What Is SEO Competitive Analysis?
SEO competitive analysis is the process of examining and evaluating the strategies, tactics, and performance of your competitors in the field of search engine optimisation (SEO). It involves conducting research and analysis to understand your competitors’ SEO efforts, what keywords they are targeting, the quality and quantity of their backlinks, their on-page optimisation techniques, and other relevant factors.
SEO competitive analysis’s goal is to gain valuable insights that can inform and improve your SEO strategy. By understanding what your competitors are doing well and where they are not, you can identify opportunities to enhance your website’s visibility, attract more organic traffic, and outrank your competition in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Competition is inherent in SEO as businesses worldwide aim for top rankings on search engines like Google and Bing to drive website traffic. Despite the challenge of global competition, understanding your rivals and utilising digital marketing tools allows for the development of effective SEO strategies gives you an edge in the competitive landscape.
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The Importance Of Analysing Your Competition
Analysing your competition is essential when it comes to SEO. With the increasing number of businesses vying for online visibility, it is crucial to have a solid SEO strategy in place. SEO competitive analysis allows you to look for areas of improvement in your SEO strategies and capitalise on your competitors’ weaknesses.
Let us see how you can rank higher than your competitors, starting with keyword competition. Below are some practical tips to help you analyse your competition effectively:
6 Tips For Conducting SEO Competitive Analysis
6 Tips For Conducting
SEO Competitive Analysis
Identify Your Competitors 
Analyse Your Competitors' Content Page By Page 
Assess Your Competitors' Keywords 
Find Broken Pages 
Review Backlinks 
Analyse Your On-Page SEO
1. Identify Your Competitors
As Sun Tzu said, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” This statement refers to winning wars, but you can apply this idea to your SEO strategy. After all, knowing your enemy is half the battle won. Once you understand the competition, you can enhance your SEO strategies based on your findings.
Research your industry and take a look at your main competitors. Examine each one to see why they are ranking higher than you.
Remember, your competitors are those who rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). You need to compete with them if you want to boost your search rankings and improve your online presence. Below are some types of competitors that you may face:
- Established Brands
- They have a long history of success and may have a wide range of products or services. Competing against established brands can be challenging, as they have already built trust and loyalty among customers.
- Game Changers
- These companies are new to the market but are quickly gaining traction. They are often innovative and disrupt the status quo.
- Niche Brands
- They focus on specific market segments or customer groups. Niche brands may not have the same scale or market reach as established brands, but they can develop a loyal customer base within their niche.
Understand the different types of competitors you face to develop a competitive strategy that suits your specific situation.
There are multiple ways that you can identify your competitors, they include:
- Finding Out From Customers
- Your clients may know about your direct competitors better than you do because they often decide which is better between your product and your competitors. The best way to do this is to conduct a survey and ask your customers about their top go-to brands, and their answers can help you discover who your competitors are.
- Checking Online Communities
- With the rise of social media and forums, people are sharing valuable information that can help one another, especially in buying decisions. You can find your potential customers on Facebook, Quora, or Reddit. Most people share their personal experiences about a product or service on these platforms to weigh the pros and cons and make the right decision for their budget and needs.
- Analysing Google’s SERPs
- Given that 85.53% of all global searches take place on Google, you can easily guarantee that most of your potential customers use this search engine to research related to the products or services you offer. Pay attention to the search intent behind keywords and explore related searches to align your content with user expectations. This analysis enables you to improve your visibility, attract more organic traffic, and stay ahead of competitors in the Google search ecosystem.
2. Analyse Your Competitors’ Content Page By Page
Once you have identified your competitors, go to their websites and analyse their content page by page. This process involves reading a lot to gain insights into their content strategy, identify gaps or opportunities, and improve your content approach.
Look for the types of content they are producing, the topics they cover, and the quality of their content. Pay attention to factors such as the length of their articles, the use of multimedia (images, videos), and the engagement level of their audience (comments, shares).
Consider the comparison table between your competitors to grasp their content pages better. Take a look at the example below:
Table Comparison Between Competitors’ Content Table
| Competitor Website | Content Types | Content Topics | Content Quality | Article Lengths | Multimedia Usage | Engagement Metrics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor 1 | Blog articles, Videos | Industry trends | High quality | Short to medium | Images, Videos | Comments, Social shares |
| Competitor 2 | Blog articles, Podcasts | How-to guides | Moderate quality | Long-form | Infographics | Social shares, Likes |
| Competitor 3 | Case studies, Whitepapers | Product reviews | High quality | Medium to long | Images, Videos | Comments, Social shares |
| Competitor 4 | Blog articles, Videos | Industry news | Low quality | Short | Images, Videos | Likes, Social shares |
| Competitor 5 | Blog articles, Infographics | Tips and tricks | Moderate quality | Medium | Infographics | Comments, Social |
This organised table format allows you to quickly compare and analyse the different aspects of your competitors’ content strategies. You can identify patterns, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement based on the information gathered.
ALSO READ: 6 Blog Content Ideas That Generate Traffic To Your Website
3. Assess Your Competitors’ Keywords
The internet is rich in SEO tools for researching keywords to benefit your website and content. Many people, however, use tools to identify long-tail keywords instead of keyword competition.
Keyword competition refers to the level of difficulty of a specific keyword. You can discover the keywords you could use for your SEO strategy and unveil the number of web pages you have to outrank. The process to assess your competitors’ keywords is the same as you do keyword research about your business. You can use keyword research tools and enter your competitor’s website, and the keyword research tool will provide a list of keywords that the websites are ranking for on SERPs.
ALSO READ: Keyword Research Guide: Identify The Right Keywords To Optimise Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Keyword competitiveness is influenced by various factors, including popularity. While using popular keywords that are most searched on Google can be beneficial, it can also present challenges in outranking competitors who are targeting the same terms. Additionally, the level of competitiveness within a specific industry plays a role. Employing niche long-tail keywords, although less popular than high-value keywords, can still be effective in reaching a targeted niche audience.
Understanding keyword competition is vital for your SEO strategy, as it allows you to dive deeper into the value of specific keywords. More importantly, you can discover how your competitors utilise relevant keywords. Doing so will give you a better overview of your competition, thus helping you plan better SEO strategies.
4. Find Broken Pages
When analysing your competitors’ websites, one crucial aspect is to determine any broken or error pages they might have. Broken pages can have detrimental effects on both user experience and search engine rankings. To effectively locate these problematic pages, you can employ various tools such as Screaming Frog or Google Search Console, which provide valuable insights into website crawling and link analysis.
To begin the process, you can use Screaming Frog or a similar tool to crawl your competitors’ websites. These tools simulate how search engines navigate a website, allowing you to identify broken links or pages that return error codes, such as 404 (page not found). You can gather a comprehensive list of broken pages across your competitors’ sites by running a thorough crawl.
Alternatively, Google Search Console can also be utilised for this purpose. By adding your competitors’ websites to your Search Console account, you gain access to valuable data about their site’s performance in search results. The Index Coverage report within Search Console provides information on pages that couldn’t be indexed due to errors, giving you insights into broken or problematic pages.
Once you have identified the broken or error pages on your competitors’ websites, it’s time to leverage this information to your advantage. A strategic approach involves creating similar or better content on your own website. By providing high-quality content that addresses the same or similar topics as the broken pages, you can attract users who were previously visiting your competitors’ sites, redirecting the traffic. This not only improves user experience but also increases the chances of acquiring new customers or readers.
5. Review Backlinks
Backlinks play a significant role in SEO. They help earn the trust and authority to search engines, indicating that other websites find your content valuable and worth referencing.
ALSO READ: The Benefits Of Earning Backlinks To Your Website
Gain a competitive edge by exploring and understanding your competitors’ backlink profiles. You can uncover valuable insights into their link-building strategies and apply them to your website’s SEO efforts.
The first step in reviewing backlinks is identifying websites that link to your competitors. It can be achieved through various SEO tools and services that provide backlink analysis capabilities, such as:
- Google Search Console
These tools typically crawl the web and compile comprehensive databases of links pointing to different websites. By inputting your competitors’ domain names into these tools, you can generate reports that showcase the specific websites linking to them.
Once you have a list of these linking domains, the next step is to evaluate the quality and relevance of the backlinks. Quality backlinks are those that come from reputable and authoritative websites within your industry or niche. Relevance, on the other hand, refers to how closely related the linking website’s content is to your own. It’s generally more beneficial to acquire backlinks from websites that share similar themes or topics with your own, as this indicates to search engines that your content is contextually relevant.
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6. Analyse Your On-Page SEO
Knowing your rivals may be the easiest part of your SEO strategy. The next challenge is to use your newfound knowledge about your competitors and apply better practices to your on-page SEO.
KNOW MORE: Ultimate On-Page SEO Guide For 2023
After researching your competitors, analyse your on-page SEO to see where your content falters. For instance, check out these on-page SEO factors that affect your ranking:
- Number of words per web page
- Length of your videos
- Relevance of topics
- Types of media for your content
These factors play a significant role in improving your SEO. Analyse these on-page SEO elements based on your findings so you can rank higher than your competitors.
Conclusion
SEO competitive analysis is a continuous process businesses must do to stay ahead of the competition. By taking the time to conduct a competitive analysis, you can gain a better understanding of your competitors and identify opportunities to improve your website. It can help you improve your website’s ranking in search results and attract more visitors.
Not enough time to conduct DIY SEO competitive analysis? OOm, a leading SEO agency in Singapore, offers a free competitor analysis report! Claim yours now to keep tabs on your competitors and start outperforming them.
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