(Newswire.net — November 20, 2019) —
Competition is an important part of every industry as it encourages innovation. It also forces you to do better at all phases, starting from development to sales and customer satisfaction. Though many marketers look at competition every day, not everyone can perform an analysis in a way that matters. Here are some tips that will help you identify your top competitors and discover how they are outranking you. An SEO expert combines these tips with favorite competitor research tools to gain the best of results.
- 1. Find Your SEO Competitors
You probably know the names of the big rivals in your industry. But they may not be the only ones you should consider here. You may have multiple SEO competitors existing outside of your niche that you may need to compete with. For example, consider the case of a bakery in Australia trying to rank for a keyword like the best bakery in Australia. The bakery may be competing with other bakeries for the first-page position in SERPs. However, if the bakery is trying to gain ranks for a helpful, how to blog, it should be competing with other food or bakery related blogs popular among its target audience.
Your top competitor in SEO is the one that ranks in the first position for the keywords that you are planning to target. If you have multiple niches then you may have distinct lists of competitors for each service that you offer with little or no overlapping between them. Thus, you should search for your top target keywords in Google, find out the sites ranking on top results, and write down the domain of those targeting the same/similar audience.
- 2. Check Keyword Difficulty
It’s a great idea to assess the strength of your SEO competitors before analyzing the specific link building strategies. You can use a competitor analysis tool to look at their total domain strength and analyze specific factors like domain country, age, backlink data, domain authority, traffic volumes, Alexa rank, social signals, and indexing in search engines. Take a note of the information and check for any loopholes you may find and can change/use to your advantage. And for niche keywords, focus on the competitor with better overall scores and ranking.
- 3. Look for Keyword Opportunities
The analysis is useful only if you are able to find proper keywords and enrich your existing or new content with the ones your competitors are using. You can discover new low competition keywords that you may have missed earlier and use them to optimize your pages for search engines. For instance, through the analysis for the example given above, you might land up on high ranking content for a keyword coffee recipes. You can dig deeper and choose specific terms related to roasting techniques, coffee bean blends, and filters.
- 4. Determine the Competitor’s On-page Optimization
With a competitive analysis tool, you can determine how those ranking at the top have done on-site SEO. You will have to learn what type of content they are publishing and which keywords they are targeting. For this, you can analyze their metadata and heading strategies such as keywords in the title, title length, etc. Also, consider their internal linking strategies and set them as a benchmark for your on-page SEO efforts while figuring out their best and worst and making improvements wherever you feel like. While analyzing content, keep a track of:
- Type of media or content they are creating
- Word count
- Video length
- Topic relevance
- Depth of details covered
- Learn tips to create the best SEO Content
It plays a significant role when Googlebot crawls a website.
- 5. Analyze the Competitor Backlink Profile
In competitor analysis, one of the most important steps for a digital marketing expert is figuring out where your rivals are getting their backlinks from. The information can be used to build high-quality links for your website as well. Using a robust SEO tool helps analyze your opponent’s link profile and find new opportunities with ease.
- 6. Examine UX and Site Structure
Over the past few years, all of the major search algorithm changes have been focused on UX such as faster pages, better mobile experiences, and improved search results. If your website is slower than your competitors and more confusing to navigate then this is something you need to correct. You should focus on:
- Better crawlability by optimizing your sitemap
- Searcher’s intent while creating every element of your site
- Prioritizing page speed optimization
Look at the competitors landing pages to see what they are doing.
- Examine their click depth
- Check whether they have any orphan pages
- Check their page rank distribution
When you analyze others’ sites, you may find that they are ranking well with proper mobile optimization. And this forms a great opportunity for you to gain ranks on SERPs.
- 7. Leverage Social Media
Wondering how social media intersect with SEO and can boost your revenue? It’s an important aspect of any SEO strategy. With the social listening tool, you can:
- Increase website traffic by tracking linkless mentions on social media. Engage with your audience when you find people looking at and using your product.
- Monitor and optimize outreach of blogs, news sites, and forums, etc
- Promote user sentiment that Google monitors and this can affect the ranking
Monitors include some easy research parameters that you can perform:
- How frequently they publish new content?
- What type of content gets more engagement?
- Which type of platforms your competitors are using?
- How do they connect with their followers?
You can also track competitors’ linkless mentions, PR, and user reviews to see what their customers like about the service or products so that you can do better.
- 8. Track Their Ad Spend
When you optimize your website but still get beaten in results from search engines, your competitors are likely outspending you. They are probably using paid traffic to generate sales and conversions. Instead of merely trying to match each competitor’s spending, you should monitor their Google Ads, paid posts, banner ads, and promoted content. You should also evaluate how other people in your niche are spending on advertising.
Thus, following this guide can help you keep a track of your competitors, and hence monitor as well as improve your site’s ranking. As mentioned above, these are the commonly used tips by Gautam Sharma – SEO Expert in India which includes analyzing keywords and backlinks, examining site structure and UX and tracking ad spend of competitors.