SEO is an excellent marketing approach. Every day, new websites as well as businesses emerge, and the top five search engines such as Google, account for two-thirds of all clicks. High-quality content, an effective SEO plan, and technical SEO are not enough to ensure that your website receives the attention that it requires. Unfortunately, more than 90% of websites do not receive Google search traffic. So, to avoid being on that site, you must not only ensure that your website is the finest; you must also make it rank higher than your competitor's websites. And this is precisely where competitive research comes into play here.
What is Competitive Research and Analysis for SEO?
SEO competition analysis is examining your SEO competitors' keywords, links, content, and scope to incorporate the most successful components of these methods into your SEO plan. Rather than guessing which keywords to use, writing content, or getting backlinks, one can simply look at what works for others, particularly their competitors, and follow a similar path for them.
You can understand this better if you consider the following scenario: you own a business, one of three in the city. Your clients are interested in the product/service that you are providing, but you already know they're going to other places, your competitors for the same product/service. So, you go to check out your competitors' businesses to learn more about how your competitor is handling the same thing. Check out other businesses to see how they are doing things differently. You learn their approach and then apply it to your business. You must modify it a bit to suit the vision, ethics, and value of your company.
This is what SEO competitor research does in the field of digital marketing services. Now you must wonder how you can do this in case of analyzing a competitor’s website, so, here is a 5 Step Guide to doing SEO Competitor Analysis-
Step 1. Identifying Competitors
To do anything with your company, you must first identify your competitors. These are businesses that contend with your brand for your most valuable information. Make a list of your competitors. This is a fantastic beginning point for your research. The next step is to search the internet. Google will provide you with all the information you require about your competition. Put keywords, products, or services associated with your brand in Google's search bar and carefully assess the results. Add more testimonials to your company ranking with the help of brand-specific phrases.
Step 2. Competitor Keyword Analysis
Competitive keyword research includes three key components that examine the complexity of vying with competitors when evaluating the ranking of specific keywords. Think of keywords that both you and your competitors may have overlooked and then among that pick the keywords that describe your rivals, not you. Once you've discovered high-quality pages for your keyword, you must concentrate on them and examine the key parameters linked with them
Step 3. Conduct Page Analysis
The following step is to examine competing websites and particularly their top pages. Pay close attention to the content and keywords, as well as how they interact. Keyword Gap Analysis is another term for it. You want to identify keywords that your competitors should be using but aren't. This will help you devise a strategy to rank higher than your competitors based on this information.
Once you've compiled a list of keywords relevant to your business, you may construct pages dedicated to categorizing them. You could also add new words to already existing pages to update them but be cautious not to lose their focus. You may also perform competitive backlink research to track backlinks from your rivals. Examine the number of backlinks, who owns the links on your site, as well as the significance of the connections. Knowing which websites link to the content they have and how this impacts their ranking status, and credibility can provide significant insight into how the strategy works.
Step 4. Evaluation of their Backlink Profiles
When scanning a website, Google continues to prioritize backlinks. When competitors display a strong relationship statement, your competition for a qualifying position grows. As a result, you must improve your backlink profile. To simplify the procedure and ensure compliance with applicable backlink criteria, thoroughly research your competitor's existing backlinks.
Step 5. Implement a Content Strategy and monitor your Progress
After gathering the necessary information, you can create a competition analysis report. Based on this analysis, the next step is to create an SEO policy. Prepare and keep a list of internal concepts or keywords first. Following that, you must implement an application domain and link to external websites as needed. After you've implemented your business plan, you'll want to know if your aim is paying off. You can investigate whatever metric you believe is essential, but landing page rankings, page traffic, and are solid places to start with your evaluation process.
How to avoid pitfalls while conducting SEO competitor research in 2023
To avoid any pitfalls while conducting SEO Competitor research in 2023, you should make sure that your competitor research includes the following-
Identify competitor’s most linked Content
Links generate a lot of traffic and help SEO ranking because they are search engine referrals. This is a rather simple tip; all you need to do is identify competitors' material that has a significant number of backlinks. After that, you must determine the sort of content and topics being connected, as well as the sources of those links. This gives you the ability to do two things: To begin, take inspiration from the type of content and/or subjects they are employing. Second, use that to develop a better version of the content and request that the referring domains swap links to your competitor's material with connections to your better content.
Look for your competitor’s most sought-after Content
Search intent is rapidly gaining traction and may eventually substitute keywords. One page can even rank for hundreds (if not thousands) of long-tail keywords. You can identify which sites are ranking for a variety of keywords and garner a lot of traffic by looking at your competitors' top-ranked pages. This allows you to create content around those themes and attract some long-tail traffic to your page.
Concentrate on Search Intent rather than search volume
A keyword with a high volume does not always bring in traffic or conversions. Instead of tracking search volume mindlessly, pay heed to search intent. Keywords aren't essential if you can supply users with what they're searching for. Search engines favor websites that give relevant content and a positive user experience, therefore you should respond to users' search intent better than your competitors. Many visitors combined with a high bounce rate is meaningless and might harm your SEO.
Keep these things in mind: Expand on competitors' existing material, whether it's by providing more detailed or broader pieces, or simply a clearer and more focused experience. Instead of just using high-volume keywords, provide quality content that matches search intent. Include more content formats such as videos, infographics, step-by-step manuals, and so on.
You should study Backlink Growth
As link popularity is such an important SEO ranking factor, you should learn everything you can about how your opponent generates backlinks. Do not make the mistake of disregarding the backlink growth of your competitors' websites while conducting SEO Competitor research. First, consider how quickly they are obtaining new referring domains. This should give you a ballpark figure for your link-building efforts. Compare the number of backlinks they have now to the number they had a year ago. Divide that value by 12 to get their monthly growth forecast.
Keep a lookout for unusual growth spikes or drops, as they could suggest a particularly good or bad piece of content, a link-building approach, or something else. It's worthwhile to dive deeper into these incidents and figure out what went right and wrong for them, so you don't make the same mistakes.
Don’t forget to Spy on competitor’s Organic Keywords
Investigate which keywords are driving organic traffic to your competitor's websites. So, make certain that you do. Identify high-traffic keywords while excluding trademarked terms, then sort them by utility. Some may be more suited for a homepage or landing page, while others may be better suited for blog posts. Keyword complexity is another issue that people usually neglect but should not. If you want quick results and/or have a limited budget, avoid high-difficulty keywords because ranking highly for them can take a lot of time and resources.
Investigate the Traffic Breakdown by country
This might assist you in identifying opportunities in your industry. Examine the top five nations, analyze their traffic percentages, and prioritize the ones with the greatest amount of search demand. This isn't quite difficult, but many marketers focus on their company's home country while ignoring the rest of the globe. There may be immense potential in other nations that share the language, or you may gain an advantage from translating sections of your site to a variety of languages if your brand is well-known in another country.
Examine your competitor’s Featured Snippets
Position zero, or featured snippets, are critical for your overall rating and credibility within a topic. You might well be ready to do the same if your competitors rank for many featured snippets. This is simpler than it appears because the bulk of snippets does not come from the top slot in the ranking; if you can reach the top five, you have a good chance of owning a featured snippet.
Look for competitor’s PPC Keywords
This can provide valuable information for the development of an SEO strategy. If your competitors are purchasing traffic for a given term, that keyword is almost certainly profitable. Finding your competitors' PPC (pay-per-click) keywords allows you to identify high-converting, low-volume phrases that are easy to ignore while conducting standard keyword research. Consider however, that your competitor may simply be incorrect, so it's advisable to test these keywords yourself before attempting to rank for them.
Search for Broken Pages
In this case, you want to locate competitor pages that seem to have backlinks but are no longer available or are inoperable for whatever reason. You can create something similar if you can find out what information was on the dead page. Then after, simply email everyone who connected to the said page and request that the link to the defunct page is replaced with a link to your new content piece.
Understand why you're comparing Websites
Outlining your main goal is one of the most crucial guidelines for producing an effective SEO competition analysis study. Having a goal for your analysis can help you choose your approach when conducting your analysis. For instance, do you want to just focus on direct competitors or consider the larger competition as well? It will also allow you to investigate the topics that most concern you. For example, if the goal of the competition study is to discover each competitor's communications line to develop brand positioning, you should examine their organic material, visuals, copy, and so on. If the goal is to determine whether their product/service pricing is appropriate, then you should just focus on examining the pricing of the competition.
Conclusion:
Competitive analysis is a straightforward notion. When it pertains to SEO, you would like to understand what strategies your competitors are adopting, what their backlink profile looks like, what keywords they are ranking for, and what is and is not working for them. So competitive analysis is exactly what it is. You're gathering information from your competitors to better understand the successful aspects of their strategy and how you might incorporate them into your own. If you use the above suggestions when conducting SEO competitor research in 2023, you will be able to avoid any/all pitfalls that may arise in the process.
