How to do SEO Competitor Analysis
All site owners should conduct competitive analysis, but far too many either don’t do it at all or do it haphazardly. A detailed competitive analysis can be used to create a roadmap of what you need to do to improve your site so that it is on par with your competitors.
It may also be used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your site as well as the sites of your competitors for everything from SEO to search feature victories. Using this information, you may find areas where you are weak and improve on them, as well as places where your competitors are poor and profit from their deficiencies for your site and search success.
You want to discover competitors who may rank higher than you in the SERPs but are not actual competitors, as well as sites that may not be as vital for you to outrank in comparison to others. When the only site ranking above you for specific keywords is Wikipedia or Pinterest, it is not always worth the time spent. Instead, consider additional terms on which your actual competitors are outranking you, resulting in lost traffic.
You’ll also want to make sure that your keyword research backs up your estimates about who your competitors are.
In order to uncover your genuine SEO competition in your SEO study, you must be thorough and exact. This entails performing SEO comparison and study on various keywords and noting the top ten or twenty websites that appear consistently for all of them.
One method is to enter a keyword into a free SEO analytics tool like Ubersuggest. The Content Ideas section displays a list of links and domains that ranked for the term. We used the keyword “pet grooming” in this example.
Due to the fact that Ubersuggest is a free service, the number of keywords and top-ranking domains available for competition SEO analysis may be limited. To delve deeper into SEO comparison data and obtain accurate findings, a paid SEO tool such as Ahrefs may be required. The Ahrefs competitor analysis tool is more complex and has a plethora of options that will make any aspect of competition analysis easier and faster for you.
The next step in the competitive analysis is to examine a competitor’s website and its top-performing pages. What keywords are being utilized on these pages, and how are they being used in their content?
This is known as keyword gap analysis. This is the step of your rival SEO study in which you identify keywords on a competitor’s site for which they are ranking but your site is not. The Ahrefs competitor analysis tool has a function called Content Gap that allows you to identify keywords that rank for certain domains that you define. When you find useful keywords that are also related to your business, you may construct a page dedicated to ranking these keywords. When this occurs, you have the option to direct customers to your site rather than the competition.
Checking a site’s backlink data is another component of how to do competitor analysis. A competitor backlink analysis examines which sites link back to their content and how this affects their domain rank and authority. With this data-driven technique, you can get useful knowledge and implement a comparable link-building plan to mimic their results.
A well-known company can rank for dozens of highly competitive keywords. Does this imply that you, too, must compete? No, not always. Furthermore, huge corporations have the resources to ensure that they always rank for the top keywords. Neil Patel, an SEO specialist, advises focusing your rival SEO study efforts on terms that will increase your profit or income. Using the pet shop as an example, it’s pointless to try to rank for “best dog keychains” when they only sell for $2 each.
Consider your high-profile product or service, and then concentrate your efforts on ranking for keywords that will generate you more leads for that specific product or product range. The success of a solid competitor analysis SEO campaign is primarily dependent on identifying and filling a gap or disconnect between the competition and the audience. It may be a low-competition keyword or a basic, helpful article that is highly searched for but has not yet been created by your competition.
After you’ve gathered data, you’ll need to use it to generate an SEO competitor analysis report. You can plan your SEO content strategy based on the report. To begin creating your content strategy, make a keyword list or a list of content ideas and keep it in a basic spreadsheet or use a service like Ahrefs. The Ahrefs competitor analysis tool also has the ability to add certain keywords or content ideas to a list so that you can export them in a spreadsheet and build a quick SEO competitor analysis report.
Regular keyword audits and competition analysis SEO reports should be prepared to determine whether or not your competitive analysis plan was successful. You may do this with any free SEO tool, but in Ahrefs, go to Keywords Explorer and enter the desired keyword. What is data-driven marketing if it does not include competitive data? Not many business owners can commit to learning how to do SEO competition analysis since they are overwhelmed by novel concepts and it might appear to be a difficult and complicated process.
Others may not have the time to master the complexities of creating competitor study SEO reports with software. It can, however, be as simple as seeing what your competitors are doing and then doing it better.