If you’re launching a new site, finding out who your competitors are
and understanding what they’re doing online is a must. By knowing what
your rivals are doing in the
search engine optimisation (SEO)
and social media space, you’ll not only get a better sense of their
online marketing strategy and what’s working for them, but also where
you stand and how much work you need to do to outrank them.
This is something that you can achieve with proper SEO competitive
analysis which can help shed light on your competitors’ techniques or
the platforms where they are successfully attracting customers in your
niche.
There are hundreds of articles and resources on how to optimise a
site, what SEO mistakes to avoid and so on, but not so many on
competitive analysis.
Why? Because 1) It’s not as “sexy” as a topic like “the
Greggs logo being hijacked” and 2) It’s a lot like flossing – everyone agrees it’s important but few do it.
However,
industry experts agree
that competitive analysis is a critical part of search marketing
success, so important that it is linked to higher conversions meaning
more sales.
Again,
why? Because you’ll get extremely valuable information and insights on your competitors’…
- Links: Find out where your rivals have backlinks and you don’t.
- Content: Discover how they are reaching your audience through content.
- Site structure: Check how your competitors have structured their site, and look at how search crawlers see their sites as compared to yours.
Ok, let’s dive in and see how you can perform your own competitive SEO analysis.
Four simple steps to perform a SEO competitor analysis
1. Identify your competitors
This is very helpful if you’re just starting out with a new website
and want to find out who you’re competing against. This list of
competitors doesn’t just include the businesses that offer the same
products or services as you but any site that competes with you in
search results for your target keywords.
So what you need to do is to check who ranks for your keywords in search engines. Here’s how…
First,
do a keyword research,
if you haven’t already, and prepare a list of your most powerful
keywords and keyword variations that have the potential to send you
targeted visitors.
Next, check which sites are ranking well for each of your top
keywords. A simple yet not so time-efficient way to find your online
competitors is to go to Google and run a search for your top keywords.
For example, say you’re selling second hand books. A quick search on
Google will show you the top sites competing for the keyword “buy second
hand books”:
You can also use a tool like
SEMrush to get your list of competitors for each keyword:
An additional way to find competitors is to
sign up for Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your keywords, which may unearth other potential competitors.
Next, create spreadsheets with your top keywords and your competitors
for each keyword. This list will ultimately include relevant keywords
that you would like to rank for in search engines and your competitors’
position in search engine results pages (SERPs). As you go through this
process, you’ll likely come across other keywords that your competitors
are using which you might want to add to your list.
Sometimes you may get the sites of big brands like Amazon, especially
if you’re targeting short and generic keywords like “buy books online”.
Either go with more specific keywords or ignore these big brands for
now because you’re just starting out and can’t compete with an
established brand with a great reputation, years of experience and
practice, and a huge budget.
In many cases you will see some sites appear in more than a list.
They may be the real competitors as their appearance in different lists
shows that they are also targeting these keywords; the same users you
want and same niche you have. Now you have your list of real
competitors.
2. Analyse their links
In this step you will get some insights into how your competitors are building their backlinks, including:
- How many links they have
- Which sites they’re coming from
- Which of their web pages are receiving most links
- What types of anchor text they’re using
Running a backlink analysis on your competitors helps you understand
their link profile and why they’re ranking, as well as their strategies
to acquire links. Plus, it gives you a tidy list of high opportunity
links (if they can, why not you?).
A great tool to use in this part of your competitive analysis is
Moz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE).
Ok, let’s assume that you are the owner of usedbooksearch.co.uk. Go the OSE and type your website address into the search bar:
Click on “Compare Pages” under the search box and add your top competitors:
Click “Compare” and you’ll be taken to the results of the comparison:
The default tab is “Compare Link Metrics” which shows you great insights into your competitors’:
- Total Links – The total number of links pointing to
their sites, including internal links (links between your own pages)
and external links (coming from other sites)
- Total External Links – The total number of links from other websites.
- Followed Linking Root Domains – This shows you how many unique websites (“linking root domains”) have links that Google counts for a site (follow links).
Of course, there are many other stats and information listed on this page, but these ones are the most important for this step.
3. Check their on-page SEO strategy
Analyse your competitors’ sites in detail to see how they’re
optimising their web pages. Pay extra attention to the following
elements:
- Title tags
- URLs structure
- Meta descriptions
- Header tags (H1, H2, H3 etc)
- Keyword positioning in content
- Content relevancy with targeted keywords
If you’re unfamiliar with some of these terms, before you continue make sure you read this guide on
on-site SEO basics.
Two good tools you can use to quickly check page optimisation are
SEOchat’s Page Comparison tool and
Web page SEO analysis tool.
Here is some of the information that SEOchat’s comparison tool shows you:
Make sure you also take a closer look at their copy – pay attention
to titles, calls-to-action, unique selling points, sign-up forms, the
structure of the page etc. This can help you get a better understanding
of how they’re optimising their pages but also how they’re enticing
visitors to act.
4. Scan their social accounts and monitor mentions
A few months ago, the web was buzzing on the topic of
social media signals and brand mentions
and their importance in assessing a site’s authority. While it isn’t
the case that social media influences SEO directly, being active on
social media is critical and it can drive heaps of traffic to your site.
So in this step you might want to check and see if your competitors
are actively using social media. Do they have a Wikipedia page? How do
they rank for their own brand name and do their social profiles show up
in the top search results? Have they even secured their brand across
social networks? Do they distribute online video?
Run a simple search on Google, Facebook, Twitter for their brand name or you can use tools like
Topsy and
Socialmention to find out how active your competitors are on social media.
How to beat the competition
The only way you can beat your competitors is by gathering as much
information as you can about them. Find out what they’re doing right and
how they’re attracting customers, and then use this valuable
information to overtake them.
When you’ve completed your SEO competitor analysis:
- Update your list of top competitors
- Update your list of keywords
- Use those promising new keywords you’ve discovered to create new pages on your site
Finally, don’t forget to revisit your SEO competitive analysis once
every couple of months so you’re always up-to-date with what your
competition is up to.
