How to do an SEO Competitive Analysis

SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is becoming more crucial for any online company. The cause? Where you rank is important because SEO is one of the primary methods by which customers discover your business online.

After all, according to Backlink, the top position on Google receives a click-through rate of 27% as opposed to just 0.63% for Google’s second page.

You can see what your rivals are doing with SEO and how you stack up against them by conducting an SEO competitive analysis (as an add-on to a comprehensive digital marketing competitive analysis).

It will show the advantages and disadvantages so you can design a plan that keeps you in front of them in the standings. (Google and otherwise). When conducting a competitive study, you must follow five essential steps:

Identify your competitors
Analyze their SEO strategy
Analyze their keywords
Analyze their on-page optimization
Analyze their backlinks

Let’s get started and learn how to conduct a competitive study for SEO.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

Regardless of whether your business is new or well-established, you should be aware of your rivals. This holds true for both the goods and services you offer as well as your SEO rivals’ search engine rankings!

Making a list is the first step in finding your rivals. Look at the websites or businesses that appear when people look for your keywords and the website you want to rank first for.

For instance, in the example below, when looking for “SEO trends 2023,” Word stream has obtained the featured snippet, while Search Engine Journal has occupied positions two and three. These are your main rivals if you’re attempting to rank for this term.

You can also find some excellent SEO competitive research tools online. With the help of the competitive research tab in SEMrush, you can learn more about other websites that are performing well for related keywords. Another tool with a rival choice to take into account is KW Finder.

This will also help you discover websites that you may not have known about or considered, making it a useful method for identifying rivals.

Step 2: Analyze their SEO Strategy

To learn more about the SEO tactics of your rivals, visit their websites. This covers the design of the website, the kinds of material produced, and the targeted keywords. (both short and long-tail).

Additionally, you ought to evaluate the functionality of their websites for mobile devices. Tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test can be used for this.

Knowing these details will enable you to assess how your website stacks up against those of your rivals in terms of technological SEO.

Analyze your competitors’ content

It’s critical to understand both the kinds of content your rivals create and which content attracts the most visitors. To aid your SEO plan, ascertain:

What are their top-ranking pages?
Which pages rank for keywords?
Which pages drive the highest percentage of traffic?

To locate the most well-liked material in a particular niche, use a tool like BuzzSumo. This will enable you to determine the kinds of content that are popular with your target group and the subjects on which you should concentrate.

The material that attracts visitors for your competitors might astound you. It might be a landing website, blog, or even an ebook.

Look at your competitors’ social media presence

When it comes to increasing company awareness and directing traffic, social media is very powerful.

Check out the social media sites of your rivals. Take a look at their engagement levels, amount of followers, and type of content shared. This will enable you to comprehend how your rivals use social media to increase website traffic.

Check your competitors’ rankings for keywords that you are targeting

You can learn more about the keywords and levels of performance of your rivals by doing this.

A target list of the main and secondary keywords you want to rank for should exist. Keep in mind that these keywords can alter and their rankings could drop, so it’s advised to regularly check your keywords.

The objective is to rank for your primary keywords, but you should also consider low-hanging fruit, or pertinent but unpopular keywords, in order to move up the rankings.

Step 3: Analyze their Keywords

When it comes to your main keywords, you might be doing well, but what about the ones you score for but which push you to the bottom of page one of the SERP?

Pay attention to those keywords because making an effort to include them in your writing may help you surpass your rival and take the lead.

Additionally, search for phrase opportunities and keyword gaps. Using tools like SEMRush or AHREFS, you can use this to find keywords or phrases that you could and ought to be ranking for.

Additionally, you ought to examine any keywords with high search traffic that might have been lost by your rivals. Visit the website, look at where they are falling in the rankings, and try to determine why. Then take advantage of that chance by incorporating those keywords into your writing.

Step 4: Analyze their On-Page Optimization

Your competitors may appear higher in search engine results than you because they put more time and effort into optimizing their pages.

Therefore, you must examine the sites that are ranking higher than you. This will enable you to understand why your rivals are performing better when it comes to their search engine positioning.

You should take into account the following in your analysis:

Titles: Google gives importance to page titles because they demonstrate how pertinent a keyword is to a search and affect rankings. As they instruct browsers on how to show the title of your page in search results, social media, and browser tabs, make sure your title tags are accurate and linked to the appropriate keyword.

Meta-data – For the meta keywords and meta description elements, meta-data is crucial. Both will aid Google in understanding the subject matter of your website. Look at what your rivals are doing to improve search results.

Headlines or Headings – When headings are linked to specific keywords, Google prefers them and gives h> tags more importance. These can be extracted for featured snippets as well, which will move your material to the page’s top. Be aware that, according to Ahrefs, Google employs H1 tags nearly 51% of the time in place of the title tag.

Internal linking structure: Internal links are useful for guiding visitors to pertinent content and can boost the SEO of your sites. Avoid overcrowding a piece with links, but do include good ones that will retain readers on your site.

Quality content is important because even if you create a lot of content, people won’t read it and search engines won’t give it a high ranking if it isn’t good and relevant. When creating material, quality is preferable to quantity. Do a quick search to discover which websites the top-ranking rivals are using to establish themselves as authorities on the subject. If you need some ideas, check out this “Guide to Content Ideation.” Images and videos – Are your competitors optimizing images and videos for the web and portable? Do they have descriptive and pertinent titles on them? To participate, you must take the same action.

Structured data and schema markup help search engines comprehend the content of a website and can increase a page’s visibility in search results.

URLs: Check out the URLs of your rivals to see if they’re doing anything unusual. Make sure your URLs are clear, descriptive, and loaded with pertinent terms.

Customer experience – Usability is a ranking factor, so take a look at the navigation, load time, and page layout of your rivals’ websites. What is the typical customer experience like, and how does it relate to yours?

Step 5: Analyze their Backlinks

Search engines and placement depend on backlinks. Using Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to gain insights into the backlink profiles of your rivals can teach you a lot.

But the number of connections is not what matters. What you need are high-quality backlinks, which are an excellent asset to any piece of content. In reality, outreach shouldn’t be used to simply obtain links from anywhere because low-quality backlinks can harm your pages and be perceived as spam.

For instance, if one of your sites receives a link from a reputable website like Wired, it gives those pages more authority and improves their ranking.

Analyze the backlinks that your rivals may be using to boost their rankings and see if you can duplicate them. Are they receiving quality media connections or recommendations from a reputable group or entity?

Take notice of the websites that link to your rivals as they may link to you as well. You can always get in touch with them to discuss a new blog or guide that discusses a novel subject or a more effective method for obtaining backlinks.