How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis

Doing SEO can feel like a battlefield at times.

There's a great deal of technical knowledge you need to know. And you have to keep creating brilliant content constantly that helps people to have a chance at being ranked for a keyword or phrase.

Do you want a simple way to boost your SEO that doesn't involve boring technical setups? And how about targeting your content so carefully that you see actual results that grow your business?

If that's what you'd like, then this post is for you.

You're going to learn a brilliant way to improve your SEO efforts. How?

Through competition analysis.

If it sounds difficult, don't worry. This post will cover the easiest ways you can learn all about your competitors and how they're carrying out their own SEO.

Armed with that knowledge, you'll start improving your content marketing, competing for the right keywords, and seeing positive results.

Want to rank higher, get more traffic, and have more customers? Let's get started and look at how to analyze your competition to grow your own business.

The benefits of doing an SEO competitor analysis

Before we dive into the practical work of analyzing your competition, let's look at why you should in the first place.

For starters, you can understand what keywords your competition is using, what kind of content they're writing, and if there are gaps that you can take advantage of.

You can also learn if the competition is doing strongly in certain areas of SEO and if it's not worth your resources and effort to do the same. You could be better off looking for alternative topics and means to focus on to grow your own online presence.

Competition analysis can also help you set goals that are realistic and will lead to strong outcomes for your business.

How to do analyze your competition's SEO

In this section, we'll cover a few different ways to analyze your competition's SEO strategy. This includes free and paid options which can give you enough depth of information to impact your content marketing decisions.

Identify your competition

To start with, make a list of your top competitors. If you're starting a new business or have been around for a while, you'll have a few competitors at the top of your mind.

Write them down and go through their websites to take a look at the keywords they use, the kind of posts they write, and what's happening on their social media.

Then, extend your list by doing a normal Google search for the products and services that you offer in your business - what customers would look for before they arrive at your website.

For example, if you have a hairstyling business, the keyword search you would do could be 'hair stylists in Louisville'.

Take a look at the results that follow and you'll get a list of your competitors whom you can then study.

Here's an image of what a search result page can tell you about a search for 'auto parts in florida'. 

Use a WordPress SEO plugin

One of the struggles of using SEO is that you have to work across different platforms to optimize your content marketing.

AIOSEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin available, overcomes this issue by helping you do competitor analysis right from your website's dashboard.

All you need to do is check go to the AIOSEO dashboard and go to the Analyze Competitor tab. There, you can enter your competitor's URL and get a thorough breakdown of their SEO strategy.

In this way, when you can compare your strategy against your competitors', you'll have a host of information to work with.

You'll get insights on whether your blog posts are focused on the right keywords. On how effective your blog titles are. And the plugin also makes advanced SEO easy. For example, you'll know if your robots.txt file is working properly or whether your site speed is too low, and much more.

Leverage SEO platforms

Now for the most expensive option which comes with its own strengths and benefits.

For those who have a strong understanding of SEO and want in-depth knowledge, investing in an SEO platform like SEMrush can be the right step to take.

With this platform, you'll start by learning about your domain rating and that of your competitors. You'll also learn about questions and phrases people use around your industry. That you'll be able to leverage and add to your posts and other content.

Over to you

It's important that you don't get overwhelmed by data when you're boosting your SEO. It's best to use free plugins and other paid helpful tools to make your search engine optimization easy so that you can stick to focusing on building content and checking the results of your efforts.

Take small steps every day and learn a little bit about your competition. As you get insights into other companies, the kind of content they make, and the people they target, you'll automatically find gaps, opportunities, and ideas for your own content marketing.