Identifying your top competitors for important keywords and analyzing their online presence is an essential part of developing an SEO strategy. The goal of any organic SEO campaign is to drive more traffic to your site through search and showing above your competitors is a must. A smart SEO strategy will focus on posting unique content targeting terms competitors are ranking for in an effort to outrank and stay one step ahead. The first step in developing an SEO plan is often to analyze SEO competition.
Here are some tips on how to analyze your top SEO competition and develop a plan to outrank them on search engine results pages.
Find Top SEO Competitors
Figuring out which sites you’ll be competing with for position on the top of Google rankings is an obvious first step in the SEO competitor analysis process. You may already know who is showing in the top of search results in your industry but actually searching for your top keywords and seeing which sites show on page 1 may lead to some surprises. Seeing which sites are on top of search results for a variety of search phrases will give you a good idea of which sites you’ll need to outrank on SERPs.
Tools like SEMrush or Spyfu can also be used to scan urls and keywords for more info on the SEO landscape of a particular industry.
Once you’ve identified the sites showing on page 1 for valuable keywords you’ll be ready for more in-depth SEO competitor analysis.
Check Competitor Site Performance
Google and other search engines use a variety of factors to determine how a site ranks so monitoring how competitor sites perform is important. Site load time and backlinks are 2 examples of items you can keep an eye on to make sure your site has what it takes to rank. Picking a few key metrics to watch is a good way to get an understanding of what rival sites are doing well and opportunities for your site to give visitors a better experience.
Checking the domain authority of competitor sites, which takes a number of factors into account to generate a score 1-100, is also a good way to determine who your top competition is.
Some tools you can use to get insights on competitor site performance:
- Page speed – Google Pagespeed Insights
- Backlinks – Ahrefs Backlink Checker
- Domain Authority – Moz Free Domain SEO Analysis Tool
Visit Competitor Landing Pages
Checking how competitor sites are performing is a good way to get started with technical SEO optimizations but visiting the pages ranking at the top of SERPs is just as important. Viewing the content that’s been published on a competitor site is one of the best ways to analyze SEO competition. Taking a closer look at the pages to determine search intent and what questions the content is specifically designed to answer will help you create content for your target audience’s needs.
Visiting competitor sites can also be a great way to see design elements that are working well and get inspiration for new page layouts.
Develop SEO Plan with Competitors in Mind
Analyzing SEO competitor sites is one of the best ways to make sure you start an SEO campaign with the elements needed for success. Competitor sites can serve as a resource to give you ideas for technical SEO optimizations, new engaging content, page layout design and more.