How to Do an SEO Competitive Analysis?
Congratulations! Your website has ranked number one for a certain keyword. Now that your business is receiving so many targeted visitors, it’s time to consider the long-term strategy. If you want to stay on top of your industry, you’re going to need a comprehensive SEO competitive analysis program.
If you want to grow your business, you need to compete – and win. If a competitor ranks higher than you for a keyword, they will get the traffic and sales. The good news is that it’s possible to outrank them by keeping up with the latest trends in SEO.
Proper SEO competitive analysis is the key to staying ahead of the competition. SEO competitive analysis tools allow you to constantly monitor your website’s performance and identify problems that could threaten its ranking. In addition, they let you see which SEO strategies work well and which ones should be refined or avoided altogether.
Know Your Competitor
The first step of the SEO competitive analysis checklist is to take a look at what keywords your competitors are targeting. Make a list of your top 5 competitors and do a comprehensive check of their keywords. When you research your competitors, try to focus on websites that rank highly or often for your main target keywords and any significant additional keywords. Along with the competitor’s URL and their ranking for the top search terms, write down the goals and objectives of their website.
Determine Which Sites to Compare
You may not be trying to outrank every site in the SERP, but it is essential to try to outrank your true competitors. However, not every website that ranks above your website is an outright competitor. For example, you can hardly consider Wikipedia to be a direct competitor. Such sites are different enough in their respective niches to compete with each other in terms of rankings.
We should instead focus on how we can provide value to our customers. Determine which sites to compare based on the following factors:
- Resources available
- Time investment needed by the seller
- Current ranking in SERP
These factors help you identify the websites that are causing you to lose the most traffic.
Evaluate Your Competitors’ Top Pages
Identify your competitors’ most popular pages by looking at their sites in a web browser. The SEO Competitive Analysis here includes the pages that rank for the most keywords, the pages with the heaviest traffic and the pages with the biggest percentage of traffic.
The competitor analysis is an important part of any SEO campaign, but you may not be aware of all the information you need to gather. Never assume that you know all the most popular pages on your competitor’s site (or any other site). Evaluating your competitor’s top pages is part of the competitive analysis process and can uncover some surprises.
Know the Keyword Gaps
Look at the keywords you already rank for, but not as well as your competitors. Take particular note of keywords where you are only a few spots away from being number one, or even just behind the primary competitor. Your competitor is likely to outrank you in many keywords, with certain keywords even just one position ahead.
Pay attention to the keywords you don’t rank for at all and consider if there’s a way to get more traffic from them, such as deciding which content you should create to improve your rankings.
Keep Tabs on Your Progress
Having a strong SEO strategy is integral to having a successful website. But in order to know whether your SEO Competitive Analysis strategy is working, you need to track it. Regular keyword audits and competitor analysis reports will help you understand how well you are performing in the search engines and highlight weak points in your overall SEO strategy. You can also check competitor analysis SEO reports to see how well you stack up against the competition.
Use a keyword optimization tool to check the performance of your new content, as well as old ones. You can also keep track of how your content is performing over time by comparing it against other pages in your account. This can help you determine whether or not changing your approach will result in a higher ranking.
Seek Expert Assistance for Your SEO Competitive Analysis
Whether you’re looking to generate leads or rank on the first page of search engine results, SEO Consultants will help you drive more traffic from the major search engines. We are a leading local SEO company in Singapore that consistently uses well-designed global SEO practices. We are committed to having you ranked on page 1.