Understanding how your competitors perform online is important for refining your internet marketing strategy. This guide walks you through SEO competitor analysis step by step, helping you identify gaps, enhance your approach, and stay ahead in the search engine results.
How to Identify Your SEO Competitors
Identifying the right competitors is foundational to effective SEO competitor analysis. It’s essential to differentiate between two types of competitors: industry competitors and search competitors. Here’s how you can identify them:
Industry Competitors
These are the businesses you already know, the companies offering similar products or services. You may already compete with them in terms of sales, but they might not necessarily be your biggest online competitors. Start by listing these known companies and checking if they show up for key terms related to your business.
Search Competitors
These are websites that compete for the same search engine traffic. Often, these may include industry blogs, niche content creators, or even large directory sites that rank for keywords important to your business. To identify these competitors:
- Use Google Search: Enter some of your most important keywords in Google. See who shows up on the first two pages. These are your search competitors.
- Utilise SEO Tools: Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can automate the process. These tools allow you to enter your own domain and then generate a list of websites that rank for similar keywords, often giving you competitors you may not have considered.
- Check SERP Features: Some competitors might be dominating through featured snippets, maps, or other SERP elements. Using tools like Ahrefs to track who is capturing these can reveal new players in the competitive space.
A competitor isn’t just anyone who outranks you. Focus on those that target the same audience and provide similar solutions. A small niche blog might rank high but may not be your direct competition in terms of business.
Conduct a Keyword Gap Analysis
Keyword gap analysis helps you discover which keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t. This reveals missed opportunities for content creation or optimisation.
- How to do it: Use tools like Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool or SEMrush’s Keyword Gap. Enter your website and compare it with competitors to see the keyword differences.
- What to focus on: Prioritise keywords with high search volume and manageable keyword difficulty. Identify opportunities for long-tail keywords that may be easier to rank for.
Good Practice: Focus on high-intent keywords that align with your audience’s needs, even if they have lower search volume.
Bad Practice: Targeting highly competitive keywords with no chance of ranking instead of opting for lower-competition opportunities.
Analyse Traffic Sources
Understanding where your competitors’ traffic comes from (organic, social, paid) can provide insights into their digital marketing strategy. Some competitors may rely heavily on organic search, while others might be successful with paid ads or social media.
- How to analyse: Use tools like SimilarWeb or SpyFu to get a breakdown of their traffic sources.
- Why it’s useful: Knowing their top-performing channels helps you identify areas to improve your own strategy, whether it’s expanding into paid search, optimising for organic, or investing in social media.
On-Page SEO and Content Gap Analysis
Evaluate your competitors’ on-page SEO elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and internal linking structures. Additionally, analyse their content. Are they covering topics that you don’t?
- How to analyse: Look at their keyword usage, content structure, and readability. Also, check their internal linking strategy to see how they optimise for both user experience and search engines.
- What to focus on: Identify content gaps by comparing your site’s content to your competitors’. Are there topics or subtopics they rank for that you haven’t addressed?
Scenario Where Competitor Research is Applicable: If you run an online bookstore and notice a competitor ranking for niche book genres that you don’t cover, competitor research will show you what type of content or keywords they are using to get this traffic.
Scenario Where Competitor Research is Not Applicable: If your business is hyper-local and provides services that only your community needs, competitors in different geographical areas may not be relevant for keyword research.
Review Competitor’s Backlink Profile
A competitor’s backlink profile can give you insights into their link-building strategies and help you find potential backlink opportunities for your own website. Backlinks are a major ranking factor, and understanding how your competitors are acquiring them is key.
- How to analyse: Use tools like Ahrefs to explore where your competitors are getting their backlinks. Look for high-authority domains that link to them but not to you.
- What to focus on: Identify opportunities to replicate their backlinks. This could involve outreach to the same publications, blogs, or influencers.
Good Practice: Look for broken backlinks on competitor sites that you can replace with your content, or creating high value content that others want to share/link to.
Bad Practice: Buying cheap or spammy backlinks to match competitors. These can harm your SEO rather than help. Another bad practice involves buying expired domains and redirecting them to your website to transfer their backlink profile. This method leverages the expired domain’s authority and backlinks, but this is a risky strategy today.
How to Replace Broken Backlinks
Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to discover broken backlinks on competitor sites. These tools allow you to analyse their backlink profiles and filter by “broken” links. A broken backlink is a link that points to a non-existent page or a page with errors (i.e. 404 errors).
Identify Replacement Opportunities
Once you’ve found a broken backlink, check the context of the page that originally hosted the link. What was the topic of the broken link? If you have content that covers a similar topic or you can create a piece of content that matches, this presents an opportunity.
Create Relevant Content
If you don’t already have content that could serve as a replacement, create a new resource that would be a suitable replacement for the broken link. The content should be high quality and better than what was originally there to increase the chances of webmasters agreeing to link to it.
Outreach
Contact the webmaster of the site hosting the broken link. Your outreach email should be polite and professional. Mention that you noticed they are linking to a resource that no longer exists and that you have a great alternative they can link to instead.
Here’s a possible outreach email:
“Hi [Your Name], I was browsing through your fabulous article on [Topic], and I noticed that one of your links to [Website] seems to be broken. I’ve created a similar resource that might be helpful for your readers. Would you consider updating the broken link with my content? Here’s the link: [Your URL]. Let me know if this would be useful. Thank you!”
Make sure you personalise your outreach emails. Highlight the value of your content, and ensure the content you’re suggesting is genuinely useful. Be professional yet friendly in your tone. Dom’t send generic or bulk outreach emails without tailoring the content to every contact. People are unlikely to respond and it could harm your reputation.
By successfully replacing broken backlinks, you’re not only gaining a high-quality backlink, but you’re also providing value to the site owner by helping them maintain a well-functioning website. This builds relationships and can lead to more opportunities in the future.
Review Technical SEO
A competitor’s technical SEO health affects their rankings. Factors like page load speed, mobile-friendliness, and site architecture play a huge role in user experience and search rankings.
- How to analyse: Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to assess their technical SEO.
- What to focus on: Look at core web vitals (load time, interactivity, stability), mobile responsiveness, and site structure. If their site loads faster or has better usability on mobile, you’ll need to adjust your own strategy accordingly.
Analyse SERP Features
Competitors can dominate the search results by ranking in SERP features like snippets, image carousels, and local packs. Understanding how they secure these placements can help you optimise your own content.
- How to analyse: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to track SERP features and how often your competitors appear in them.
- What to focus on: Identify specific query types or keyword categories where competitors have secured featured snippets, and adjust your content to target these opportunities.
Review Competitor Social Media Strategies
While social media is not a direct ranking factor for SEO, it contributes to brand visibility and traffic. Analysing your competitors’ social media presence can help you refine your own approach.
- How to analyse: Look at their posting frequency, engagement levels, and content types (videos, blogs, promotions). Use tools like Hootsuite for deeper analysis.
- What to focus on: Find patterns in their high-engagement posts. Do they post frequently about specific topics? What gives them the highest engagement? Do they use more videos or interactive content?
Conclusion
Competitor research is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. SEO is constantly evolving, and so are your competitors. By regularly reviewing and updating your competitor analysis, you can stay ahead and refine your strategy based on the latest trends and data.