Here’s Why You Need SEO Competitor Analysis Services
A comprehensive guide to SEO Competitor Analysis Services. Learn what they are and how they can help you improve your website visibility and rankings.
May 29, 2023
Introduction
Are you looking for an effective way to measure your organization's search engine and digital marketing performance against key competitors?
If so, expert SEO competitor analysis services are the perfect solution.
According to a study from Ahrefs, over 90 percent of web pages do not get any organic traffic. That statistic alone is why SEO competitor analysis is essential for businesses that need an edge in their industry.
Competitor research and analysis services help brands discover what tactics other companies are using and how they are being used to succeed online. Business leadership and marketing teams can then leverage that knowledge to improve their digital marketing strategies.
In this post, I will explore SEO competitor analysis in more depth and how you can use it to improve your brand's online authority, website visibility, and search engine rankings.
SEO Competitor Analysis Defined
Competitor analysis strategy consists of researching and comparing websites that compete with yours, placing an emphasis on design features and other elements like funnel content, backlinks, and organic search traffic patterns.
The results are usually delivered in a report that shows the client what strategies competitive sites are using so they can apply them to their own websites and SEO campaigns. This information is also incredibly useful for marketing teams because it eliminates much of the guesswork associated with planning content marketing.
To make the task more efficient, the auditor or consultant performing the service uses industry-standard tools to collect large amounts of data quickly and to organize it into a final report.
The Benefits of SEO Competitive Analysis Services
To gain a competitive advantage, businesses of all sizes need to understand what other brands in their industry are doing strategically. Analyzing competitor sites can reveal how other companies in your sector position themselves and what they are doing to get ranked on search engines. By understanding what works for multiple competitors—from keyword selection to page structure and content optimization—you can increase your chances of outperforming them online.
SEO competitive analysis services also provide additional insight into customer behavior and how it has changed over time, as well as trends related to popular content topics in your industry. This type of reconnaissance keeps brands up to date on the market environment and customer preferences, which will help them develop digital marketing strategies to increase visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Insights from an analysis help you craft content that drives more organic traffic to your website. This can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, or any other type of content relevant to your industry. You'll find out what website and advertising conversion tactics work best so you can generate customer engagement.
SEO Audit and Digital Marketing Campaign Analysis Steps
In the sections that follow, I will summarize the analysis process, which begins with an SEO audit. If you would like more details, please contact us and we will be glad to provide more information.
SEO Audit
Optimizing your website's performance and visibility are key in competing in search engine results. An SEO audit will pinpoint technical issues, errors, and other areas that need improvement. This includes testing and reviewing loading speed, page structure, meta tags, and content keyword density.
With this data, we can show you how to optimize your website for better performance and greater visibility. SEO audits also provide explicit details that uncover ranking opportunities your company may have been missing.
An SEO audit should be part of a routine digital growth strategy. So, if you have not performed an audit on your website in the last six months, now is the time.
Identify Your Competitors
The next step in the analysis process is to identify who your true competitors are. You can’t assume that all websites ranking higher than yours for a specific keyword are your primary competitors. To analyze and compare organic competitors, you must research multiple keywords related to your brand, product, or service.
For example, a bakery in New York that wants to rank for "best bread in New York" is competing against other bakeries. But if they publish a helpful how-to blog on their website, the competition on search engines will be much stiffer since big brands like the Food Network will compete for that term as well.
A company operating in multiple niches may have unique competitors for each niche instead of a short list of broad market competitors. To find out who your biggest competitors are, look up top keywords related to your company and make a list of the major contenders.
You can also do this using competitor analysis tools. A tool like WebCEO will help you develop a list of websites that appear regularly in the top 10 or 20 rankings for each keyword.
For instance, if you offer a pet grooming service and input “pet grooming” into Google, American Kennel Club will show up as one of the top performers, even though it is not in the pet grooming industry. Therefore, you must perform several searches to get an accurate list of competitors.
SEO tools with a suite of advanced features make identifying competitors and analyzing data less time consuming. So, if you want to take your digital strategy to the next level, consider investing in a premium tool like SEMRush, WebCEO, or Ahrefs.
The Brand Auditors uses the best SEO competitor analysis tools on the market. I will cover some of them in a section that follows.
Audit Site Structure and UI/UX
Most of our brand audit clients want to optimize their websites for customer engagement and conversions. That is why we include a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) audit as part of our SEO competitor analysis service.
If you are serious about getting ahead of your digital competitors, you need to examine the structure, UI, and UX of their sites. Google has made it a priority to improve the user experience. So, you must account for this, or your investment in SEO could be wasted.
You should review your sitemap for crawlability, optimize page speed (especially on high-value landing pages), and explore how well your website converts visitors throughout the customer journey. Keep in mind that you must always take searcher intent into account when building out elements of your website. This approach ensures the best user experience possible.
Finally, it is helpful to analyze the click depth and page ranks of competitor websites. This will show you what they have done differently that has resulted in elevated visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Analyze On-Page Optimization
When conducting a competitor SEO analysis, it is essential to analyze a competing website's top-performing pages. By looking at their content, you can find keywords they are using. This process is known as keyword gap analysis. You can use Ahrefs' Content Gap feature to identify keywords the competition is using to rank.
By uncovering relevant keywords, you can determine what new content to add to your site. This gives you an opportunity to funnel some of your competitors' organic traffic to your site. To do this, you must explore how to use on-page optimization to optimize title tags, meta descriptions, and page content.
With the right analysis tool, you can uncover your competitors' content creation and marketing strategy. This includes information such as how often they are publishing content, the type of content and media they create, video length, and more. All of these are important search engine ranking factors.
By studying their internal linking strategies and other on-site SEO elements, you can learn what competitors are doing well and where they are missing the mark in order to come up with a better approach. Pay attention to topical relevance, depth of detail covered, and media to see if there are any valuable takeaways that might apply to you.
Focus on Keywords with High ROI
It is important to focus on keywords for SEO that offer a high return-on-investment (ROI). While some large businesses may rank for dozens of top competitive keywords, this does not mean you should compete for the same terms.
Look for keyword opportunities that will yield more profit and revenue for your business. For example, if you own a pet shop business, competing for “best dog keychains” might not be profitable. Instead, focus on those areas that will make you more money. Think about your high-profile product or service and use keyword research to find the ones with higher ROI potential.
A successful SEO campaign also involves identifying the gap between what your competitors are providing and what customers are looking for. Then you can take steps to fill in any disconnects.
Create content specifically tailored toward your customer base that is not only unique but relevant as well. One way to do this is by developing content that answers frequently asked questions. Doing so will help set your brand apart from other competitors as eager customers flock to discover niche information from reliable sources like yourself.
The Brand Auditors can help you leverage competitor analysis to develop a better content marketing strategy. Get in touch with us to find out how.
Dig Into Competitor Backlink Profiles
Competitor backlinking is a great way to increase your website's organic search engine rankings and gain an understanding of the link building strategies used by your business competitors. By performing a thorough analysis of the backlinks that are pointing to competing websites, you can get a better sense of the number and quality of backlinks needed to rank well in the SERPs. You can identify the websites that link to a certain type of website within your vertical search.
With competitor backlinking, you have access to valuable insights on not only how you should build links but also who should link to you. Dissecting the website backlinks of your rivals is a great way to unearth new link opportunities — something that is virtually impossible to do on your own without using a robust SEO tool.
Interpreting the SEO Competitor Analysis Report
Interpreting an SEO competitor analysis report can be a daunting task, but it is a critical step in assessing your online presence. With this report, you will be privy to valuable data from your competitors that you may not have access to regularly.
The report discloses information on website traffic, popular keywords, and search engine rankings, and more. This information gives you insight into the keywords competitors are using to draw visitors and how their content works for SEO purposes. The analysis could reveal areas of improvement on your own website, such as updating page meta tags, correcting technical errors that affect performance, or refining images.
This data also helps you create highly targeted campaigns to increase visibility and greater reach with potential customers.
Battling businesses with more brand authority can appear overwhelming without a competitive analysis in place. However, the analysis report ensures that you have all the facts at hand needed to beat them at their own game.
Track Your Progress
Once you have implemented the recommendations and improvements to your SEO strategy, assessing performance should be one of your key priorities. We recommend conducting regular keyword audits at least once per quarter to check the effectiveness of your competitive analysis strategy.
Fortunately, there are tools available that will help you with this process. By leveraging Ahrefs’ free SEO tool (or your tool of choice), you can easily uncover insights which will give you a better understanding of how well your competitors are performing for specific target keywords.
Competitive Analysis Tools
Competitive Analysis Tools have become an invaluable resource for SEO professionals. The tools allow you to identify and analyze the SEO strategies of your competitors, helping you understand how to best optimize your own SEO campaigns.
Here are some of our favorites:
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best competitive analysis tools on the market, offering an abundance of features that allow you to gain insights into your competitors and improve visibility in SERPs.
You can use this platform to conduct keyword research, analyze backlink profiles, track rankings over time, monitor brand mentions, and much more. The data-driven insights provided by Ahrefs allow you to get a better understanding of your own site, as well as those of your competitors, giving you greater control over promoting your services and products.
Google Alerts is a fantastic free service offered by the tech giant. It allows users to track their competitors' digital activity and analyze their SEO strategies. For anyone looking to get ahead of the competition, this tool is invaluable.
With Google Alerts, you can set up multiple custom alerts for any keyword or phrase related to your industry. Whenever new content appears that matches your criteria, you will receive a link in an email update. This helps ensure you are always aware of current trends and have the latest to inform future content marketing decisions.
Similar Web
Similar Web offers a suite of competitive analysis tools designed to allow businesses to gain insights into their competition. With its proprietary technology, you can gain access to total visits, page views per visit and average time spent on a website that your competitors are receiving. It also provides product comparison reports showing how products from other players in the market to compare with yours in terms of popularity and performance among consumers.
This comprehensive platform even lets you track online campaigns directly so you can measure the success rate of your marketing efforts against your competitors.
SEMRush
SEMRush includes powerful tools that allow you to track and report your competitors' progress. You can use these tools to identify opportunities for improving website rankings such as organic search, paid search, link building, content marketing, technical SEO, local SEO, and more. The keyword research and position tracking capabilities can help you determine the best strategy to build new links or strengthen existing ones.
MOZ
Moz provides users with a suite of competitive analysis tools that enable them to evaluate how they stand up against other websites. With these powerful tools, users can gain valuable insights into what works best for them and identify areas in need of improvement.
The competitive analysis tools allow users to track which keywords are giving the best return on investment and gain an understanding of their website's visibility compared to their organic competitors. In addition, Moz provides on-page optimization tools so users can ensure the quality of their website content is up to standard.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog will provide the insights such as page speed, meta information, text analysis, status codes, heading tags, images, and other components required for a top-ranking position. Plus, their user-friendly interface provides comprehensive data, which makes it an absolute must-have for any digital marketer.
Serpstat
Serpstat offers a convenient, easy-to-use interface with all the features you need to monitor your competitors in one place. Through insights into their strategies and traffic estimates, users can develop an effective SEO strategy for their website.
The platform's recently launched SEO Suite enables automated long tail keyword tracking and backlink monitoring. Users can also sync up various web analytics integrations to get a full picture of their competitor's performance.
How Much Do SEO Competitor Analysis Services Cost?
The Brand Auditors offers services for a competitive price starting at $3,000. The comprehensive analysis provides valuable insight into three of your biggest Google organic competitors.
This package includes detailed data from keyword gap analysis and link building metrics to conversion rate optimization strategies and content marketing strategies that make these competitors successful. In addition, The Brand Auditor’s report will give you actionable advice on how to overtake them, with short and long-term recommendations for increasing market share.
The customized analyses rely heavily on human processes rather than software, which allows The Brand Auditors to drill down and provide meaningful insights into competition. They can also conduct in-depth analysis of additional competitors for an extra fee.
With four weeks’ turnaround time, you will have a strategy that guides you exactly where and how to compete in your chosen fields so that you can dominate the competition.
Conclusion
A comprehensive SEO competitor analysis can help you identify the steps you need to take to rank in the search engine results pages. By leveraging competitor insights and trends, you can improve ROI on your search engine marketing efforts.
The Brand Auditors can work with your team to develop specific strategies designed to help your brand stay ahead of the competition.
If you have questions or would like to know more about The Brand Auditors competitive analysis services, email me personally at [email protected].
Until next time,
Chris
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