A Competitor Analysis, or competitive analysis is the process of identifying similar businesses in the market that offer similar products or services as yours and evaluating them on the basis of predetermined criterias.
A Competitor Analysis helps to prove an in-depth analysis of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and you can easily see how your business compares to it.
Meanwhile, SEO Competitor Analysis is used for the same purpose as any other Competitor Analysis: to identify what competitors are doing well and strategize your plan accordingly.
SEO Competitor Analysis is the process of analyzing the SEO strategies that your competitors are performing to rank higher in SERP.
It includes the keywords, backlinks and all the other optimization factors that your website’s competitor is using and on the basis of the generated SEO Competitor Report, you can prepare your own website’s SEO strategy.
How to beat your competitors in the SEO Game?
Start with Keyword Research
Keyword Research is undoubtedly the foundation of SEO.
So before you start with SEO Competitor Analysis, you must begin with identifying all your important keywords and the potential keywords that your audience can use in search queries.
In later aspects too, for creating content around the keyword and trying to rank; Keyword Research can play a massive role too.
2. Identify your SEO Competitors
While it might seem obvious, the first step to dominate your competition using the SEO Competitor Analysis is by identifying the competitors.
In traditional marketing, you’re most likely to already know your competitors but when it comes to SEO, the chances are high that your competitor won’t be the same.
So, how do you identify your competitors?
a. Google SERP
Google SERP is undoubtedly the best bet for finding SEO competitors. Identify the keywords you want to target, and you can search the keyword in the Google Search Bar or you can simply use tools for SERP Analysis.
b. Using Tools to Identify the Competitors
Alongside using SERP Analysis, you can also use specific specialized SEO tools for finding your competitors.
3. Analyze your Competitor’s On-page SEO Performance
Next and one of the most important steps is checking your competition’s on-page SEO strategy and performance.
a. Competitor Keyword Research
It is the process of analyzing your competitor’s keyword.
Take note of keywords that your competitors are using to get ranked and also pay attention to keywords you’re ranking but lagging behind.
b. Top Performing Content
Well, you might have heard a lot of people saying “Content is King”. And it is the same for SEO.
That is why you need to analyze your competitor’s top performing content. A top-performing content refers to the content that drives traffic and content that drives results too.
While analyzing the Top Performing Content, you can consider factors such as
Content Format: Whether the content is in written content, visual content, audio content, video content or any other content.
Content Length: When analyzing your competitors’ top-performing content, take note of the average length and plan your content accordingly.
Content Type: What type of content has worked for your competitor
Internal Linking: Analyze how your competitors are using internal links
4. Analyze your Competitor’s Technical SEO Performance
a. Site Structure
A website should provide a user with a good user experience and a website should be easy to crawl, and that is exactly where Site Structure comes into play.
Various SEO tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMRush, Ahrefs can be used to analyze your competitor’s website structure and plan changes on your website if it’s needed.
b. Site Speed and Performance
Speed is one of the most crucial factors for a website. Google has made it an actual ranking factor too for the SERP.
You can easily analyze a site’s speed and performance using various online testers such as Page Speed Insights and GTMetrix.
c. Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile Friendliness is the measure of how well a website is designed and optimized to load on a mobile device.
By optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly in formatting and content, your SEO content will be more effective, and your site will rank higher in SERP.
Also with the help of various tools, you can also find out the issues and try to resolve them.
5. Analyze your Competitor’s Off-page SEO Performance
The most common ways to uplift Off-page SEO Performance are link building and other promotion strategies that help drive traffic to your website.
However, backlinks are the pillar for your Off-page SEO Performance.
Looking into your competitors’ backlink profile can’t be done manually, of course.
But a good SEO tool can give you all the backlink data you need in a matter of minutes.
6. Identify the Weaknesses and Strengths of your Competitors
Since you’re now ready with a report of your competitor’s SEO analysis, now you can analyze their strengths and weaknesses in various areas of SEO such as keywords, links, backlinks, content, authority, technical issues and many more.
7.Plan your SEO Strategy Accordingly
All you have done so far is a foundation for your SEO strategy. This is now where it all comes into effect.
Following the identification of the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors, plan your SEO strategy targeting both their strengths and weaknesses.
Learn from their strengths, adapt to what’s been working for them and since now you know their weaknesses, that is where you can upbeat them.
Conclusion:
There you have it – all you need to know to do a competitive analysis for SEO
Checking your competitor’s SEO can be of significant help. It can help you improve your own website and help you outrank and outperform your competition.
And if you’re looking for tools to do so, don’t worry we have got you covered with our previous blog.
Well, this might end you with one last question: How often should you perform SEO Competitor Analysis?
Let’s face it!
Performing SEO Competitor is no easy meal, it requires a lot of time and effort, and surely a lot of commitment too; so surely you can’t do it too very often.
But it is highly recommended to do it monthly or quarterly for ideal results, leaving you with sufficient time to react, maximize your strengths, and exploit your competition’s weaknesses.
Founded in 2017, OnlineZeal is a modern day IT Company with brilliant minds dedicated to achieve targeted goals. We aspire to step towards digital business strategies encouraging youths to become part of the modern digital Nepal.
Kamal Aryal
March 21, 2022
