Competition drives us to make efforts. In Search Engine Optimization, competition matters a lot. We need to be very precise when it comes to competitive analysis in SEO.
Do you ever wonder that why your SEO strategy is inefficient? Why are you always at the back pages of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)? Did you ever analyse your results where you are lagging? If no, then it is the right time to go for it. You need to do a competitive analysis.
Might you be wondering?
What exactly you do in a competitive analysis! In order to improve your SEO strategy, there are certain steps which you need to perform when analysing your competition. In this post, I will give you some of the tenets that will help you to strategise your website’s SEO.
Before we jump off to the cliff, let’s have a look at these fact sheets.
Stats To Ponder
- 51% of total traffic arrives through organic searches.
- 81% of your total customers and 94% of your total B2B buyers perform online searches before making any type of purchases.
- When we talk about competition, SEO matters a lot.
What’s the bottom line:
The bottom line is that you need to have an SEO strategy that can really grab your target audience attention before your competition. You need to have a plan before you implement anything.
Let’s get right on track,
Types Of Competitive Analysis In SEO
When everyone talk about competition, they talk as if they know them perfectly. But isn’t that a misconception? (You tell me!!!) It is a misconception because there are so many facets that you overlook every time.
Let’s talk about two type of Competitive Analysis in SEO,
- The first type of analysis is always done in large scale. This step involves discovering your competitors and having the first look at their keywords, content strategies, and rankings. Maybe that competitor is not the one with the real estate equivalence but still giving you a solid competition in sales. This analysis will help you to bolster your SEO strategies.
- The second type of approach is more granular. It is an in detail analysis of every action of your competition. You can say, it is a web page-wise analysis where you analyse every aspect of their page ranking. How much lead it is generating and all.
Both of these analyses are important in terms of SEO strategies. Understanding the stand of your competitor can lead your SEO strategies to success.
In the following section, I will cover some of the best practices that will help you in your competitive analysis. Let’s start then,
Competitive Analysis: Work In Progress!!!
l Conduct A Wide Range Analysis Of Your Competitors
You need to look for overall success of your competitors online. Make use of an analytics tool to observe results about the keyword they rank on top. Then you can perform a simple keyword gap analysis. In this analysis, you will gather information about the keywords for which you are not ranking but they are. This will give you clear idea about how you can enhance your pages on those keywords.
l Take Milestones and Compare where you stand
Now, you need to analyse your website’s performance on your main set of keywords. You need to prioritize your keywords in accordance with your business KPIs (Key Performance Indicator). Benchmark some of your KPIs which have some resemblance to these tenets,
- Traffic Rank Globally: How much traffic your competitor is getting in a definite time frame? How this traffic perform in comparison to yours? If you are lagging here, you need to put extra efforts into your content distribution and creation.
- Google Performance: Do your competitors perform well in the search engine rankings? You can easily find how well they perform well and why you do not. With a simple software of competitive intelligence you can do that. Study the effects and create your own strategies.
- Website Reputation: This particular information tells you about how well their specific pages are performing and where your pages are lagging. Higher the quality of backlinks on your competitor’s website, higher their score will be. Then you can have a complete idea about how to make your web pages better in terms of reputation.
l Keep Your Eyes Open for What’s Changing
We all are aware of the fact that nowadays every major website is changing. They are changing because that is a need of an hour. You need to understand the changes your competitors are making. What changes are they making and why these changes are made.
- It is important to understand these points when you are working on your SEO competitive Intelligence,
- What exactly is paying off for your competitors?
- What new ideas and hypothesis they are trying and testing?
- Which content they are modifying and why?
By comparing these changes you can easily check whether you can get benefited with it or not.
In The End
So, analysing competitors can always provide you some wonderful insights about how you can approach in your SEO strategy.
You need to know exactly what you want to achieve from your SEO campaign and then put all your efforts strategically in the right direction. This not only saves time and money but also generate effective results for your business.
I hope you do like my post. Share it and spread the awareness. If you think I miss something, let me know via comments and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Till then, have a great day ahead.
Author Bio:
Sarah Clarke works as a writer for Media Fortress, an SEO Agency offering cost effective search engine optimisation services in Perth. She is a web addict and spends too much time in front of the computer. When she actually manages to get away for more than 10 minutes, she is usually reading books, traveling or shooting photos.