Spy on the Competition with our SEO Competitor Analysis

If you're planning a new online venture or are frustrated with losing to your competitors in organic searches, you need to conduct an SEO Competitive Analysis. Your top competitors are a gold mine of information if you know where to look, and this can arm you with the intelligence needed to build out your SEO strategy and help increase your website's organic traffic.

At SEO Kangaroo, every decision we make is driven by data. We love it, and you should too. We use those facts and figures to make decisions that help drive your marketing Return On Investment (ROI) further than ever before. Every marketing strategy, including those for digital marketing, should always start with competitor analysis, and an SEO strategy is no different.

Before you invest in an SEO campaign, having a good understanding of the competitive landscape you are operating in is a must so you can feel confident in your SEO strategy.

In actual terms, performing an SEO Competitive Analysis lets you:

• Find out what works and what doesn't in your industry.
• Find your competitors' weaknesses and capitalize on them.
• Find your competitors' strengths and replicate them.
• Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward
• Finally, understanding how difficult outperforming your competitors in search engine results pages (SERP) will be.

If you're planning a new online venture or are frustrated with losing to your competitors in organic searches, you need to conduct an SEO Competitive Analysis. Your top competitors are a gold mine of information if you know where to look, and this can arm you with the intelligence needed to build out your SEO strategy and help increase your website's organic traffic.

Your offline and online competitors might not always be the same businesses. To start an analysis, you have to find those competitors who may provide the same products and services as you and those media and informational resources that occupy the first page of google for the keywords that your potential customers use to find your website.

So, what goes into an SEO Competitive Analysis? Here's a brief overview of the process.

Identifying your competitors is fairly straightforward. You may already know who they are. For SEO purposes, these competitors compete for your desired keywords in organic search results. Then comes the high-level view of your competitive landscape. We will check out a few metrics and stats to give us an idea of your competition's strengths.

Competitive Metrics:

• Domain Rating 
• Number of referring domains
• Estimated organic search traffic
• Estimated number of keyword rankings

The Analysis:

• A high Domain Rating indicates how strong a backlink profile is. It would help to judge your competitor's DR relative to your site. As a small business owner of a mechanical repair shop, comparing yourself to BMW USA is not fair, and they aren't your competitor.

• A high amount of Referring Domains can also indicate a site's strength unless a bunch of those links are low quality. Then, comparing this with the sites' DR can show the quality and quantity of links to that site.

• Organic Traffic and Keywords are obvious ones. The higher they are, the better the site performs in an organic search.

Link popularity is a significant SEO ranking factor, according to a study by Ahrefs. This makes it a prime target in our competitive analysis. The quality and quantity of links your competitor has been relative to its strength in search engine rankings.

Checking out the rate at which your competitor is acquiring new links gives you a rough target to aim for with your link-building strategy. Below are examples from 2 different Air Conditioning Repair businesses in Miami, Florida.

The Analysis:

Here are two examples of link building. Example 1 shows consistent somewhat very slow link building. Whereas in example 2, this shows negative growth until approximately April, where you can see that hockey stick growth that tapers off in July.

This hockey stick growth shows the competitor actively engaging in link building, which means they are determined to spend money on SEO to outrank their competitors.

Keywords are the key that unlocks your SEO success! Corny, I know, but it's true. First, you want to find out which keywords are currently driving all the organic traffic to your competitor's site. A good tip is to look at only the keywords your competitors rank for in the top 10 search results. Another tip is to filter out branded keywords.

Here's an example of an Automotive Repair business in Dallas, TX :

The Analysis:

The example above is filtered from highest to lowest based on the traffic each keyword generates for that site. The total volume listed is for all of the US. So let's review for any juicy keywords that might be worth targeting. Some of these might be worthwhile targeting as a standalone page, such as transmission service. That could encompass both #2 and #3 keywords. Whereas keywords #4, #6, #8, and #9 would make for better blog articles.

You also have to take into account the difficulty of that word. For example, the top keyword: spark plug, has a difficulty of 34. As per the pic above, it's estimated that for you to rank in the top 10 for that keyword, you need approximately 43 referring domains linked to it. Not difficult, but it can be time-consuming and expensive.

Content gaps are keywords your competitors rank for, but you don't. You need to fill that gap if you want to rank for those specific keywords. Therefore, we target the top 5 to 10 competitors you have chosen and check the keywords that at least one of those competitors rank for in the top 10 search results.

For example, I have chosen the top 5 google results for Personal Injury Lawyers in Salt Lake City, with Competitor number 5 representing your hypothetical business. These keywords are where your competitors rank in the Top 10 where you don't. Again, we have excluded branded keywords as they are mostly irrelevant to your business.

The Analysis:

There's some great opportunity to expand into those keywords listed for this Lawyer. Volumes are low, typical for a local service area, though keyword difficulty is also low. So there's an opportunity on both service pages for a few of those keywords and some long-form content in the form of blog articles that you could use to educate potential clients and build trust.

Like the content gap above, we want to find our competitors' top pages here. By finding out what their top pages are, we can figure out which of their articles are:

1. Ranking for a bunch of keywords and

2. pulling in a ton of traffic.

Then we can also target these topics with our articles and steal away some of that traffic. In the example, we will focus on searching for blog articles, though on some sites, blog articles are just listed as regular pages, so you have to be on the lookout for these.

Here's an example from the National Association of Realtors:

The Analysis:

As already discussed, pages on sites with many backlinks tend to rank high in organic searches and get most of the traffic. We want to look for pages with high traffic and low referring domains. These are opportunities for you to compete. For example, you could write a similar article and steal some of that traffic away. You don't need to be in first place in a SERP, but this will help you get onto the first page, at least.

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. Analyzing a competitor's PPC behavior can be very insightful when it comes to planning your own SEO strategy for one good reason: If your competitors are paying for traffic for specific keywords, then you can bet that keyword is profitable for them and worth paying for.

Here's an example of paid keywords for a Dentist in New York.

The Analysis:

The long-tail keyword "root canal dentist near me" generates the most traffic to their site at 13.45%. The cost per click (CPC) is $11. Compared to the others, this keyword generates the most volume, so it could be worthwhile competing if this is an offering within your business.

Each keyword needs to be examined for you to understand what's likely to convert the best. A word of warning about PPC: just because your competitor is spending cold hard cash on PPC ads doesn't mean they know what they're doing, so testing your keywords in a campaign is worthwhile.

What we covered above is only the tip of the iceberg regarding an SEO Competitor Analysis. Knowing what your competition is up to and what works for them will give you the insights needed for your business to grow quickly.

Even if you don't engage any of our other services, our proprietary competitive SEO analysis is a step in the right direction for you and your business. So contact us for a free no-obligation consultation to discuss what you should be doing for your business online.