How To Do Competitor Analysis In SEO

If you wish to climb the search engine results pages (SERPs), competitive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) research can help you figure out where your competitors rank and for which keywords. 

You can utilize your competitive SEO insights to improve your rankings if you know what they’re doing well and what possibilities they’re missing out on.

When it comes to SEO competitive analysis, taking a proactive approach can assist you to understand: Where can you find keyword opportunities?, What kinds of content do visitors respond to when they search for specific keywords?, What SEO methods are working for your industry’s competitors?, and Where should you spend your time to increase conversions? 

Competitive keyword research comes into play here. It is preferable to discover free SEO competitor analysis tactics. All you need to know is right here.

Read More: SEO Tutorial For Beginners: An SEO Guide

What Is SEO Competition Analysis?

Analyzing your SEO rivals’ links, keywords, contents, and scope to automatically integrate the most effective components of these strategies into your SEO plan is what SEO competition analysis entails.

Rather than guessing which keywords to employ, writing content, or collecting backlinks, you can look at what others have done and build on their success.

Consider the following scenario: you are the owner of a store, one of three in the city. Customers are interested, but you know they’ll go to other places because you can’t buy everything in one location.

So you’re going on a trip. 

Look around at different stores to discover what popular items they have.

By supplying these products on your own, or even better, assisting your consumers in traveling less and getting more, you are assisting them in traveling less and getting more.

Figure Out Who Your SEO Competitiors Are?

The first thing to remember about your SEO competition is that they aren’t always the same as your direct business rivals.

So, What Exactly Is An SEO Rival?

Websites that rank for the organic web searches you’re competing for are your SEO competition. As a result, your SEO rivals will vary depending on the issue.

Before publishing or optimizing any pages aimed at ranking for a given keyword, it’s critical to understand who you’re competing with – and for what.

Finding search competitors you may not be aware of is the first stage in competition analysis. If separate sections of your website focus on different business areas and so on, this is a good thing. 

Your competitor analysis sheet would something look like this:

It’s not a good idea to take this first step by winging it. You may believe you know who your SEO competitors are, but the most accurate way to figure out who they are is to look at the facts.

You might consider using an enterprise SEO platform, such as Siteimprove SEO, to automate this process because you may be evaluating thousands – or perhaps 1000s – of web pages and keywords.

With competitor-surfacing indicators like “Discover competitors” and “Top-ranking pages by term,” Siteimprove SEO makes it simple to find your most relevant competitors.

Use the information gained from these capabilities to learn more about your search competition based on your tracking keywords and your best-performing sites.

You can keep an eye on your competitors — both current and potential – from here.

When Should You Perform SEO Competitor Analysis?

Your SEO performance isn’t isolated; it’s always compared to your competitors.

It’s also not static.

You can’t take your foot off the throttle when it comes to SEO, with search engine algorithm adjustments, new emerging competitors, and the other side’s digital marketers working to outshine you.

Analyzing your competitors regularly to see where you are (in comparison to them) will help you spot areas where you can improve before they have a negative influence on your rankings.

Here Are Some Crucial Steps And Events To Look For When Conducting SEO Competitor Study: 

Creating Content: This will ensure that your page provides a better and more detailed response to user search intent than your competitors. 

Read More: Step-by-Step Content Creation Guide [Writing to Publishing Content Successfully]

Content Planning: Examining what your rivals are doing effectively and then adding your unique twist is a terrific method to improve your search engine exposure.

You can also use SEO market research to figure out how much work it will take to outrank competitors for a given topic.

Following A Sharp Decline In Ranking:

• To figure out what your search competitor is doing to suddenly outrank you, as well as what is working and what isn’t in your sector right now.

• Competitive analysis might help you uncover optimization gaps if your page is stalling and not among the top search results.

• If the search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed: If another site has surpassed you for the top place in a search. 

Keyword Competitive Analysis: An Overview

The reason why I started with the keyword research before how to do competitor analysis in SEO, it is a very important phase to start before we understand the competitor analysis in SEO. 

A keyword competition study thoroughly examines how two or more websites compare in terms of important SEO parameters.

Naturally, how the sites use specific “money” and lengthy keywords is crucial in this type of analysis. Finally, a keyword competition study gives you a full picture of the market, including its strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities.

Identifying The Different Types Of Keywords

If you’re experienced with SEO, you’re already aware of certain typical search phrases.

Long-tail keywords, for example, are related to significantly less popular but much more detailed searches than “money” keywords.

It’s helpful to think about these keyword kinds in terms of the purpose that drives these searches if you want to optimize your SEO strategy and receive more value from your efforts.

After all, if you try to rank for essential keywords with material that focuses on the wrong search intent, your efforts will be in vain.

Take the time to define the search intent for every keyword as you choose which to target.

In that manner, low-intent searches will take clients to information about your company and items, while high-intent searches will send them to retail sites or an e-commerce site.

You’ll need a few important pieces of information to match terms to the proper search intent.

You must map out your customer’s journey and choose which keywords should be used. 

Read More: How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Business?

Competitive Keyword Research

Create a file that charts the major stages of your client’s journey to make this part of the process go faster.

The stages for most firms include attention, consideration, conversion, and retention.

After that, do some thinking and consider the search terms that a typical consumer would use at each phase.

Prospects with more general queries, such as ultimate guides, and analysis of content with a broad breadth during the awareness stage. Prospects have more precise inquiries about your product during the consideration stage, such as how it compares to rivals.

Like you can see this image:

High-intent searches with phrases like “purchase” or “pricing” are common during the conversion stage.

In many circumstances, your understanding of your consumers’ cognitive processes can lead to a fantastic list of ideas. 

Tools, on the other hand, can be used to enhance brainstorming sessions.

Read More: 11 Best Keyword Research Tools In 2022

How To Do Competitor Analysis In SEO

Concentrate On Search Intent Rather Search Volume

Simply ranking high for a keyword with a high search volume does not guarantee a significant boost in search competitor traffic. Instead, focusing on meeting search intent (also known as user intent) is recommended.

When a consumer searches, search intent is the primary goal they have in mind.

This search could be informational, such as “Woodford Reserve distillery opening hours,” transactional, such as “buy 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle,” or navigational, such as searching for “Washington Post” rather than typing the URL into the menu bar.

Regardless of the type of search your user is doing, your web pages must provide high-quality, optimized information that satisfies their search intent.

Google favors websites that provide a useful and positive user experience, which includes increasing search results that satisfy users’ search needs.

As a result, if you can better and more thoroughly answer the user’s search intent than your search competitors, your content is likely to be granted a ranking boost.

And there’s a strong incentive to do so: nearly one out of every ten searches leads the user to return to the search results page to choose a different result.

These are the users whose search query you wish to address more thoroughly through content optimization.

For example, while creating – or optimizing – your material to make it better suitable for to user search intent, you might consider:

• Creating useful material that is tailored to the user’s search intent rather than merely the terms they input.

• Include more interesting content types, such as a step-by-step tutorial, infographic, or video, on your website.

• Use Google’s “People Also Ask” tool to look for lacking content types and replies.

• improving the quality of their current content.

Compare Your SEO Rankings With Your Competitors

After that, spend some time examining your target keywords to see who your direct rivals are in search. Many previously unknown competitors will most likely be ascending the SERPs for your primary keyword goals.

Consider the following types of competitors:

1. Direct Competitors: These are companies you are likely aware of who offer identical services/products/software to you.

Assume you own a kitchen supply store that sells a specific sort of cooking appliance.

When you look for that gadget on a search engine like Google, you’ll very certainly find other sellers in the results.

2. Competitors That Aren’t Direct Competitors, Such As Content Creators And Publishers:

These are brands or websites that are outranking you but aren’t directly competing with you.

• If your competitor offers a list of the top ten ancient landmarks in your state, you might add a top 50 best sites list to your product.

• Establish yourself as a more reliable and authoritative source of knowledge.

Make sure the reader understands if you’re an expert in your subject!

Consider having one of your subject matter experts create a blog post with helpful hints. 

Remember that focusing on the user’s search intent rather than just the search counts for the competitor’s keywords you’re targeting will bring more relevant traffic to the website, help you climb the search results, and generate more qualified leads. 

Returning to the cooking device example, you may see articles in the SERPs that reference that type of device on culinary blogs or online news sites.

When conducting a competitive analysis, these indirect competitors are nevertheless worth examining.

You need to know where your rivals are outranking you in the SERPs and what type of content is performing well for the keywords you’re pursuing.

While it’s a good idea to concentrate on organizations you already understand are your competitors, make phrases the foundation of your research.

You’ll be able to see all of the businesses, publishers, and blogs that are competing with your material. That way, you’ll have a better idea of what kind of content is ranking for those keywords.

You’ll also want to look for keywords that are relevant to your business. It’s critical to identify whether your website needs to be improved or if fresh material is required for SEO by looking up keywords that your rivals rank higher for.

Your site may have performance glitches, such as poor page load times or broken links, that are obstructing your search engine rankings. Alternatively, you will not have enough conversion-optimized high-quality content.

Google’s algorithm is updated regularly. Pages that rank on page one for a keyword one month may fall to page two or worse the following month.

As a result, keeping track of page rankings and changing material as needed should be an important component of any material and SEO strategy.

It may be time to generate new content that meets your clients’ wants if your target keywords are placed too far outside the striking distance.

Conductor’s Content Guidance can assist you in improving the quality of your content.

Examine your competitors’ best-performing content when generating new material.

Then, figure out how you can improve it considerably, whether it’s by leveraging fresher data to better inform a piece of content, including visuals to increase engagement, or doing a deeper dive on the issue that incorporates additional industry knowledge or original research. 

Then, to a comparable audience as your competitors, market your fresh material.

Keep An Eye On Ranking Keywords

These SEO competitive analysis actions are only the start, and as we all know, SEO is a long-term game. Because rankings fluctuate over time, it’s critical to keep track of your own – as well as your search competition’s – ranks for your chosen keywords.

Manual monitoring, on the other hand, isn’t a wise use of resources when there are hundreds or thousands of keywords to keep track of.

Instead, use an automatic keyword monitoring tool to stay on top of the current search engine rankings. You’ll be able to identify and respond promptly to swings in website rankings if you use automatic monitoring regularly.

Simultaneously, you’ll be able to track the effectiveness of your optimization efforts.

Analyzing The Backlinks Of Your Competitors

While content is still a big ranking factor, obtaining high-quality, trustworthy backlinks is an essential element of a successful SEO plan.

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are external links that ‘point’ to your website.

Backlinks are used by search engines to determine how reliable a site is; the more significant and trusted your site is, the better it’s ranking in search results will be, and the more organic search it will receive.

Research shows that 65% of web pages have none at all. Backlinks are still one of Google’s top-ranking factors.

That means you’ll have a hard time outranking your competitors if they have a larger number of backlinks. It’s important to strengthen your backlink profile.

As a result, improving your backlink profile should be your ultimate goal for your website.

Researching your competitors’ existing backlinks will help you streamline this procedure and fine-tune your backlink strategy.

SEO link gap analysis is a term that is used to describe this process.

Siteimprove SEO’s “Backlinks” function makes conducting a backlinks analysis a lot easier.

Use it to figure out which high-quality, industry-related websites are providing backlinks to your competition, and then devise a successful formula for closing the gap.

 It’s also worth noting that not all hyperlinks are created equal. Bad backlinks can hurt your SEO performance, therefore it’s critical to keep them to a minimum. 

Read More: Anchor Text: An Ultimate Guide About Building Backlinks

Keep A Track Of Your Progress

After you’ve acquired all of the necessary data, you may create a SEO competitor analysis report. The next stage is to create an SEO strategy based on the findings of this study.

To begin, make and keep a list of internal concepts or keywords.

After that, you must develop a utilization strategy and, when needed, link to external websites.

You need to know if your objective is paying off once you’ve implemented your business plan, produced a new one, and are satisfied with the old one.

Using SEO competitive analysis tools like Databox, you can regularly conduct keyword research and create precise SEO competitor analysis reports. You can investigate any metrics you believe are significant, but page traffic, Hubspot rankings, and other metrics are among them. 

SEO Competitive Analysis Tools

So, you have learned how to perform a competitor analysis in SEO. Now, it’s time you learn about some SEO competitive analysis tools that are going to help you in the process of competition analysis:

Ahrefs

One of my favourite and best tools for competitive analysis is because it provides a detailed analysis of your competitors. It can provide you with a list of high ranking keywords of your competitors’ websites. 

Even Nikola Baldikov says-

“My best tool for competitive analysis is Ahrefs because it gives you the ability to research your competitors by accessing their backlinks, how much organic traffic they receive, which are their top pages for links, or most engaging content”

SEMrush

Ratynski Digital‘s Alex Ratynski says- 

“Semrush just has such a large number of features (many of which people don’t even know about) and they contain a wealth of information that’s extremely useful for competitive analysis.

SEMrush has lots of features for competitive analysis which can help you dominate your competitors and market. 

Conclusion

A competitor study for SEO can be broken down into multiple parts. The first step is to determine the keywords we want to rank for and who our competitors are ranking for. The size of each website depending on the number of articles indexed in Google is the next step in a competitive study.

This is done by using the “site:” command, followed by the domain (without spaces).

Additional metrics can be obtained by using ahrefs and SEMrush, two different SEO analysis tools. From Ahrefs, we get information on the amount and quality of backlinks to a competitor’s website.

All of this data, when combined, aids in enhancing the success of our website in comparison to competitors. 

For more marketing tips and services, you can schedule a free-of-cost 30-Minute Strategy session with our experts. In this call, our experts would discuss your business and provide you with the free strategies that you can use to boost your sales and revenue.