How To Conduct Competitive SEO Analysis For Businesses

In today’s digital market, organic search is typically one of the most significant avenues for bringing quality visitors and consumers to your organization. Ranking high in search engines and defeating the competition should be a primary focus. That’s why frequently undertaking competitive SEO research is a strategic imperative for every developing firm. 

By deeply examining your top 3-5 competitors, you gain invaluable intel that allows you to identify optimization weaknesses and gaps to improve upon, uncover new keyword targets to go after, model successful tactics being used, and derive insights that will fuel your own SEO and content strategies moving forward.

Dedicate time each quarter to properly examine rivals’ sites, content, and performance statistics. In this post, we will discuss best practices for picking rivals, obtaining knowledge across important SEO variables, generating actionable insights, and developing an educated approach. With the correct competition research technique, you may uncover big possibilities that eventually increase your organic presence, revenue, and brand authority in your market.

Select the Right Competitors

The first step is identifying the top rivals to evaluate. Rather of looking at the industry leaders in your sector, find 3-5 direct rivals that you consistently battle with for the same search rankings and traffic. 

Ideally, identify companies targeting the same client profiles, meeting similar needs, and providing equivalent goods or services as you. Companies that are vigorously fighting with you for top SERP rankings on high-value, priority keywords constitute the greatest candidates for study.

For example, if you are a software firm focusing in project management solutions for agencies, your key rivals would include applications like Asana, Teamwork, Wrike, Smartsheet, etc. Analyzing an indirect rival like Basecamp may not yield significant or strategic information in this scenario.

Really get into the thoughts of leadership at your rivals’ firms. Study their company structures, competitive strategies and objectives, pricing, target customer profiles, marketing tactics, and brand message. The more you grasp their aims and can mimic their thinking process, the more you can utilize competitive intelligence to augment your own strategy.

Quickly looking at rivals’ organic keywords and traffic metrics offers an incomplete picture. You need to go further into the important data and connect the dots on why and how they are doing well in SEO, where weaknesses may exist, and what strategic actions they are undertaking.

Research Core SEO Metrics and Data Points

Now comes the fun part – digging into the SEO data! A range of free and paid tools exist to support competitor research, including:

– SEMrush

– Ahrefs 

– Moz Pro

– SimilarWeb

– Screaming Frog

– Google Analytics

– Google Search Console

– Google Trends

Don’t attempt to obtain every single data item on rivals from the outset. You will experience analysis paralysis. Instead, concentrate your study on fundamental SEO KPIs and benchmarks connected to your strategic objectives. For most firms, we suggest analyzing:

Organic Keyword Rankings

Uncover where rivals already rank for your common goal phrases. Importing your top keywords into rank monitoring software will provide their current position for each. Look for patterns and repeated themes. For instance, does one player dominate ranks for commercial phrases but behind on more informative queries?

Organic Traffic 

Review estimated visitors generated by organic search month-over-month and YoY. Watch for extreme changes that might signify modifications in approach like link-building efforts, technical SEO corrections, or potentially even penalties. Benchmark competitor’s traffic versus your own targets.

Top Landing Pages

Take notice of the exact sites garnering traffic for goal keywords. What content forms or topics perform best? How does their on-page SEO and UX design compare to yours? Identify qualities to imitate.

Referral Traffic

Referral traffic gives signals about successful collaborations, influencer marketing activities, and PR triumphs rivals are employing to gain visitors. Make a list of sites usually referring to traffic to dig down later.

Link Building Tactics

Evaluate links connecting to rivals’ sites by examining the kinds (directories, guest posts), relevance, authority, and anchor text patterns that emerge. Could you explore similar link-building outreach and partnerships?

Ad Spend 

Estimates of rivals’ PPC spending may be determined using services like SEMrush and SpyFu. If expenditure is growing, it frequently shows a great purpose to control your sector.

Keyword Gaps

Find three to five target keywords you rank highly for that rivals have not cracked yet. Should you adjust attention to protect and generate content around these less competitive terms? 

By monitoring the indicators above over time, you develop an SEO performance baseline to guide choices. Next we’ll explore auditing essential on-page characteristics.

Audit On-Page SEO Elements

Now that you have the big-picture data points, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and personally analyze rivals’ on-page SEO aspects more deeply. 

Specifically, you’ll want to review:

• Page titles and meta descriptions – Check target keywords’ formatting, length, and presence.
• Headers and header tags – Note structure and hierarchy, keyword optimization. 
• Image alt text – Assess relevancy and keyword integration.
• Site performance – Compare page load speeds on mobile versus desktop. Slow sites damage rankings.
• Mobile optimization – Note responsiveness, mobile layouts, and load speed.
• Schema markup – Scan for the right schema being utilized to help CTR and rich snippets.
• URL structures – Evaluate URL naming standards for clarity and efficiency.
• Internal linking – Check for obvious navigational linkages between relevant sites.
• Text types – Compare the utilization of long-form text, movies, and graphics to your content.

As you carefully evaluate these aspects, establish a spreadsheet of findings. Grade rivals on each element using a simple 1-10 scale to better visualize strengths and weaknesses relative to your site’s optimization state.

This audit exposes problems you can immediately improve upon with technical and content-based SEO solutions. But also discover places where rivals are thriving that you can replicate. For example, rival X may have flawlessly optimized page titles but you still battle with term cannibalization across pages.

Analyze Link Building and Acquisition

Link building remains one of the most essential rankings variables and indirect markers of overall SEO performance. When examining rivals’ backlink profiles, pay particular attention to:

• Total links and domain authority – More links from trustworthy, authoritative sites signify more trust and ranking potential. 
• Top link-earning pages – Determine which pages get the most high-value links to influence your content strategy.
• Main link sources – Evaluate the primary link sources (directories, guest articles, etc.) pushing connections to model what’s working through outreach.
• Anchor text patterns – Varied, relevant, natural-sounding anchor text is good against over-optimization. 
• Follow versus nofollow links – Generally, you want to see more follow links but check for context.
• Brand mentions – Links including rivals’ brand names suggest good awareness and trust.
• Competitor overlap – Compare common link sources to uncover new collaboration prospects.
• Link velocity – Steady, natural link growth trajectory is positive. Avoid huge spikes.

Backlink data offers both link building tactics to replicate and weaknesses to attack if you identify over-optimization dangers. Moz and Ahrefs are leading tools for link analysis.

Uncover SEO Gaps and Capitalize on Weaknesses

Now we approach the payout of competitive SEO study – finding optimization gaps, growth prospects, and vulnerabilities. 

By directly comparing competitors’ measurements and tactics to your own, you may answer questions like:

• Which keyword objectives should I strive for based on competitors’ deficiencies?
• What link building methods are they doing that I’m not yet implementing? 
• Where are rivals lagging behind in technical and on-page SEO?
• How can I design content that better draws backlinks and engagement?
• What SEO or UX problems are impacting rivals that I can improve upon?
• How much traffic might I actually get by fixing certain optimization gaps?

Any SEO inadequacies, weaknesses, and holes you uncover are ideal chances to explore in your plan. Improving upon recognized flaws where rivals lag behind may lead to victories in better rankings, greater organic traffic, and additional income.

Say you observe that a big rival does not optimize their blog content for long-tail informative keywords. You might investigate and target low competition phrases around subjects they cover but lack relevant material for. Or suppose observing a rival utilizes faulty Hreflang markup on their foreign sites, significantly harming international SEO. By adopting correct Hreflang yourself, you obtain an edge in global marketplaces.

Turn vulnerabilities into strategic initiatives for your team. Even small SEO adjustments might have outsized effect when rivals falter.

Track and Monitor Ranking Trends 

The last step of doing competitive SEO analysis requires monitoring keyword rankings consistently over time. Use rank tracking tools to monitor changes weekly or monthly. Keep an eye out for:

• Positive momentum if you’re accumulating ranks versus rivals
• Volatility signaling algorithm changes or penalties 
• Opportunities to shoot competitors displaying decreases 

By combining rank monitoring with manual audits and metrics research each quarter, you identify patterns immediately. Look at both short and long-term posture changes. If a rival exhibits a consistent fall, it can represent technical concerns or loss of link power you can seize on before they recover.

Conclusion

Regular, detailed competitive SEO research should become embedded in your approach if you wish to surpass competitors in organic search. Dedicating time to fully analyze rivals utilizing data, tools, and audits delivers significant advantages, including:

• Directly finding optimization gaps to build upon
• Uncovering link-building and content methods to emulate
• Spotting algorithm risks and new keyword possibilities
• Providing strategic direction to projects 
• Keeping a pulse on market trends
• Motivating your staff with practical insights 

When implemented successfully, competitive research results into increased visibility, reduced cost per acquisition, and higher revenues produced by organic search over the months ahead. Set aside time each quarter to evaluate rivals, examine analytics, and transform shortcomings into your strategic advantages.

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