The digital world is changing day by day and with that, there is fierce competition among the website’s to attain the top spot in Google’s SERP . So, it has become imperative to analyse our website competitor’s to find some inputs that can serve us well in our overall marketing efforts. Website Competitor Analysis has essentially become one of the primary and fundamental components of all SEO optimization strategies across the world. We can also make use of a variety of website competitor analysis tools which can help us speed up our website SEO competitive analysis process.
Website SEO Competitor Analysis Process
So, let’s get started with our website competitor analysis process by following the below steps :
Identifying our Potential SEO Competitors
To do a competitive analysis, we need to understand who our potential competitors are .The first process in any SEO competitor analysis process is to identify our potential SEO competitors. We can identify our potential competitor in many ways. Some of the ways to identify our potential competitors are:
- We can type related: www.oursite.com in the search query box . Google will return all possible websites related to the particular site.
- We can check LinkedIn to see which other website is recommended by LinkedIn in the ‘People also Viewed’ section.
- We can also use competitor analysis tools like SEMrush. SEMrush has an organic competitor feature which can be useful in identifying potential competitors of our website.
Validating our Website SEO Competitors
After identifying our potential competitor, we can validate and make sure them to be our competitors. This can be done by checking whether the competitor is actually ranking for our targeted keywords and to what extent. The competitors who are ranking most times for our targeted keyword can be validated to be our sure competitors.
Comparing Competitor to find Insights
After validating our competitor ,we can find what is that our competitor is doing online. It might be checking their website content marketing strategy or checking what type of social media post they post online.
We can simply go through their website to know more about their content, their blog post, their overall website design and their website structure.
Some other options that can be explored to gather information about our competitor are by typing the following in the search box with our competitor site:
- Whois www.competitorsite.com
- Inurl: www.competitorsite.com inurl: webalizer
- Inurl:www.competitorsite.com inurl:logs
- Inurl:www.competitorsite.com inurl:stats
- Inurl:www.competitorsite .com filetype:pdf
- Inurl:www.competitorsite.com filetype:doc
- Inurl:www.competitorsite.com filetype:txt
- Inurl: www.competitorsite.com filetype:xls
Likewise , We can also check competitors blog and social media pages to collect more information about our competitor.
Check for Competitor’s Keywords
At this point we know who are our competitors and have validated and found some necessary information about them ,now we need to find their main targeted keywords .Here we can use competitor website analysis tools like SEMrush to check for the main keywords targeted by our competitor . We can check for all possible keywords for which our competitor is ranking and accordingly form our bucket list of keywords that can be targeted on our own website.
Detail Website Analysis of our Competitor
After analysing the keywords, we can perform a detail website analysis for our competitor.
Some of the things we need to analyse are :
- Homepage – How does the home page explain the whole website? What information is provided on the home page which helps us understand what the website is all about ? Is the home page flashy or rich in text content ? What is the page load time of the homepage ?
- Site organization and Architecture – How are the main tabs of the website and their accessibility? How is the URL structure of the website? How is the call to action in the website pages?
- Navigation structure – How the website’s main pages are made accessible from every other page of the website ? How is website navigation made easier in competitor’s website ?
- Performance – How the competitor’s managed the pages containing graphics and multimedia applications load easily in their website .
Check for other SEO factors
We can check for other SEO factors for which our competitor is ranking. It can help us implement the same on our website too .We can check for other relevant factors like competitor’s Page Authority , Domain Authority, and other relevant SEO factors.
Content Analysis of our SEO Competitors
Here we should analyse the competitor’s content, its readability, font size,word count and overall user experience. We can also analyse how in-depth the content has been created. How is the content targeted to our niche market and niche audience? How are the keywords used in the website pages helping to boost ranking?
Check for Competitor’s Backlink Profile
To know the backlink profiles of the competitor, we can use website analysis tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer . The backlink profiles of the competitor prove extremely helpful in our website’s SEO analysis process. Check for competitor’s backlinks, their anchor text, and their origin. Check from where are the competitors links coming from ,we might find some popular sites who can be contacted for links
Competitor’s Social Media Presence and Blog Strategy
To check what social content they are posting, we can visit their social profiles and check their social media post. Similarly, we can visit their blog pages to know more about their blog strategy as to what content they are posting, the frequency of their blog post etc. We can check competitor’s social media presence, their recent post and from which all platform the competitor is getting social media links. We can check their social media engagement to create a reference point for our social media marketing process.
Website Goals of the Competitor
By analysing goals of our competitor , we can analyse which goals are we missing and accordingly reset our own goal . We can understand which audience are they targeting and accordingly choose and pick our target audience.
Website SEO Competitor Analysis Process in brief :
- Identifying our Potential SEO Competitors
- Validating our Website Competitors
- Comparing Competitor to find Insights
- Check for Competitor’s Keywords
- Detail Website Analysis of our Competitor
- Check for other SEO factors
- Content Analysis of our Competitor
- Check for Competitor’s Backlink Profile
- Check for Competitor’s Social Media Presence and Blog Strategy
- Check for Website Goals of the Competitor
Conclusion
Website Competitor Analysis is an ongoing process which needs to be included in every stage of our website optimization process. A proper competitor analysis of the website will always lead us to some valuable insights for our overall SEO optimization process. Such insights have the potential to exponentially change our sales and conversion metrics and bring a positive impact on our overall sales cycle.
If you are looking for any kind of SEO Services in Kerala then feel free to get in touch with us.
If the above process proved helpful in analysing your website competitor then do share your comments and opinions in our comment section below.
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