Let us first know what does competitive analysis refer to? Every business has got its own competition starting from local-made products to technology services. And, competitors are those who provide similar services and products in your same locality and even in different geographies. Analyzing about them, their strategies, their methodology and much more called as ‘Competitive Analysis’, otherwise termed as ‘Competitor Analysis’
Why do we need Competitor Analysis?
As far I know, competitor analysis is always a tool for developing our own business. It provides space for development, enhances our ideas, makes us to think different, boost us to go extra milestone from our competition. In-short, a positive vibe for growth!
And in SEO,
Competitor Analysis in SEO is very important and very much required to get the insights. It helps to keep track of – what keywords the competitors use, how often they update their content, what is their current SEO strategy, in which digital medium they market themselves, how they market and what is the gap found in their SEO marketing? By collecting data, the other player in the market can develop his strategy based on this and provide a unique service filling up the gaps found in their competition.
How to do SEO competitor analysis?
Identify your competition – Well, this is kind of tough task until and unless you have a clear picture about your own services and products. Use your business driven keywords/target keywords, find your competition that ranks for your set of keywords. You can consider them as Tier 1 competition that is your main competitors. On the other hand, companies that are in your same industry, but provide a different service. They are your Tier 2 competition, actually you don’t need to work on them, but it is better to follow them to know what’s going on with the industry. This is something about ‘Competitive Intelligence’.
Analyze your competition in these verticals:
Market Share & Domain Authority – Analyze their market share, their domain authority and evaluate their history.
SEO Keywords – Track their keywords that bring potential visits, how they used those keywords in their website, where they focused to use them – whether they have written a new topic over the target keywords or within the existing content or meta data etc.,
Backlinks – Check their backlinks, what are the sites/directories they tied up with and analyze whether they are quality backlinks and you have benefits getting links from those profiles.
Content Audit – Audit the website about how often they refresh their content, how often their blog posts gets updated, their trending topics.
Social Networks – Monitor how strong is their social presence and how well they use it. Make a list of social networks they are into and which social channels they prioritize for their marketing efforts.
Other Digital Mediums – Have a check what are the other digital mediums they are using for their marketing efforts, like – PPC Adwords, Influencer Marketing, Email Marketing, Guest Blogging etc.,
Examine Reputation – Examine their reputation online and how they manage it. For example, reviews about your competitor online, positive or negative vibes and their response to them.
Convert Collected Data into Actionable Insights – By getting data from all these above mentioned points, convert those data into actionable strategies. Evaluate their strength and weakness, find their gaps, make an opportunity for you to overcome their gaps and create a right strategy to provide your services and highlight how you differ from your competition.
Repeat – Repeat this competitor analysis whenever necessary in regular intervals.
Here is the list of cool tools I use for doing my SEO competitor analysis:
https://www.spyfu.com/
https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/
Would you like to get more info on competitor analysis? Just, write to us, we will get back to you.
