It is not just your site that you need to focus on, in the world of competition, you will also need to analyse your competitor. However, competitor analysis can be a daunting task, which makes most website owners just put this at the back of their list. Still, this task is very important especially if you want to keep ahead in an increasingly overcrowded market.
To ensure that you know what your competitors are doing and how you can outperform them, here are some steps:
Know Who the Competition Is
While you may know some of your competitors, chances are, you may still not know some of them. Your task is to find and identify your direct, indirect and available competitors.
Direct competitors – these are companies who have similar products and services like yours, which you may know already.
Indirect competitors – these are your competitors that offer similar services and products but for a wider audience. To find them, do a keyword analysis and see who shows up in the terms you rank for.
Perceived or replacement competitors – While these competitors do not offer the same services you are offering, they may have products or services that can become a replacement to yours. To understand who they are, you need to conduct customer surveys and do social listening.
While most people may not have the time to do a thorough analysis of more than 20 sites, three to five sites is ok, while incorporating a mix of your competitors listed above. Once you have done this, you will be able to get a rounded view of the other companies that offer similar products and services like yours.
Evaluate Your Competitors’ On-site SEO
There are many ways to gauge on the success of your competitor. From analysing their H1 tags, meta descriptions, up-to-date on-page content, and so on. You can also include if your competitor is using internal linking, finding related keywords, also considers the length of content, and if their site is SEO friendly.
Check out their On-Page Content
Understand your competitors content by checking out if their content is relevant, informative and engaging. Try to do a couple of searches and see where the competition appears. If any of your competitors are ranking consistently high, evaluate what the content is and what they did to the content.
The days when writers just create uninteresting text just to hit a word count is over, especially if it is just a duplicate of another recycled work. These days, content that offers valuable information about their offerings, together with relevant keywords early on in the content is more effective.
Content that also uses multi-media will allow users and possible clients to stay longer and engage with the site even more than those with none. This will also result in reducing bounce rates while making users stay and wanting for more.
Once you have carefully analysed what your competitor is doing, it is time to fix your own site. Check out what you can do to improve it. You can also add videos or audios to your content if you need it, which will eventually lead to a more engaging site.
Examine Larger Contents
It is not just the blog posts which contain their infographics, interactive pieces and eBooks that you have to worry about. You will also need to find their content that is being shared and linked.Make sure that you find their most socially shared content. Instead of trawling to what campaigns performed well.
You can also narrow your list down and include their content types that includes their blog posts and larger campaigns. However, do not just analyse the pieces one by one, but find out what makes these pieces appealing to users. This process will help you learn how to create your own topics and ideas and also know what you should improve on.
Who Supports them
Once you know what your competitors’ best pieces are, try to find out who are their top influencers or supporters. Those who are linking and sharing your competitors’ content may also do the same for you, especially if they like what you are doing.
Make sure that you view sharers of the content you are investigating, filter their followers to find who among them are influential. Get this list and export them. Use Majestic and place the exact URL to find out the sites that are linking to it. Then, on your prospecting list, add any quality or relevant sites that you can also use.
In Conclusion
While competitor analysis can take a lot of time and may be a bit difficult, doing this is necessary as this will help you know if you are measuring up against your rivals. This will also determine if your findings work for your audience or not, get their influencers to build your own content, and know content gaps that you may need to fix on.
Know more on how you can examine your competitors content and how this can help your business by calling us at 0203 823 9033 or use our contact form or read more on our full seo service here.