How to Conduct A Competitor Analysis for SEO: Step-by-Step Guide

In today's digital marketing landscape, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains still at the top. Most people say that this practice is now dead because of the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. But no, search engines never accept AI content as it doesn’t match human creativity. Thus, before starting this topic, we request you to connect with Favfly, the biggest SEO expert in Kolkata.

Having been in the business for several years, we have been rendering remarkable SEO services Kolkata without fail. In this guide, we’ll not only tell you about the latest SEO competitor analysis trends but also let you know how you can use them to beat your competitors effectively. Hence, keep following our SEO company in Kolkata to avail yourself of insightful content like this!

What is an SEO Competitive Analysis?

Competitive analysis in SEO is a strategic process that comprises analyzing and evaluating your competitors’ presence online and competitor website analysis. The objective for the same is to gain useful insights and implement them to make your marketing moves effective by improving them.

By conducting an efficient SEO competitive analysis, you can recognize your rival’s strengths and weaknesses, discover potential keywords, examine their backlink profiles, understand their content marketing game plans, and know about their overall SEO strategies. 

This competitor analysis for SEO helps you in the following ways:

• Benchmark your website against competitors.

• Identify areas that need to be improved.

• Come up with good strategies to leave your rivals begins in the results pages.

• Increases your organic traffic.

• Helps you stay updated with the latest trends and technologies and leave obsolete methods behind.

• Ultimately driving more sales.

Starting the Competitor Analysis for SEO

1. Find Your Competitors for Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Before you start your SEO competitor audit, you first need to know who your rivals are and what their website looks like. Here are a few easy peasy steps to follow for the same:

2. Google the Targeted Keywords

Your competitors must have ranked for some relevant keywords and phrases. To find those, search for a targeted keyword, say “affordable cakes in Kolkata”. Look at the top 4-5 websites ranked on the first page of Google. These are the websites that have applied the best competitor analysis for SEO. 

3. Select the Top-Ranking Websites 

Click on the website(s) and copy their link. For instance, copy the link of the website that you feel is the most relevant and paste its link into a keyword research tool. There are several keyword research and competitor analysis tools, such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, Moz, and so on,

The best free SEO analysis tools are available in both free and paid versions. To know more about keyword research techniques check our blog on Keyword Research: How to Do It, Tips, Tools & Examples.

4. Select Your Target Market

Suppose your targeted segment of the audience is located only in Kolkata, which lies in India. So, take an example of a tool called SEMrush. After pasting the competitor’s website link in the box, select your target market (India, in this case) and your preferred language (American English or British English). Then, click on ‘search’. 

Then, scroll to the “Main Organic Competitors” section of the page. You’ll see a range of relevant websites ranked on the same keywords. Click on “View All Competitors” to see the complete list of your competitors based on effective competitive analysis for SEO. 

5. Consider a Specific Market Segment

Let’s say a company that is ranked well deals in hardware. However, the organic search results by the competitor research tool also show other stores that sell software, with the name of the same organization. 

In this scenario, click on the “Market Explorer Tool” to refine your competitors more broadly. Select the“Find Competitors” option, input the URL, and click “Research a Market”. Then, scroll to the “Growth Quadrant” chart and click on ‘search’ to see the refined competitors. 

6. Check Out the Four Main Categories of Competitors

The chart divides the competitor list into 4 main categories.

• Game Changers

These are emerging organizations with a smaller audience size but a quick rate of growth through competitor marketing strategy.

• Leaders

These have both a wider audience and a good growth rate.

• Established Players

These companies have a large segment of audience and a great growth rate as well.

• Niche Players

These companies are new in the market with a smaller size and a slow growth rate. 

The Market Explorer Tool also lets you view the rivals by scrolling to the “All Industry Domains” tab. Here, you can see whether you fit in among the different competitors of yours in terms of competitor analysis for SEO.

Types of Competitors to Not Select For the Best Competitor Analysis

Please note that every competitor that you come across won’t truly be your rival. For instance, don’t go for competitor research for sites like Wikipedia. These websites are more like an encyclopedia, and not your direct market competitors. 

Your real competitors are those who sell similar products or services as you do and have a good online presence. Additionally, you have a common audience. 

Finding and Closing Keyword Gaps

Keep an eye on the keywords that your competitors rank for but you don’t. You’ll have to conduct a great competitive analysis in SEO for the same. That’s a golden opportunity for you. You can use SEMrush’s tool for gap analysis for this. 

Open it and enter the example URL. You can also add up to 4 competitor URLs. Then, select “Compare”. Click on the “Missing” tab to analyze what keywords your rival brands rank for but you don’t. 

Conduct good keyword research with this SEO competitor analysis tool. Select the most appropriate ones that will make sense for your business. 

You’ll frequently need to use these key terms to create new pages. But, if you already have suitable existing pages based on these words, focus on improving their targeting of keywords. 

Recognize Strengths and Weaknesses

Every website has strengths and weaknesses. Find them by taking note of these factors.

1. Authority 

Authority is a criterion that runs on a scale from 0 to 100. It evaluates a site’s SEO performance and overall standard using a range of factors. The higher the grade, the better chance of higher rankings for relevant key terms. 

SEMrush’s tool for bulk analysis will analyze your authority score against your rivals. Enter the URLs and the competitor URLs (up to 200). Click on “Compare”. You’ll see a section “AS” that represents the Authority Score.

Build good quality backlinks to elevate your authority. These serve as the “Votes” of suitability and authority to Google crawlers. 

2. Content

SEO competitor research for content is also very useful in answering these questions.

• Do they post high-quality content?

• Are they working on only one type of niche or several?

• Do any related blogs appear to be thinner and less in-depth?

• Do they focus only on product sections rather than guides or tropical pages?

Check out each of your competitor’s content (At least 5-10) and take note of their strengths and weaknesses. 

You can copy their strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses. This competitor analysis SEO will make your content better. 

Open SEMrush and click on “+Create Project”. Input your URL and project name (project name is optional). Again, select “Create Project”. Then, select the subfolder you want to do an SEO competitor audit on. Finally, click on “Start Audit”. 

You can analyze the competitor seo tracking results by content sets. These divide the content by the type of changes needed as per the SEO competitor analysis report.

Select “Start Analyzing” to use the keyword competition analyzer for each piece of content individually. 

3. Technical SEO: The Best Competitor Analysis

Technical SEO is the market competitor analysis method of revamping a website for search engines and improving user experience. 

Again, SEMrush’s tool for site audit can evaluate the condition of your technical SEO compared with other brands.

You can always visit their official website to know more. Or, you can use any other competitor research tool that you like. We’ll here take an example of the SEMrush tool. 

Put up projects in the keyword research and competitor analysis tool for your competitor’s site and run crawl-based audits. 

Once the audits are done, you’ll see an outline of the technical fitness of each website indicated with the “Site Health Benchmark”. 

This yardstick measures the technical condition of the website on a scale from 0 to 100. It considers technical SEO issues that could hinder your growth. The higher the growth, the fewer the issues. 

Click on the “Issues” tab to see the competitor analysis for SEO errors. The free competitor analysis tools also explain how to fix them. Use these to regularly audit your website and compare your grade with that of your competitors. You’ll start to see the results. 

4. New Keyword Rankings

You must know if your competitors are targeting new keywords. Target the same keywords to uplift your SEO competitor analysis checklist. 

Use SEMrush’s organic research tool to discover the key terms your rivals are ranking for. 

For example, take the website favfly.com, which shares a common niche and audience with EstaGlobal.

Open the tool, enter the URL, and hit the “search” button. Then, scroll to the “Position Changes” tab and refine (filter) the reports to see only the refined keywords. Analyze competitor website traffic and each key term individually. Identify if you need to create new pages targeting the same words or phrases. 

Determining the type of page needed starts with taking into account your business focus and published pages currently ranking for your key term. 

For example, if you search for “SEO competitor analysis tools free”, the SERP is governed by blog posts and articles. 

To rank for this new phrase, you could design a high-quality blog post that helps visitors get access to a website competitor analysis tool, competitor traffic analysis instruments, competitive keyword research tool, and a range of other useful search results. 

Doing this skillfully is called matching search intent. 

Search intent is a purpose that a user wants to fulfill by searching for a query online, say, “competitor seo tracking”. 

For every new key term you want to target with your website, you must create relevant content to satisfy a user’s intent. 

5. Lost Keyword Rankings

When your rival has stopped ranking for a particular keyword(s), you could utilize that opportunity. SEMrush’s “Organic Research Tool” helps you find the lost keywords.

For instance, suppose your competitor has stopped ranking for “keyword gap analysis”. 

Open SEMrush, enter the URL, and hit the “Search” button. Then, click on the “Position Changes” tab. Apply these filters:

• Top 20 positions in the SERPs to see only the most applicable key phrases/terms. 

• Lost keywords to analyze where you can maximize.

There are plenty of reasons why a site can lose keywords. First and most important, Google updated its algorithm. 

Second, there must be an overstuffing of keywords which made Google penalize the website owner. 

If you already have pages targeting those key terms you find but still they’re not ranking well, use SEMrush’s “On Page SEO Checker” tool to review suggestions on how to optimize the page’s performance. You can also create new pages after thorough market competitor analysis that would serve a user’s search intent. 

Analyze on a Page-by-Page Basis

Attend the On-Page SEO Factors when undergoing an SEO competitor analysis template for pages. Keep an eye on the title tags of the competitor that outrank you. 

1. Title Tag

Take note of the competitors’ title tags that outrank you. When examining, ask yourself these questions.

• Do your competitors input keywords better than you?

• Do the targeted key terms appear at the near beginning of the title tags?

• Do they include special, click-persuading alterers such as “best”, “simple”, and “easy”?

Look at these keyword competition analyzer factors while crafting your SEO title tags for a better reach.

2. Meta Description Tags

The meta description doesn’t directly impact the search engine rankings. However, it’s a crucial factor in competitor analysis for SEO. These enhance click-through rates but unfortunately are often overlooked. 

Look at the meta descriptions written by your rivals and craft ones that are click-persuading.

3. Header Tags

Google gives great importance to <h> tags. Always use HTML <h> tags instead of determining headers via CSS. 

The Search Engines can also use these headings for featured snippets and other FAQ sections. Thus, these are a must in a competitor analysis SEO. 

Contrast your header tags against that of your rival brands as a part of competitor analysis for SEO. See the areas for improvement. 

For example, use the targeted keywords more naturally in your headings and subheadings (h, h2, h3) if your competitor is also doing the same. Don’t force stuff as it will only lead to penalizing your article. 

4. URL Structure

Compare your URL structure with that of your competitor in the search results. Ask yourself the following questions to inspect your competitor's marketing research.

• Do your competitors use shorter URL slugs?

• Do they better incorporate key terms in the URL?

• Do their URLs explain the page context?

If you notice they are doing anything positive, do the same. Improve your URL structures to elevate your SEO strategy. 

5. Content and Keywords 

Analyze your competitor’s content to see if

• Their writing is high quality.

• They use key terms and phrases throughout the page.

• They are using relevant transition words.

• Their readability score is higher than yours.

• They are using relevant secondary keywords also which you don’t.

Carry out this keyword competition analysis and improve your content accordingly. You can use SEMrush’s “SEO Content Template” and “SEO Writing Assistant” tools for these purposes. 

Suppose you want to create a blog on “best free SEO analysis tools”. Enter your keyword in the template and click on “Create Content Template”. You’ll see suggestions of your competitor’s content and semantically used keywords, particular domain listings you can build links from, readability information, and a lot more. 

As you start writing, the tool will provide real-time feedback on voice tone, competitor analysis for SEO, uniqueness, etc. 

6. Review Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that direct to your web pages. Analyzing these is an important factor in competitive analysis in SEO. Making high-quality backlinks that give tough competition to your rivals will elevate you higher in the results pages. At least design something similar to them so that you can differentiate between high-quality and low-quality ones. 

7. High-Quality Vs Low-Quality Backlinks 

Create high-quality backlinks, such as by government sites, news sites, or those well-ranked in your niche. 

Low-quality links emerge from private blogs, link farms, or junk email sites. These don’t boost your rankings, not at least for a long time. 

You can use SEMrush’s Backlink Analytics tool for effective competitor backlink inspection. 

Input a competitor’s URL and select “Analyze”. You’ll see an overview report containing all the data of your competitor’s backlink. From there, navigate to the “Backlinks” tab. Now, you can see all the backlinks directed to your rival’s site. 

While inspecting those, ask yourself these questions:

• Have they undergone press releases by major news channels?

• Are they well-established in your niche?

8. No Follow Vs. Do Follow Backlinks

You ideally need a lot of high-quality backlinks as they transmit page rank. 

No-follow links ask the Search Engine not to pass PageRank. However, they can still assist with referral traffic and various brand signals. 

These links shouldn’t be overlooked as they come from reputed sites. 

Open SEMrush where you can see your rival's do-follow backlinks and no-follow backlinks by tuning the “Follow” and “Nofollow” tabs in the backlink competitor analysis report. Both parts of this description can help you assess your competitor’s backlink profile. Ultimately, you get an idea of where to collect backlinks for your site through this competitor backlink analysis.

7.  Backlink Gaps

Backlink gap analysis discloses websites linking to competitors but not you. If your competitors are getting linked by someone, you can request for linking to your site too. 

You can use any other tool for reference. Here, we are taking SEMrush’s Backlink Gap tool as an example. 

Enter your URL and two or more of your rivals’ URLs. Select “Find Prospects”. 

You will see a list of website suggestions that link to your competitors but not you. 

8.  Analyze Content Types

Analyze your competitors’ content and ask yourself these questions.

• Are they publishing videos?

• Podcasts?

• Infographics?

For instance, if a competitor regularly posts videos on their YouTube channel but doesn’t get as much reach as they have to, possibly their platform isn’t optimized. 

Grab this opportunity and start your YouTube channel. Publish relevant and good-quality content.

If the Search Engine displays top search results for particular keywords (your top key terms), then your videos can get a good number of reaches and site authority. 

9. Grab Featured Snippets

Attend the SERP features, such as featured snippets, for which your rivals can rank. Try to create content for those as soon as possible for your website. 

You can use the “alsoasked.com” competitive keyword research tool or many other snippets that you’re comfortable using. 

Simply input your target keyword, say, “find competitor keywords” for example. Select your target market and language and click on the search option. You’ll see a range of high-ranking FAQs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, competitor analysis for SEO is an essential factor for ranking high in search results. You can develop an effective content marketing strategy by attending to the above guidelines and steps. 

Additionally, you can stay updated with the latest trends by utilizing these SEO steps in the best possible way. 

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