Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management

Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is growing in importance for any business operating online. The reason? SEO is one of the main ways people find your brand online – using SEO writing amongst other tactics – so where you rank is crucial. 

After all, the number one spot on Google gets a 27 percent click-through rate compared to only a 0.63 percent CTR for Google’s second page according to Backlinko.   

An SEO competitive analysis (as an add-on to a full digital marketing competitive analysis) will allow you to see what your competitors are doing with SEO and how you compare to them. 

It will highlight the strengths and weaknesses so you can create a strategy that helps you stay ahead of them in the rankings (Google and otherwise). There are five key steps you carry out in a competitive analysis:

• Identify your competitors
• Analyze their SEO strategy
• Analyze their keywords
• Analyze their on-page optimization
• Analyze their backlinks

So let’s dive in and see how to do competitive analysis in SEO. 

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

Whether you’re a start-up or an established company you should know who your competitors are. This not only applies to the products or services you sell but also to where you rank on search engines – your SEO competitors! 

The first thing to do in identifying your competitors is to make a list. Look at your keywords and website searches that you want to rank first for and see what websites or companies come up. 

For example, on searching for ‘SEO trends 2023’ in the example below you can see that Wordstream has landed the featured snippet while positions two and three are taken by Search Engine Journal. So, if you are trying to rank for this term, these are your key competitors. 

There are also some great SEO competitive analysis tools out there that can help you. SEMRush has a competitive analysis tab that will give you insight into other websites that are ranking for the same keywords. KW Finder is another tool with a competitor option to consider. 

This will also help you find sites that you may not have heard of or considered so it’s a good way to unearth competitors. 

Step 2: Analyze their SEO Strategy

Look at your competitors’ websites to get a sense of their SEO strategy. This includes the website structure, types of content created, and the targeted keywords (both short and long-tail).

You should also check your competitors’ website speed and mobile responsiveness. This can be done using tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. 

Knowing these things will help you understand how your website compares to your competitors in terms of technical SEO.

Analyze your competitors’ content

It’s important to not only know the types of content your competitors produce but what content gets the most traffic. To help your SEO strategy, find out:

• What are their top-ranking pages?
• Which pages rank for keywords?
• Which pages drive the highest percentage of traffic? 

You may be surprised by the content that drives traffic for your competitors. It could be a blog, a landing page, or even an ebook. 

Look at your competitors’ social media presence

Social media holds a lot of sway when it comes to driving brand awareness and directing traffic. 

So check out your competitors’ social media channels. Look at the number of followers they have, the type of content they share, and their engagement levels. This will help you understand how your competitors leverage social media to drive traffic to their websites.

Read: ‘5 Ways to Maximize SEO and Social Media’ for insights and tips. 

Check your competitors’ rankings for keywords that you are targeting

This will help you understand which keywords your competitors are ranking for, and how well they are performing. 

You should have a target list of primary and secondary keywords you want to rank for. Remember these keywords can change and rankings can decline so a regular check on your keywords is recommended.  

The goal is to rank for your main keywords but also look at low-hanging fruit i.e. keywords that are relevant but have low competition so you can rise up the rankings. 

Step 3: Analyze their Keywords

You may be doing well when it comes to your primary keywords, but what about the ones you rank for but place you at the bottom of page one of the SERP?

Pay attention to those keywords as putting some effort into including them in your content could help you overtake your competitor to land a position ahead of them.  

You should also look for keyword gaps and keyword opportunities. This will help you to identify terms or phrases you could and should be ranking for using tools like SEMRush or AHREFS.  

You should also look at any keywords your competitors may have lost and have a good search volume. See where they are declining in the rankings, visit the page and see if you can figure out why. Then capitalize on that opportunity by creating content that includes those keywords. 

Read: ‘The Ultimate List of Free Keyword Research Tools’ to get some guidance in this area. 

Step 4: Analyze their On-Page Optimization

The reason your competitors outrank you for SEO could be that they spend time and effort on optimizing their pages. 

So you need to analyze the pages that are outranking you. This will help you to identify why your competitors are doing better when it comes to where they are positioned on search engines. 

Elements you should consider in your analysis are:

Titles – The title of your page is important to Google, it shows how relevant a keyword is to a search and is a ranking factor. Make sure your title tags are correct and tied to the right keyword as they tell browsers how to display your page’s title in search results, social media and browser tabs.

Meta-data – This is important for the meta keywords and meta description tags. Both will help Google to identify what your page is about. See what your competitors are doing to optimize searches. 

Headlines or Headings – Google likes headings and gives weight to <h> tags when they are related to specific keywords. These can also be pulled out for featured snippets so can send your content to the top of the page. Be aware that when Google ignores the title tag, it uses H1 tags nearly 51 percent of the time instead according to Ahrefs. 

Internal Linking Structure

Internal links help direct visitors to relevant content and provide SEO benefits. Avoid overloading a piece with too many links. Instead, include quality and relevant links to keep people on your site.

Quality Content

Writing a lot of content is pointless unless it’s quality and relevant. Search engines and readers prefer quality over quantity. Competitors that rank highly may use blogs to become authorities on topics. For inspiration, refer to this Guide to Content Ideation.

Images and Videos

Check if competitors are optimizing images and videos for the web and mobile. Ensure they are properly tagged with descriptive and relevant names.

Schema Markup and Structured Data

Structured data helps search engines understand page content and can improve visibility in search results.

URLs

Review competitors’ URLs. Make sure your URLs are descriptive, concise, and include relevant keywords.

Customer Experience

Usability is a ranking factor. Evaluate the layout, navigation, and load time of competitors’ pages. Compare the overall customer experience to yours.

Step 5: Analyze Their Backlinks

Backlinks are crucial for search engines and ranking. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to analyze competitors’ backlink profiles.

Quality over quantity is key for backlinks. High-quality backlinks are beneficial, while low-quality ones can be seen as spam and harm your pages. For example, a link from a high-authority site like Wired adds authority to your pages.

Analyze competitors’ backlinks to understand what helps them rank higher. See if you can replicate their successful backlinks. Reach out to sites linking to competitors with new content for potential backlinks.

Passive Voice Adjustments

• Internal links help direct visitors to relevant content and provide SEO benefits. (Active: Internal links direct visitors…)
• Writing a lot of content is pointless unless it’s quality and relevant. (Active: Writing a lot of content is pointless if it lacks quality and relevance.)
• Ensure they are properly tagged with descriptive and relevant names. (Active: Properly tag them with descriptive and relevant names.)

Sentence Length Adjustments

• Internal links help direct visitors to relevant content and provide SEO benefits. Avoid overloading a piece with too many links. Instead, include quality and relevant links to keep people on your site.
• Quality over quantity is key for backlinks. High-quality backlinks are beneficial, while low-quality ones can be seen as spam and harm your pages.
• Structured data helps search engines understand page content and can improve visibility in search results.

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