One of the most effective ways for brands to stay ahead of the curve is through competitor analysis.
If you want to get stuck in to competitor analysis but are left wondering where to start, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. In this blog post, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about competitor analysis to ensure your brand gets ahead of the competition. Without further ado, let’s jump in!
What is competitor analysis?
Before we delve in, it’s worth getting clear on what exactly competitor analysis is. Put simply, competitor analysis involves researching, analysing and evaluating your top competitors to gain a deep understanding of their strengths, weakness and key opportunities for your brand to take the lead. When it comes to competitor analysis in SEO, there are a few areas of significance. Identifying your keyword gap will be extremely important for you to understand the keyword opportunities available to your brand while your content gap can help to you identity popular user search queries related to your field, that you don’t currently have any content about.
Why is competitor analysis important for my ecommerce brand?
Competitor analysis is an excellent tool for ecommerce brands and for some, can feel like a secret weapon when it comes to driving organic traffic to your site. By understanding which keywords your competitors are ranking for, how they’re ranking for those keywords and getting to grips with the type of content they’re publishing, you can fine-tune your own SEO and content strategies to align with your goals and target audience.
5 tips for how to conduct competitor analysis
Now, it’s time for some practical tips on how to conduct competitor analysis for success! Whether you’re well-versed in the world of SEO or are just starting out, these tips can help you achieve your goals.
1. Identity your competitors: Identifying your key competitors is the first step in conducting successful competitor analysis. It’s a good idea to do some research surrounding your direct and indirect competitors, local and national competitors and conduct some market research to find those competitors you didn’t even know you had! Only when you’ve ascertained your top competitors can you begin to analyse competitor keywords.
2. Analyse their keyword rankings: Using keyword tracking tools such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs ad SEMrush, you can monitor your competitor website’s keyword rankings both globally and locally. Simply input your competitors’ domains to see what keywords they rank for as well as their ranking positions, search volume and organic traffic. You’ll need to make a list of of the top keywords they’re ranking for on Google as this will help you to understand which keywords are providing the most traffic to their site. Don’t forget to take a look at trends over time as if they’re rankings are dropping for a keyword, this could indicate a vulnerability and an opportunity for your website to create great content around that particular keyword.
3. Evaluate your content: Next, it’s time to evaluate your content. You’re looking to look for keywords that your competitors rank for, but you don’t. Once you’ve identified these gaps, you can develop a content strategy that centres around these keywords to reach your target audience and drive organic traffic to your website. Evaluating your content gap can not only allow you to discover previously missed opportunities, it can also help you to improve the relevance of your content by uncovering avenues that your target audience are actively seeking, but you’re currently unaware of.
4. Assess their on-page SEO tactics: Assessing your competitors on-page SEO tactics such as their mobile experience, meta descriptions, title tags, headings, whether blog posts are long-form, listicles and so on, will help you to understand the SEO tactics they’re employing to achieve their current rankings and direct organic traffic to their site.
5. Take a look at their backlinks: Gaining an understanding of your competitor’s backlink profile will enable you to see that website’s that have strong backlinks from well-regarded websites tend to rank higher than those without. Take a look at where their backlinks are coming from and work out ways in which you could work with similar websites or brands to help you achieve a stronger backlink profile.
And there you have it! 5 of our top tips for competitor analysis that will help you brand climb to the top of those pesky search engine results pages. Don’t forget, when you’re investing time and energy into SEO, it’s all about the long game. So keep a close eye on your competitors to ensure you’re always moving in the right direction and you’ll be reaping the rewards in no time at all.
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