When you are working to improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and make yourself stand out from the crowd of competitors, it can be tricky to know where to start. There are several ways to optimize your own SEO, but it can be difficult to know where your competitors fall in comparison.
One of the best things you can do for your own website is run a competitive analysis. This article will discuss the importance of analyzing your competitors in a variety of ways, and offer a number of competitor analysis tools to help you learn how to make yourself stand out. It is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one if you want to push your online business to the next level.
Content Analysis
Content analysis is an excellent way to conduct an investigation of your competitors’ work. All of the content written on your website, from articles to product descriptions, can be maximized for SEO. By analyzing competitors’ keywords, links, and website traffic, you can get a better idea of how to boost your own website’s content to get ahead. There is no singular way to analyze content, but instead a number of competitor analysis tools that you can take advantage of as you work to improve your own content.
Backlinks
One great way to conduct competitor research is through analyzing backlinks. If you link another website on your page, that website has a backlink to you. Backlinks are used to increase your credibility and grow your SEO, so analyzing your competitors’ backlinks will inform you of how you compare on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). You can utilize sites like Ahrefs or the Semrush Backlink Competitors Report to find out how your competitors are doing. With all of your new information, you can learn how many more links to include on your own site, how to optimize your anchor text, and more. You can also do an analysis of your own backlinks to get a more complete understanding of what you can be doing better, regardless of what your competitors are doing.
Google Data Studio
One of many excellent competitor analysis tools, Google Data Studio is a free tool that you can use to create reports that analyze trends and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). It is one of Google’s business analytics tools that is actually incredibly helpful for analyzing your own website. It can also be used to perform a competitive analysis, however. Syncing Google Data Studio with Google Ads means that you can take a look at your competitors’ website traffic and ad success. This can help you track which time of year they are experiencing significant revenue increases, as well as what kind of ads are garnering success. Eventually, you could build up an entire report to present to your team. This data can help you learn how to best counter your competitors’ work and better stand out from the crowd.
Finding and Using Competitors’ Keywords
Keywords are an essential part of SEO, and therefore a very important part of your marketing process. The better and more relevant your keywords are, the more traffic you will get to your website. If your competitor is using the same or better keywords than you, it is important to find out what those keywords are. There are a number of different ways to find competitors’ keywords, as well as a number of ways to use that information to your advantage.
Finding Competitors Keywords
You can utilize a few different competitor analysis tools in order to find the keywords your competitors are using most often. First, you can look in the HTML Source Code for your competitor’s webpage to find their tagged keywords in titles, descriptions, and additional content. You can also use the Google Keyword Planner tool to scan through your competitor’s URL for a quick list of their keywords. Software like SEMrush, BuzzSomo, and Screaming Frog Spider can also be used to find keyword rankings, show you how keyword content is distributed, and perform SEO audits. This type of competitor research will set you up for success as you work on improving your own keywords.
Using Competitor Keyword Research
There are a number of different ways you can utilize your new keyword data. The first and perhaps most obvious is to use those keywords in your own content. That way, when a potential client types that phrase into their search engine, you will pop up right alongside or even above your competitors. This way, you increase your own traffic and potentially even decrease your competitors’.
Additionally, through researching your own keywords in addition to your competitors, you can find out what keywords are not being used by either of you. Take advantage of those keywords and start integrating them into your website’s content. That way, you get ahead of the curve and open yourself up to more clicks and more traffic based on underutilized internet searches. The same goes for long-tail keywords or keywords that customers are more likely to use when they’re ready to buy a product.
Local Competitor Research
If you are an online business that has a brick-and-mortar in addition to your online shop, your local SEO is especially important to maintain when faced with competitors. This type of research can be done with some simpler competitor analysis tools like Google Maps, Yelp, and even sites like Facebook. In addition to researching keywords and online analytics, take the time to investigate your competitors’ reviews and locations. This way, you can be more aware of what products and services they are able to offer in-person. In person, reputation can be incredibly significant to customers. Make sure you are going above and beyond your competition in whatever ways that you can.
Social Media Analysis
Another great way to conduct competitive analysis is actually through an investigation of your competitors’ social media activity. Competitor analysis tools like Sprout Social, Phalanx, or Social Blade can help you delve deeper into your competition’s social media success. These sorts of tools can help you discover how much of a following or actual presence your competitors have on social media. These sites can also offer benchmarks of success for your competitors and give you ways to easily compare your own social media insight to theirs. Social Media management is a slightly different beast than managing your website’s SEO, but no less important to your brand. Taking advantage of tools that can help you stand out from your competitors on social media will help bring more people to your website as well.
Machine Learning & AI
There are also a number of great AI and Machine learning programs you can use to conduct some competitor research. Machine learning software is excellent at picking up patterns, which is especially helpful when trying to analyze SEO. Some of these competitor analysis tools can research millions of data points at once, giving you a complete comprehensive analysis, all in one place. Additionally, because Machine Learning models are able to learn based on the training you provide them, you can customize your model to search for a specific type of data. This could help you examine a competitor’s keywords, their website traffic, or any other element that you want to compare.
There are additional forms of AI that you can use to really bring your analysis to the next level. AI can actually track the activity of your competitors’ websites in real time and analyze their digital footprints throughout the day. AI can also help you track public responses to your competitors’ products and services so you have a better idea of how you can set yourself apart.
You can use AI to find your competitors’ weaknesses and capitalize on them by offering a stronger or more publicly acclaimed product. This can also be applied to monitoring your competitors’ demographics so that you can find groups or locations that you might be able to target a little bit more.
Find Your Ways to Dominate
There are a variety of tools at your disposal that can help you find out your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Harnessing the power of AI, researching keywords and social media, and thinking locally when you need to can all drastically help your own business. Taking the information you learn about your competition can help impact your success.
Find the places where your competitors struggle and make yourself stronger than they are in those areas. Find where they are successful, and match them to try and pull customers your way instead. There are many different ways to achieve success through competitive analysis, so find the path that works best for you in order to bring your website and your business to the next level.
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