user experience.
Some best practices to consider:
- Don’t link to off-topic pages
- Do remove broken links
- Do use descriptive anchor text
Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals focus on aspects of web page performance such as loading time, interactivity, and visual stability. See how your competitors’ sites measure up in these areas.
Specifically review:
Step 7: Set Up Monitoring Tools
Monitoring your competitors’ strategies can help you stay ahead of the curve.
Tools like Mention.com and Google Alerts can alert you to changes in your competitors’ websites and brand mentions. This allows you to learn what drives mentions so you can create those opportunities for yourself.
Find out what journalists, influencers, or bloggers are working with your competitors and use that information to create a list of media contacts to reach out to for guest posting opportunities or press mentions.
By staying informed about industry trends and competitor strategies, you can adjust your SEO strategy accordingly and maintain a competitive edge.
Step 8: Create a Plan
The final step is putting it all together to create a plan.
Armed with the insights from your competitor analysis, it’s now time to create a comprehensive SEO plan based on the framework:
- Strategy
- Timeline
- Project Plan
- Goals
- KPIs
Then you’ll also want to structure your roadmap into the following buckets:
- Technical
- Content
- Linking
- Social/PR
SEO Competitor Analysis Tools
Luckily, there are a variety of SEO competitor analysis tools available to help you conduct a thorough competitor analysis.
From SEMRush and Similar Web for competitor identification to Ahrefs and BuzzSumo for in-depth analysis, these tools can provide helpful insights into your competitors’ strategies and help you craft a winning SEO plan.
FAQs on SEO Competitor Analysis
1. How do I identify my top-performing keywords and pages?
Start by using tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console to uncover the search terms driving traffic to your site. Look for patterns and focus on terms that relate to your brand.
2. Who are my SEO competitors?
Your SEO competitors are not just those offering similar products or services, but also websites consistently outranking you. Use tools like SEMRush and Similar Web to identify these competitors and gain insights into their strategies.
3. How can I improve my technical SEO?
To improve technical SEO, focus on enhancing user experience (UX), optimizing website performance, organizing URL structure, ensuring mobile-friendliness, implementing schema markup, and optimizing internal linking. Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test to assess your site’s performance.
4. How can I analyze my competitors’ backlink profiles?
To analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles, use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to identify their most valuable backlinks. Look for opportunities to acquire similar backlinks from reputable sources in your industry.
5. What are some key metrics to track in my SEO competitor analysis?
Some key metrics to track in SEO competitor analysis include organic search traffic, keyword rankings, backlink profile quality and quantity, domain authority, and social media engagement. Tracking these metrics can help you understand your competitors’ strategies and identify areas for improvement in your own SEO efforts.
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