Understanding your competitor’s SEO strategy is a sure way to get ahead of them in the SERPs. Most of your competitor’s information and data can be found in tools all over the net. My favorites to use are SEMRush.com and Spyfu.com. These tools provide an easy way to find out exactly what your competitors are up to. In this post, I’ll provide some key competitor SEO analytics to review to in turn improve your own SEO strategy.
Competitor SEO Analysis
SEO Competitor Analysis #1: Check your competitor’s SEO keywords.
In the world of SEO, the keyword is king. So knowing the very best SEO keywords to target on your site is essential. In the same regard, knowing the keywords of your competition is just as crucial. The beauty of digging into competitor SEO keywords is that you can uncover that you weren’t targeting and boost your ROI.
Keep in mind that any SEO keywords you discover can be used for your own SEO, Google Ads, and PLA campaigns.
SEO Competitor Analysis #2: Check for backlinks.
To uncover backlink opportunities that you may be missing, conduct an in-depth analysis of your competitor’s backlinks. Are your competitors featured on a “Top 100 websites for ….” list? Are they getting great coverage from a blog that discusses your industry? Whatever the links are, theirs bound to be a website that should be linking to you as well. Finding and evaluating websites linking to your competitors opens the door for a chance to build new links for yourself. After you’ve built out a list of domains to target in your link-building campaigns, reach out to those sites to be featured or added.
PRO TIP: Uncover link-building opportunities by watching your rivals’ lost links.
SEO Competitor Analysis #3: Check out their website content.
Content is king! Yes, I know previously in this same post I said keywords are king, but having more than one king never killed anyone.
This is one of the easiest ways to get a leg up on your competitor’s SEO strategy. In doing this, you want to check for these three things:
- Content uniqueness
- Length
- How the keywords are utilized
A simple example of this is to review the website’s blog (if they don’t have a blog and you do, then you are WAY ahead of the game). If they’ve written a post on “how to build a bike”, take that as an opportunity to create more unique content based on that same premise; “how to build a 10-speed bike” or “where to buy a 10-speed bike”.
SEO Competitor Analysis #4: Review their social media.
Social media is a gold mine for improving your website SEO and your competitors know that too. Monitor your competitors’ social media activities to see how they engage with users and what type of responses they receive from their followers. Also, scour through their content and examine your competitors’ top-performing content to enhance your own strategy. To keep up to date with the posts and promotions coming from your competitors, follow their accounts.
Creating a successful Competitor SEO Analysis requires identifying your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Leveraging those two different attributes can allow you to stay abreast of opportunities and keep you ahead of the pack.