How to properly analyse your competitions SEO

Competitor analysis is the process of identifying the strategies, strengths and weaknesses.

13:38 22 May 2019

This not only helps you upgrade your strategies but also, enables you to win the battle. Every entrepreneur needs to adopt competition analysis so that they can identify the points that they are missing as well as the areas that they need to improve. This is important for it can enable you to get the better of your competitors in the market. The good thing is that, competition analysis is not as tough as it sounds because you have a wide range of tools and materials that can help you along the way. You can easily find these tools on the internet. However, if you are new to this, the following guide to analysing competition SEO will help you a lot.

Identify your competitors

The first step in doing a competition analysis is identifying who your competitors are. It would be impossible to analyze their behavior when you do not even know who they are. Therefore, identifying them is the first and foremost step that you need to take. You can easily identify your competitors by searching for the main players in your industry. Also, consider zeroing in on the players who operate in your region. This is important for it will lead you to competitors whom you share the same environment and customers. After getting a list of your top competitors, it is advisable to narrow them down to 4 or 5 organizations. This is to enable you get a more focused analysis.

Tour their websites

After identifying and short listing your main competitors, it is time to take a long tour through their websites. A deep look into your competitor’s website will reveal what they are doing and what you are not doing in order to compete effectively. The research that you are going to conduct will not only help you in making the right decisions but also, reveal the strategies that will grow your business.

Spy on their keywords

Keywords are an important part of SEO because they help search engines find your website. SEO today is very tough and it is advisable for you to make smart moves so that you can win competition. Therefore, when doing competition analysis, it is important to look at which keywords are ranking high for your competitors. In addition, it is advisable to check out their keyword density in order to have a better idea. You can then integrate these keywords into your own posts or create fresh content with the keywords.

Evaluate their backlinks

Search engines improved their ranking methods in that, backlinks play a more prominent role. Here, you will find that search engines are paying special attention to the site that link back to your site. The more prominent these sites are, the more your site will rise in the ranking. Therefore, it is important to look at the kind of sites that your competitors have linked to so that you can improve your SEO strategies. If you find authority links on their sites, you can consider linking back your site from those sites. However, you need to test them to ensure that they do not have the error 404 which will make them broken links. Broken links cannot do much to improve your SEO and thus, should be ignored.

Look at their social media handling

Social media is an important tool in the growth of a website. That is why you need to analyze your competitor’s social media pages to see what they are posting as well as how engaged they are on the platforms. You should pay special attention to the activities that they are engaged in on social media. A proper understanding of how social media operates can greatly help you in driving in more traffic.

Is your competitor using paid advertisements?

Another important thing to note when analysing your competitor SEO is whether they are using paid advertisements. Paid advertisements can be a great way to get your site out into the market. However, this des not give you organic traffic. Therefore, you still need SEO to keep your site afloat on search engine by itself.

Analysing your competitor’s SEO will help you understanding all the barriers that you have while at the same time enabling you to develop better SEO strategies that will yield even greater results. The good thing is that you can talk to a SEO expert if you neither have the time or right skills to handle this project.