SEO is one of the most fundamental aspects that can still work wonders concerning traffic to your site. But you will most likely find other websites that optimize for the exact keywords you are looking for. Indeed, analyzing essential SEO competitors provides beneficial information to learn the strategies of the competitors and to see places that need improvement. This will help you know how to go about choosing the right plan that will enable you to rank higher than your main competitors. If you are interested in a detailed analysis of your competition, follow this guide.
The initial process requires one to identify three to five direct competitors. Your direct competitors are websites that belong to your industry or niche and which achieved high rankings for your targeted keywords.
Use these methods to find competitors:
Google Search – Use your target key phrases and note what websites come out on the first results pages
SEMrush/Ahrefs – Use the keyword you’re targeting in keywords research software to see which sites are ranking for each of them.
SimilarWeb – Go through your own site statistics to discover that web pages receiving traffic go.
Carefully go through each competitor’s on-page SEO elements, including:
Site Architecture
Determine whether this single or multiple topics centered with a Silo structured site or do they stick to a single domain.
Take note of:
-What structures are they using?
-What is the current information regarding the number of web pages they possess?
-How far down does their site go?
Assess their content for SEO best practices:
-Did they use blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.
-How frequently is there an update of the information?
-What quality is the content of all these sites?
-Does it cover Keywords, First-Level Synonym Keywords, and Other Synonym Keywords Appropriately?
-Reference to the content provided and the number of articles for individual topics of interest.
Audit their technical SEO, including:
– Site speed
– Mobile Optimization
– Structured data markup
– Meta tags
– URL structure/formatting
– Link structure
Search rankings are closely associated with the quality and the quantity of backlink profile that a site has.
Use Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz to analyze their backlinks around:
-Total number of backlinks
-Number of referring domains
-Uses of backlinks: contextual/ editorial backlinks opposed to unnatural backlinks
-Linking domain: quality (authority, relevance, trust).
For location-based searches, identify which local SEO elements competitors have implemented:
– Google My Business listing
– Local schema markup
– Location data in content
– Location keywords
With all data gathered about top competitors, you can strategically identify optimization opportunities including:
-Exploring site architecture problems, you are able to address
-Depth of content subjects / topics and its relative weakness compared to competitors
-More suitable, higher quality forms of content with which to utilize
-Issues for technical work
-Backlink profile gaps
The last process is to transform the gathered knowledge into an SEO action plan, where all the opportunities are listed.
Develop strategies around:
-New site architecture or silos to build
-Which content and when to post
-Fixing technical problems
-Strategies to gain free additional backlinks
-Boosting local SEO presence
With competitor insights at all the main aspects of SEO, you can achieve proven strategies to outperform top competitors within your niche. Competitor data should be reviewed at least on quarterly basis to know the progress with the sites. It helps you maintain your alertness on the competitor’s performance thereby helping you adapt to changes in the SERP.
An organized SEO competitor analysis shows gaps for correlation so that one can improve organic presence and rankings. Looking at both on-page and off-page signals give analysts an all-around view of why competitors occupy a specific ranking. Convert these findings into practical SEO recommendations of the site content and structure, technical aspect, backlink acquisition, and geographical targeting. By doing competitor analysis on a recurrent basis, it is possible to transit strategies to levels needed to overcome the better competitors. Follow this guide’s steps to learn more about your competition and improve your SEO activities.
