Competitive research is a natural first step when launching or revamping your lead generation campaigns that focus heavily on SEO.
Whether building a content marketing strategy for an enterprise e-commerce company or a hyperlocal lead gen strategy for a local service-based business, having insights into the competition’s online presence will help guide your strategy.
Using advanced tools and research, our team quickly discovers what works in your industry based on what works for competitors and what does not.
Often, this informs us of where we should allocate resources, whether it’s building up a content network or focusing sharply on local advertising and Google Business Profile.
Keyword competitor research is also invaluable for managing the core aspects of your business, whether it’s developing future products and services or developing a stronger unique selling proposition (USP) that sticks out.
SEO competitive analysis is not just some gimmicky tactic to help you rank for qualified keywords. Still, it can help you learn more about essential aspects of your business.
The Importance of SEO Competitive Analysis
Analyzing your competitors’ websites and overall online presence is the ideal way to figure out tactics that work and gain valuable insight into how to outrank them.
From a broad overview, this analysis can help you discover valuable insights, such as:
- How competitors price their products
- What channels they use to market their products
- What customer segments and audiences they target
- Any promotions or events they use to spread awareness
- Influencers or partners they use to gain views
- How many reviews they have
Of course, for many businesses, organic search is still their number one channel of brand awareness and revenue.
By performing SEO competitor research, you can discover many key strategies, including:
- Important keyword trends
- Organic search optimization tactics
- Potential backlinks
- Any blind spots in your SEO strategy
Again, every industry and business is different. By first analyzing what competitors are doing and comparing it to past success we have had with similar businesses in your industry, we can develop a personalized strategy that will maximize the results of all online marketing campaigns.
When Should You Conduct SEO Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is an important aspect of ongoing SEO that can be done at virtually any stage of an engagement.
We most often conduct SEO competitive analysis whenever we:
- Start a new campaign
- Seek to identify new topics
- Perform semi-annual keyword gap analysis
- Notice a sudden drop in qualified keyword rankings
- Pivot to a new channel, service, or product
- Help a business open a new location
To begin, it’s important to understand the strategies and tools that are most likely to help you learn more about your competitors.
5 Simple Tips to Conduct SEO Competitive Analysis
Ready to get started with SEO competitive analysis? Here are five crucial steps that the team at ContentMender takes when undergoing a competitive analysis campaign.
1. Identify Potential SEO Competitors
First, you must identify potential SEO competitors to research them properly. While you may have some ideas of your top competitors based on your location or top brands in your industry, if you service customers nationally through e-commerce or multiple service locations, there are bound to be dozens of competitors you are unaware of.
Here is where the power of digital tools comes in. Using tools like GA4, SEMrush, Ahrefs, some simple Google and ChatGPT searches, you can identify competitors based on which ones are ranking for the same keywords or have similar backlinks.
For example, SEMrush provides a list of organic search competitors based on several metrics, such as shared keywords and proprietary competition analysis.
2. Brainstorm Keywords & Keyword Research
One of the best ways to discover your direct competition is to determine who ranks for the keywords you would like to target.
Once you have this knowledge, you can create a strategy for how to overtake their rankings.
Take note—don’t chase vanity keywords here. Many agencies gloat about improving keyword rankings, but some are useless to focus on and just create noise.
We have a more comprehensive overview of keyword research, but here’s an overview of what you want to look for to get the most out of your research.
Brainstorm keywords you would like to rank for and determine which are realistic. These will often be low-to-medium in difficulty (read – low volume), but feel free to leave in more competitive keywords to see how your website compares to the types of websites that are ranking for difficult words.
Many SEOs refuse to target keywords that have, say, a search volume of 50 or less per month. However, one must consider the value of a customer, especially the lifetime value of repeat customers. For example, if you are marketing business consulting that’s worth $2500 for the first session with the possibility of a repeat buy, targeting a keyword with a search volume of 10 would be wise.
Be sure to add related keywords discovered from keyword tools like our go-to, SEMrush.
Another important avenue is to determine which keywords you are already ranking for, preferably on pages 2-5. These are generally the terms for which you can move higher. Also, make sure to research the competitors that are outranking you for those terms.
These keywords won’t necessarily be your target keywords, but they are the seed keywords to use for competitive research.
If you don’t have access to SEO tools, you can manually search the keywords and take note of the websites that are on the first few organic search result pages. There are a few tools that will help expedite this process. SEMrush is excellent for this, as they have tools that will tell you who is ranking for the given keywords, provide related keyword recommendations, and also competitor suggestions based on your current website rankings.
And, also ensure to check who is getting all the focus in ChatGPT searches. That says much about their authority and overall SEO presence.
3. Brainstorm Competitors & Determine Validity
Now that you have competitors based on keywords and current rankings, you should add any industry competitors that you think could be valuable additions to your list.
Validate whether these competitors are SEO competitors by checking their keyword positions and search traffic. If they outrank your website, but not by an excessive amount, they are considered your online competitors.
Websites ranking far better than yours or pulling in a lot more traffic than your website are not your direct competitors – yet.
The purpose of your SEO competitor analysis should be to gain ideas on improving your SEO strategy. The strategies of major players are good to know, but their SEO won’t be as directly applicable to your current situation.
4. Evaluate & Compare
Now that you have your list of competitors, you can evaluate them and compare their stats to your website’s stats.
Competitor Keywords & Content
Not every ranking keyword is the result of intentional focus, but knowing which keywords your competitors are ranking for gives you a good idea.
Most keyword tools will tell you which page is ranking for each keyword, but you will want to get more in-depth. You can then use a tool, such as Moz’s On-Page Grader tool, manually read through their site, or complete a site search for those keywords to determine the type of content they are creating in that vertical that helped them to rank.
Evaluate your competitor’s keywords for the:
- Type of keywords (long-tail or short-tail)
- Relevance to the industry
- How many are ranking, and at what position on the search engine results page
- What the search volume is for those keywords
Do your competitors have a universe of pages built around the keywords they are ranking for or one comprehensive page?
Are they targeting general, high-volume keywords or specific, long-tail terms? Do they keep their content fresh, like with frequent blogs and updates, or is a detailed evergreen page the cornerstone of their website?
These are the types of questions you want to be able to answer.
Page-Level SEO Comparison
Additional factors aid in ranking besides content-based analysis. It’s important to learn about your competitors’ page-level strategies.
You’ll want to get a qualitative account of the pages that are ranking for the chosen keyword. This includes page authority, the number of external links, the quality of said links, and their anchor text. Check if they use headers properly and if the keywords are in their headers. The Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool is amazing for this purpose.
Pay attention to your competitors’ backlink profiles. They can tell you more than how your competitors managed to raise their own ranking and what websites to target to build links back to your website. You’re basically searching for potential backlink targets to add to your link-building strategy.
5. Additional SEO Competitor Analysis Factors
Check out the age of the website’s domain and the domain authority. Websites that are older and better established often rank better. There is not much you can do to compete with that directly, but it is important to know if it could be a factor in their success.
Knowing the domain authority can let you know if the overall website had an effect on the individual page’s ranking or if it was purely page-level optimization. Keywords that low domain authority websites rank for are often easier targets.
Social media plays a huge role in the popularity of websites. If you find a website that isn’t ranking particularly well for anything but is still pulling in traffic, social media may be playing a major role. It is important to look into how much your competitors rely on social media because that can present an opportunity for you to gain visibility or even professional relationships.
Time to Implement Your SEO Strategy
You asked yourself, “What are they doing?”
Now answer, “Can I do it better?”
What you learned from your investigation should tell you how your competitors approach SEO, what worked for them, and what they are missing.
Use that to tell you what you are missing and what you can do better than what they are doing.
Ranking high in the SERPs for keywords that will bring in qualified traffic is not the only goal of SEO. The key to all of this is boosting revenue for your business, and that often involves leveraging your competitor’s strategies against the,
If you pay attention to the details, you can find more than meets the eye and begin to reverse engineer your way to the top with an SEO strategy that can take down the toughest competition.
FAQs
What is SEO competitive analysis?
SEO competitive analysis is the process of researching and analyzing your competitors’ websites, keywords, backlinks, and marketing strategies to identify opportunities to improve your own search engine rankings and online presence.
Why is competitive research important when launching or revamping a website?
Competitive research helps you understand what strategies work in your industry, where to allocate resources, and how to position yourself effectively. It informs decisions on content creation, SEO, advertising, and keyword targeting.
What tools are used for SEO competitor research?
Common tools include Google Analytics 4 (GA4), SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Moz. These platforms provide insights into competitor rankings, backlinks, search volume, and keyword performance.