Do you want to rank better than your competitors?
Do you know what keywords they are ranking for and how many pages of content they have in order to do so?
If the answer is “no,” then it’s time to perform an SEO competitor analysis.
Your website may currently be number one for a certain term, but this isn’t always the case. Other websites, most of which are competitors, will figure out how to optimize their content and surpass your site over time. This is why any company must conduct SEO competitive analysis on an ongoing basis.
Many firms assume that their SEO efforts are already as good as they can get. However, this is not the case. There is always room for improvement in order to achieve better results and stay ahead of the competition. Data-driven marketing techniques like keyword competition analysis may assist you in determining methods that are effective for your rivals and incorporating them into your own online marketing strategy.
Once a website has been working on improving SEO metrics, it becomes more difficult to remain at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Competing sites with stronger content and better optimization strategies will be able to outrank your site in no time. By utilizing tools for competitive analysis, you can find new opportunities that will help you improve your own marketing efforts.
A proper competitor analysis should include everything about the website that is currently ranking above yours, including URLs, backlink profiles, content quality, and quantity of internal links, to name a few. It’s also important to note how long they have been in business, so you know whether or not it will be difficult for you to overtake them.
Let’s get started.
What is Data-Driven Marketing?
It’s about time we started talking about data. Data-driven marketing implies that every action taken in a digital marketing campaign is based on data analysis. The majority of this information relates to a company’s target audience or existing consumers.
Data-driven marketing entails using search engines to promote your site. More specific SEO techniques, such as keyword competition analysis and competitor analysis SEO, are other forms of data-driven marketing.
The ultimate objective of data-driven marketing is to ensure that any marketing campaign meets a consumer’s needs or behavior. Data points such as online reviews, website traffic, and conversion rates are collected in order to figure out what customers want from a business.
What Is SEO Competitor Analysis?
A competitive analysis, also known as an SEO competition analysis, analyzes the content and other elements of a website’s content to discover what rivals have already used keywords or links. Simply put, it’s an SEO comparison between two competing websites in the same sector or industry.
Competitor analysis SEO can include:
- SEO keyword competition analysis
- Competitor backlink analysis
- Keyword gap analysis
- Top content analysis
The SEO competitive analysis is successful and quick because you don’t have to start from scratch. You can look at what your competitors are doing and apply it to your own SEO efforts.
Most marketers make use of an SEO competitor analysis tool to make the process easier and get a lot of data without having too much effort. These tools are also beneficial in producing SEO competition reports. Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz are some examples of SEO rival analysis tools.
Marketers learn how to conduct competitor analysis SEO in order to maintain their positions and ensure that they remain competitive in their sector.
How To Do Competitor Analysis
Now that we’ve defined what SEO competitor analysis is, it’s time to look at how to do it in a few easy steps. These are the most typical stages; you may immediately start utilizing them.
For a more thorough and in-depth approach to how to do competition research, look at Ahrefs’ SEO competitor analysis template.
Identify Your True Competitors
The first stage in learning how to perform competitor analysis SEO is to identify your competitors.
When it comes to keywords, Moz states that knowing who your real rivals are is essential. Not all websites that rank higher than yours for a term are your competitors; some may even be your customers or partners.
In your SEO analysis, you must be thorough and precise in determining your real SEO competition. This entails performing SEO comparison and research on a number of keywords, noting the top 10 or 20 websites that frequently appear for all of them.
The most popular topic on your website is analyzed according to the number of times it has been linked and the domains that ranked for the keyword.
Conduct Page Analysis
The next stage is how to do competitive analysis is to look at a rival website and the site’s top-performing pages. What keywords are these sites using, and how have they been utilized in their material?
This is referred to as keyword gap analysis. This is the period of your competition’s SEO evaluation where you look for keywords on their site that they rank for, but yours does not. The Ahrefs competitor analysis tool has a special function called Content Gap that identifies keywords that rank for specific domains. Here’s what it looks like:
You may create a page dedicated to ranking these keywords once you’ve discovered relevant keywords that also apply to your company. As a result of this, you may persuade consumers to visit your site rather than the competition.
Conduct a Competitor Backlink Analysis
Another approach to perform competition analysis is to examine a website’s backlink data. A competitor backlink analysis entails examining which websites link to their material and how this affects their domain ranking and authority. With this data-driven approach, you can get some important information and use the same link-building strategy as them to replicate their results.
You may analyze these characteristics in terms of how they stack up against the competition’s backlinks:
- Number of backlinks
- Domain authority of linked sites
- Relevancy of linked content
Once you know what your rivals are doing to obtain backlinks, you’ll be able to develop a comparable approach and put it into action for your own website.
Focus on Keywords With High ROI
A successful business might rank for hundreds of top competitive keywords. Is this to say that you must compete as well? Certainly not. Furthermore, big firms have the financial wherewithal to ensure that they continue to rank for the most important terms.
According to Neil Patel, an SEO specialist, focusing your competitor’s SEO analysis on terms that will increase your earnings or revenue is a good idea.
Consider your high-profile product or service, and concentrate your efforts on ranking for keywords that will help you generate more leads for this item or line. Alternatively, create particularly distinctive and pertinent content to your consumer base, which your competitors have yet to produce.
In a comprehensive comp comparison SEO campaign, the most important aspect is finding a gap or disconnect between the competitors and consumers and filling it in. It might be a low-competition term or even simply an easy, useful post that isn’t yet dominated by your rivals.
Create and Execute a Content Plan
The next phase is to use the data to create an SEO competitor analysis report. You may build your SEO content strategy based on the report. Make a keyword list or a content ideas list and store it in a simple spreadsheet, or utilize tools like Ahrefs to get started making your content plan.
The Ahrefs competitor analysis tool also includes a built-in function for recording specified keywords or content suggestions and importing them into a list so you may export them as a spreadsheet and generate an immediate SEO competitor analysis report.
Track Your Progress
When it comes to analytics, you can’t just wait for things to happen. You need to track the success of your new or re-optimized material once it’s published. To ensure that your competitive analysis approach was effective, regular keyword inspections and competitor analysis SEO reports should be done.
You may use any free SEO tool for this, but in Ahrefs, you must enter the target keyword into Keywords Explorer. Then click on Traffic Share by Pages on the left side. This should show you the top pages and their rankings.
Cover All Bases With an SEO Competitor Analysis Template
There are many methods for performing an effective search engine optimization (SEO) competition analysis. To help you, you may utilize a free SEO competitor analysis template. Saving time and being organized with your SEO competitive analysis project is made easier with a prepared document on hand. A template also improves the accuracy and speed of an SEO competitive analysis report.
Of course, performing a comprehensive competition study takes time and resources, but the benefits are worth it. If you’d rather outsource the task, consider hiring a digital marketing firm with expertise in certain SEO services such as SEO competitor analysis, franchise SEO, and local SEO. Thrive is a trustworthy business that has years of expertise in this field.
Conclusion
What is data-driven marketing if it isn’t based on factoring in competitor information? Not all company owners are capable of learning how to perform SEO competitive analysis, as they are overwhelmed by foreign concepts, and it appears to be a difficult and time-consuming process.
It may be difficult for others to master the ins and outs of producing SEO reports via software. It might, however, simply involve comparing what your rivals are doing and then surpassing them.
