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Competitor Analysis: Ultimate Guide for 2024

Competition in SEO is fierce. To rise above your competitors, you must analyse their strategies and improve upon them. This guide will walk you through practical steps to outperform your competitors in search engine rankings.

Why Competitor Analysis is important for SEO

Competitor analysis helps you understand:

  • What keywords they’re ranking for
  • Where their backlinks come from
  • How their content performs
  • What opportunities you can exploit to outrank them

By breaking down your competitor’s SEO strategies, you can identify gaps, create better content, and target profitable keywords.

1. Identify Your Competitors

The first step is identifying your real competitors in search results. They may not always be the brands you think. Here’s how to do it:

Tools for Competitor Identification:

  • Google Search: Search your target keywords to see who ranks high.
  • SEMrush: Use the “Competitors” report to find who’s ranking for your targeted keywords.
  • Ahrefs: Use “Competing Domains” to identify who ranks for similar topics.
  • Moz: The “Competitor” tool lists your top rivals for SEO.
Wikipedia traffic over view

Steps:

  1. List the top 10–20 competitors based on the tools and organic search.
  2. Focus on the ones that consistently rank on the first page.

2. Analyze Competitor Keywords

Once you’ve identified competitors, it’s time to figure out which keywords are driving traffic to their websites. Here’s how to do it:

Steps to Analyze Keywords:

  • Use Chatgpt: Enter a competitor’s URL to discover their ranking keywords.

Just ask gpt,

GPT doing competitor analysis

Jusk ask gpt,

“I will provide you mine competitor URL currently ranking at the top provide me their rank keyword ( Provide your competitor URLs)”.

If you have premium tool then it can also do better.

  • Identify High-Volume Keywords: Look for keywords with high search volume and low competition.
Keyword with high search volume and low KD

Just go semrush and setup the KD filter and Search volume filter.

  • Find Gaps: Compare their keywords with yours to identify opportunities where you aren’t competing.

Tools:

  • Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: Find competitor keywords and their ranking position.
  • SEMrush Organic Research: Uncover competitor’s top-performing keywords.

What you can do is

  • Target Long-Tail Keywords: These are easier to rank for and can drive targeted traffic.
  • Look for Featured Snippet Opportunities: Check if your competitor ranks for snippets, and create content optimized for them.

3. Analyse Competitor Content

Content is at the heart of any SEO strategy. Analysing your competitor’s content helps you create something better and more comprehensive.

What to Look For:

  • Content Format: Are they using blogs, videos, infographics, or podcasts?
  • Content Length: Do their top-ranking articles have 1000 words or 3000?
  • User Engagement: Look for comments, shares, and likes on their posts.
  • Topics: Which topics are driving the most traffic?

Tools:

  • BuzzSumo: Analyze which content gets the most shares on social media.
  • Ahrefs Content Explorer: Find which pages on your competitor’s site get the most backlinks and social shares.

Steps to Beat Competitor Content:

  1. Go Deeper: If their blog post is 1500 words, write 2500 words covering the topic in more depth.
  2. Improve Readability: Break content into short paragraphs, use bullet points, and make it visually appealing.
  3. Use Multimedia: Add infographics, videos, and charts to make your content more engaging.

4. Perform a Backlink Analysis

Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals. By understanding where your competitors are getting their backlinks, you can aim for similar (or better) links.

How to Analyze Competitor Backlinks:

  • Ahrefs Backlink Checker: Enter your competitor’s domain to see their backlink profile.
  • SEMrush Backlink Analysis: Analyze your competitor’s backlink sources and anchor texts.

Key Factors to Look For:

  • Linking Domains: Where are their strongest links coming from?
  • Anchor Text: What text do they use to link back?
  • Broken Links: Check if they have broken links that you can use to build your own backlinks.

Just do:

  1. Reach Out for Similar Backlinks: Contact the same sites that linked to your competitors and offer them superior content.
  2. Fix Broken Links: Find competitors’ broken backlinks and offer your content as an alternative.
  3. Guest Posting: Check where your competitors are guest posting and submit your articles to these sites.

5. Analyze Competitor On-Page SEO

Competitor on-page SEO helps you understand how well-optimized their site is for search engines. You can optimize your own site by comparing key elements.

On-Page SEO Elements to Analyze:

  • Meta Tags: Analyze their meta titles and descriptions. Are they optimized with keywords?
  • Headings: Look at how they structure their content using H1, H2, H3 tags.
  • URL Structure: Are their URLs short and keyword-rich?
  • Internal Linking: Do they link to important pages within their content?
  • Page Speed: Faster pages rank better. Check their page loading times.

Tools:

  • Google PageSpeed Insights: Compare their page speed with yours.
  • Screaming Frog: Crawl their site to identify meta tags, headings, and other on-page elements.
  • SEMRush On-Page SEO Checker: Find out what they are doing right and how you can optimize your own pages.

6. Monitor Social Media Activity

Social media does not directly impact SEO, but it drives traffic and engagement, which can indirectly boost your rankings.

Key Areas to Analyze:

  • Platform Usage: Are they active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or other platforms?
  • Engagement: Check the number of likes, shares, and comments on their posts.
  • Content Sharing: What type of content do they share, and how often?

Tools:

  • Hootsuite: Monitor competitors’ social media posts and engagement levels.
  • BuzzSumo: Discover their top-performing social media content.

Actionable Task:

  • Increase Your Social Media Presence: Share more frequently and engage with your audience.
  • Optimize for Social Sharing: Use catchy headlines and images that are optimized for platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

7. Track Their Paid Advertising

Competitors often use paid ads to supplement organic SEO. Monitoring their paid strategy can provide valuable insights.

What to Track:

  • Ad Platforms: Are they using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or both?
  • Keywords for Paid Ads: Which keywords are they bidding on?
  • Ad Copy: Analyze their ad text and call-to-action strategies.

Tools:

  • SpyFu: Discover which keywords your competitors are bidding on in Google Ads.
  • SEMRush Advertising Toolkit: Analyze their ad copies and performance.

Work to do:

  • Target Competitor Keywords in Ads: Bid on the keywords your competitors are using.
  • Improve Ad Copy: Write more compelling ad text to outperform their ads.

8. Create a Winning Strategy

Once you’ve gathered all the data, it’s time to put it all together and craft your own SEO strategy to beat your competitors.

Key Steps to Craft Your Strategy:

  1. Keyword Targeting: Focus on the keywords where your competitors are strong, but find opportunities where they are weak.
  2. Content Creation: Develop more in-depth, engaging, and optimized content than your competitors.
  3. Backlink Building: Target your competitors’ backlink sources and expand to high-authority sites they’ve missed.
  4. On-Page Optimization: Ensure your site loads faster, has optimized meta tags, and has a solid internal linking structure.
  5. Track Progress: Use Google Analytics, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to monitor improvements and adjust your strategy as needed.

Conclusion

By understanding and analyzing your competitors’ SEO strategies, you can build a more robust approach to outrank them. Focus on identifying competitors, analyzing their keywords, content, backlinks, and on-page SEO, and creating better versions of what they offer. Consistently monitor your progress and make adjustments to stay ahead in the rankings.