How To Do SEO Competitor Analysis That Help You Stack Up Against Competitors?

Introduction

Don't let your competitors steal the show. With comprehensive competitor analysis, you can understand the strengths and weaknesses of their SEO strategies and refine your own approach to gain a competitive edge.

In this article, we will walk you through the essential steps of competitor analysis and how to use it to dominate the SERPs.

What is competitor analysis?

In the SEO context, competitor analysis means studying your competitors’ backlinking, content, and keyword strategies. Thinkof it as a spy mission — you go in and observe your rivals, uncover their secrets, identify their weaknesses, and seize opportunities to outmaneuver themand emerge victorious in the SEO battlefield.

Why should you perform competitor analysis?

When you understand what your competitors are doing right and wrong, you can optimize your SEO strategy for better rankings and organic traffic.

Do note that it’s not a one-time task. Ideally, you should do it quarterly or at least twice a year, depending on your industry. When you make it a habit to regularly analyze competitors, you can:

·       Identify content trends and keyword opportunities

·       Understand which SEO strategies are driving competitor success

·       Determine where to focus your resources for better conversions

How to do an SEO competitive analysis?

There are six easy ways to learn from your competitors:

1. Identify your SEO competitors.

Firstly, know who your rivals are. Make a list of all the competitors you are familiar with, direct and indirect. You canalso use Semrush’s Organic Research tool to identify competing websites.

·       Director competitors are those who offer similar products and services. Say you are a home appliance store selling a type of vacuum cleaner. When you look up ‘vacuum cleaners’ in Google, you will find other stores selling that on the search results page. Those are the direct competitors ofyour business.

·       Indirect competitors are websites and brands you are competing with for SERP rankings even though they don’t sell a similar service orproduct. They can be news sources, encyclopedias, individual bloggers, social media sites, or content creation hubs like TikTok and YouTube.

Once you know your competitors, look up high-value keywords to see what comes up in the SERPs. Are some indirect competitors outranking you? This could indicate that you don’t focus enough on long-tail keywords, or you have a weak backlink profile and/or poor on-pageoptimization.

Are you competing with large enterprises and massive brands that can be difficult to outrank? This might mean that you may need to shift your focus to nichekeywords or long-tail queries. After all, it’s often unrealistic to go against Amazon for high-search keywords.

Image Reference from https://exposureninja.com/blog/seo-competitor-analysis/

Analyze the sources of their traffic

The next step is to learn their SEO strategy and identify their sources of traffic. Focus on the following:

·       Top-performing content

Use a keyword research platform combined with Google to identify your competitor’s best-ranking pages and articles. This will help you identify target keywords and avoid overly competitive terms that may not be worth pursuing at this time.

·       Content marketing strategies

What types of content do they tend to focus on? What are their distribution strategies? Examine their content format, too. Do they often use text or dothey prefer infographics and videos? By using a different format for your content, you can differentiate yourself from the competition and improve your chances of making high-quality content that ranks better on SERPs.  

It also makes sense to analyze your competitors' content marketing strategies, including quantity and quality. This will help you assess the level of content required to rank well in your niche, or you can consult a professional content marketing agency India.

·       Content distribution strategy

Find out how your competitors distribute and promote their content. Identify which individuals or teams in their company are responsible for their contentstrategy. Many marketers are active on social media, so you can analyze their social media profiles to understand their approach and competitive stance, oryou can consult an experienced social media marketing agency in India.

Find and cover content gaps

A keyword gap is a list of keywords that your competitors rank for but you don't. These keywords represent opportunitiesto increase your website's traffic. Can you imagine what a good SEO company in India can boost you achieve by targeting them? Semrush has a KeywordGap Tool, which is used by most SEO agencies. You can also use it to identify these potentially high-performing words and phrases.

Look for gaps in backlinks

In this step, find out how your competitors get backlinks. Do they buy them? Do they collaborate with experts? Do theyguest-post? Use this information to create content that can attract similar high-quality backlinks.

As you analyze your competitors' backlink acquisition tactics, you will likely be able to see gaps in their strategy. This will help you figure out ways toget even better-quality links from authoritative sites that will help boost your rankings.

Identify the broken pages of the competitors

Broken pages with backlinks are those that no longer exist or are inaccessible but still have other websites linking to them. The page may have been deleted orrelocated, or perhaps technical issues with the server hosting the page might prevent it from loading. Typos or changes in the page's URL structure can also cause broken links.

Use backlink checker tools to analyze a competitor’s backlink profile and identify broken links pointing to their website. Once you've found a broken page, createa new piece of content that addresses the same topic or provides a similar solution. Contact the owner or webmaster of the website with the broken link, explain that the page is broken, and offer your new content as a replacement. If they agree, you've successfully acquired a valuable backlink from an authoritative website.

Examine the Core Web Vitals of your closest competitors

SEMRush’s SiteAudit can help you examine a competitor’s website health. The point is to:

·       Assess the website's overall quality and search engine ranking capabilities

·       Identify high-performing pages to understand what drives traffic

·       Compare your technical SEO efforts with the competition. This includes optimizing for user experience and search engine visibility.

Check out the terms that your competitors are using for sponsored search

Take the time to learn the new keywords your competitors are targeting so you can target them as well. You can use this Organic Research tool from SEMRush to identify the new organic keywords they’re ranking for.

Likewise, identify the keywords your competitors are using for paid advertising. Analyze these keywords to decide if it’s worthwhile to create new content to target them.

Conclusion

SEO competitor analysis is crucial to boosting your organic traffic and rankings. However, it’s a continuous and thorough process that requires the right tools. When done correctly, it can provide your SEO efforts a competitive advantage and bring more insights into your business.

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