Off-page SEO is crucial to the viability of your business. A comprehensive SEO strategy will greatly improve your likelihood of being ranked highly on a search engine results page, which means more traffic to your website, which means more opportunities for you to sell the products or services you are offering. Many business owners struggle on where exactly to start when it comes to improving their current SEO strategy, especially if they feel like they are already doing everything they can. The answer is simple If you want to improve your SEO strategy, you should always begin with a competitor analysis, which can give you valuable insights on how exactly you can up your SEO efforts.
Why Is A Competitor Analysis Important?
Regardless of what type of business you run, you need to know what your competitors are up to. What products or services are they offering? What are their prices? How many customers do they have? It is no different when it comes to SEO.
In order to remain competitive, you must be aware of your competitors’ SEO strategies and how much effort they are putting into them. A competitor analysis will give you the insights needed to know how to improve your own strategy and outdo your competitors. It will also show you where you are outperforming your competitors in SEO, allowing you to know exactly where your competitive edge is so you can hold onto it. Conducting a competitor analysis is mandatory if you want your SEO strategy to be as effective as possible.
How to Do a Competitor Analysis in SEO
Now you’re probably wondering how to actually go about conducting an SEO competitor analysis. Luckily, the process can be broken up into five key steps.
- Identify your competitors.
- Analyze their SEO strategy.
- Analyze their keywords.
- Analyze their on-page optimization.
- Analyze their backlinks.
Take the information you learn from these steps and compare it to the same data for your own business. You will see how you stack up when compared to your competitors, and how you can improve to overtake them in SEO efforts. As for the best tools to use to go about completing these steps, don’t worry, we’ll get to that soon.
Identifying Competitors
In order to conduct a competitor analysis, you’ll need to know exactly who your competitors are. This can sometimes be easier said than done. Here are a few helpful tips for identifying them.
- Check local business directories.
- Pay attention to advertising.
- Conduct customer surveys.
- Perform a Google search for the products/services you offer.
- Use an SEO tool such as Semrush
The importance of accurately identifying your competitors cannot be overstated. Leaving one out of your analysis could potentially leave you with a gaping hole in your SEO strategy.
SEO Competitor Analysis Metrics
The valuable insights you gain will be gleaned from certain metrics provided by your competitor analysis. Careful attention should be paid to all of these to ensure that you have a complete picture of the competitive landscape in your industry.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score which rates a site’s relevance when it comes to a specific subject area or industry. Search engines give a lot of weight to domain authority when ranking sites within search results. If a competitor has a much higher domain authority than you do, they will most likely rank much higher than you in search results performed by potential customers.
Find Link Building Gaps
Link building is the practice of increasing the number and quality of inbound links to your website. The more high-quality external sites you have linking to your own, the higher you will rank in search engine results. A competitor analysis will reveal the domains that are linking to your competitors but not to you. You can then work on getting these external sites to link to your site, evening the playing field between you and your competitors.
Site Traffic
Site traffic is the number of visitors a website is receiving. A competitor analysis will show you exactly how much traffic your site and those of your competitors are experiencing. If a competitor’s level of traffic is much higher than your own, it means that they are outperforming you in SEO and you should make efforts to close this gap. On the other hand, if your site is the one with higher traffic, it does not mean you can take it easy. You should continually evaluate your SEO strategy to ensure you remain on top.
Compare Keywords
Perhaps the most useful information from a competitor analysis is the keyword comparison. This will show you which keywords your competitors are using which you are not. Sometimes, these will be keywords that never even occurred to you. You should begin utilizing these keywords in your content to take away any advantage your competitor has over you. Inversely, you will also see which keywords you are using which your competitors are not. You should continue to use these keywords, as they present an advantage you have over your competitors.
SEO Competitor Analysis Tools
There are a number of tools which can be extremely helpful when it comes to conducting a competitor analysis and it can be difficult to know which ones you should use. One of our top recommendations is Semrush. This tool can be used for keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, backlink tracking, and comprehensive online visibility insights, making it almost like a one-stop-shop for SEO. In addition to Semrush there is:
- Sparktoro
- Moz
- Ahrefs
- Many more!
It can be helpful to play with a few competitor analysis tools to find the one that is right for you. At the end of the day, the best competitor analysis tool is the one that you are actually going to use because you like its layout, user experience, or any other feature that is important to you.
