SEO Competitor Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide for 2023

An SEO competitor analysis is the act of identifying your industry’s online competitive landscape, assessing your SEO rivals, and utilizing the insights gained to enhance your website’s SEO performance and ascend in the rankings. Despite implementing an SEO strategy, creating quality content, and conducting technical SEO assessments, there is no assurance that your content will receive the recognition it deserves, as approximately 90% of web pages receive no search traffic from Google. So, who is capturing that indefinable traffic? Your SEO competitors.

The reality is that if your competitors are excelling in these endeavours, surpassing your efforts, you will struggle to secure visibility in search results. This is where an SEO competitor analysis becomes invaluable. It equips you with the tools to differentiate the strategies of your competitors and empowers you to fine-tune your SEO approach for a more impactful online presence. In this blog, you will understand how to perform an SEO competitor analysis in 2023.

What do you mean by SEO competitor analysis?

SEO competitor analysis, also known as SEO competitive analysis, involves delving into your rivals’ approaches to uncover valuable information about their keyword usage, content creation, and backlink strategies. By leveraging these findings, you can enhance your own SEO efforts.

Conducting a competitor analysis empowers you to:

1. Discover Winning Strategies: Identify and adopt successful tactics employed by your competitors.
2. Identify the Weaknesses of your competitors: Pinpoint areas where your rivals might be lacking, giving you a chance to gain an edge.
3. Measure SEO Performance: Compare your current SEO performance with that of your competitors.
4. Understand the Competitive Landscape: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the broader competitive environment within your niche.

Through thorough SEO competitor analysis, you can strategically position your SEO endeavors for maximum effectiveness and stand out in your industry.

Why is it necessary to do an SEO Competitor Analysis?

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, conducting SEO competitor analysis in 2023 has become an essential practice for businesses striving to thrive and excel. This strategic approach unveils crucial insights that not only keep you informed about your rivals but also empower you to strengthen your own SEO strategies.

By delving into SEO competitor analysis, you gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitors’ tactics, strengths, and weaknesses. This knowledge enables you to adapt and refine your own approach, aligning it with the latest industry trends and best practices.

Moreover, in a saturated online marketplace, staying ahead of the competition is crucial. SEO competitor analysis equips you with the tools to identify gaps in the market, discover untapped opportunities, and fine-tune your content, keywords, and backlink strategies accordingly.

Furthermore, search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, placing higher importance on user experience and relevant content. By studying your competitors’ SEO techniques, you can identify innovative ways to enhance user engagement, improve website visibility, and achieve higher search engine rankings.

Incorporating SEO competitor analysis into your digital marketing strategy provides you with a roadmap to success, enabling you to create a more impactful and competitive online presence. In 2023 and beyond, this proactive approach is a vital component of achieving sustainable growth and maintaining a strategic edge in the ever-evolving digital realm.

How to find your SEO competitors

It is crucial to differentiate your SEO competitors from your direct business competitors. Your SEO competitors are the websites that rank for the same organic search queries you are competing for. This distinction implies that your SEO rivals can vary based on the specific topic. Before you optimize or publish pages targeting particular keywords, it is essential to identify precisely whom you are contending against and for what.

This initial step involves competitor analysis, particularly in uncovering less obvious search competitors. This is especially pertinent if different segments of your website target diverse business niches and thus have multiple competitors spanning various industries.

While you might have an idea about your competitors, the most accurate method for determining your SEO competitors involves data analysis. You can use free SEO tools offered by W3Era to identify the keywords that are ranking on top of SERPs. With W3Era’s free SEO tools, like the Backlink Generator tool, you can generate unique backlinks on authoritative websites.

This will rank your websites higher on search engine results pages. This approach empowers you to keep a vigilant watch over your competition, both established and emerging and determine the factors contributing to their search engine dominance.

Once you have identified your actual SEO competition, you can delve into a more comprehensive SEO competitive analysis.

When should you conduct an SEO competitor analysis?

Your SEO performance remains in constant comparison with your competitors. With shifts in search engine algorithms, new entrants in the field, and competitor digital marketers working effortlessly to outshine you, maintaining a strong SEO stance is crucial. Conducting regular competitor analyses allows you to measure your position relative to others, identifying areas for enhancement before they impact your rankings adversely.

Some key processes require an SEO competitor analysis:

1. Content Creation: Crafting content that not only addresses user search intent but also surpasses competitor offerings.
2. Content Planning: Studying competitors’ successful strategies and adding your unique touch for improved search engine visibility.
3. Ranking Drop Investigation: Unraveling why rivals suddenly outpace you in rankings and understanding the prevailing dynamics in your industry.
4. Stagnant SERP Performance: If your page is not among the top search results and is seemingly stuck, a competitive analysis can highlight optimization gaps.
5. SERP Changes: If another website takes the lead for a particular search term, employing SEO competitor analysis unveils its strengths for rivalry.

Incorporating SEO competitor analysis into these stages ensures that you stay in harmony with the ever-evolving digital landscape, stay ahead of the competition, and continuously enhance your SEO strategy.

How you can do SEO competitor analysis

Conducting a comprehensive SEO competitor analysis is a strategic approach to gaining insights into your rivals’ digital tactics and leveraging those insights to refine your own SEO strategy. Here’s how you can effectively perform an SEO competitor analysis:

• SEO competitor keyword analysis

Competitor keyword analysis involves identifying valuable keywords that your search competitors have achieved high rankings for but your website has not. This information is then strategically utilized to redirect their traffic toward your web pages, effectively enhancing your online presence.

What keywords should you consider in your competitor analysis?

When conducting competitor analysis, focus on identifying keywords that your rivals are ranking for. You need to look for high-performing keywords related to your industry, products, or services. Additionally, you can explore long-tail keywords that target specific niches. Analyze the keywords driving the most traffic to their site and those contributing to their top-ranking pages. By understanding their keyword strategy, you can refine your own content, SEO, and marketing efforts to gain a competitive edge.

Focus on search intent instead of search volume

A keyword with a high search volume does not mean it will rank high and bring about a large increase in search traffic. Therefore, it is recommended to concentrate more on satisfying search intent.

Search intent, also known as user intent, represents a user’s primary goal when conducting a search. This could encompass informational purposes like “Woodford Reserve distillery opening hours”, transactional needs such as “buy 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle”, or navigational queries like “Washington Post”, used to locate the site rather than directly typing the URL. Regardless of the search type, your web pages should align with search intent, offering well-crafted, optimized content that delivers a valuable and pertinent solution to their inquiry.

Google prioritizes websites that deliver a relevant and positive user experience. This extends to elevating search results that effectively cater to user needs, thereby enhancing their search experience. Consequently, if your content surpasses that of your competitors in addressing user search intent with greater accuracy and detail, you are likely to witness an increase in your ranking.

Crafting or refining your content to align more seamlessly with user search intent could involve several strategies:

1. Delivering Valuable Content: Focus on generating content that directly aligns with the user’s search intent, moving beyond keyword matching.
2. Diversifying Content Formats: Enhance your pages by incorporating diverse and engaging content formats like step-by-step guides, infographics, or videos, making the user experience more dynamic.
3. Tapping into “People Also Ask”: Utilize Google’s “People Also Ask” feature to identify content gaps and unaddressed queries, enabling you to offer more comprehensive answers.
4. Elevating Existing Content: Improve upon existing content by going beyond your competitor’s efforts. For instance, if a competitor presents a list of the top 10 historical sites in your region, take it a step further with a comprehensive list of the top 50 sites.

By adhering to these strategies, you can enhance your content’s ability to satisfy user search intent, ensuring that your website not only meets the user’s needs but also stands out in the competitive digital landscape.

Explore long-tail keyword opportunities

What if your website is smaller or less established compared to your search competitors? With a significant 60% of pages ranking within the top 10 Google results being three or more years old, it becomes a prudent strategy to shift your focus away from the highly competitive keywords and turn your attention towards more attainable long-tail keyword variations. In fact, the majority of Google searches fall into this category, accounting for approximately 70% of all web searches.

Moreover, about 50% of search queries consist of four or more words, prompting a departure from the basics. For instance, attempting to rank for popular one-word keywords like “headphones” presents a challenge due to high keyword difficulty, yielding approximately 1,95,00,00,000 search results and it is constantly increasing within seconds.

To distinguish yourself from the crowd, consider utilizing a more precise term such as “noise-canceling headphones”, “budget wireless headphones”, or “headphones for sleeping”. These options offer more descriptive specifics and encounter less search competition.

• Competitor SEO content analysis

Keywords play a crucial role in any SEO competitor analysis, but your assessment does not stop there. It should extend to leveraging your competitors’ top-performing content to enhance your own SEO strategy.

The concept is to uncover your competitors’ most popular content and use it as a foundation for improving your own. This approach saves time and energy, given that these pages are already ranking well and driving traffic. By identifying and then elevating their tactics, you align more closely with user search intent and deliver an enhanced content experience. Apart from content analysis, you also need to conduct technical SEO analysis to ensure the possibility of getting higher rankings in search engines.

Once you have identified the content you are competing against, two primary methods can help you gain a competitive edge over your competitors:

1. Identifying and filling content gaps: This approach involves identifying weaknesses in your competitors’ content and capitalizing on them. For instance, if they focus on one content format, you could restructure it into a more popular format.
2. The ‘Skyscraper’ technique: This method demands more effort. It revolves around using your competitors’ content as a foundation to create a comparable yet superior piece of content. Subsequently, you reach out to websites linking to your competitors’ content and persuade them to replace the link with yours, which offers more advanced insights.

Incorporating these strategies not only helps you stay competitive but also elevates your content’s visibility and value in the digital landscape.

Key Content Elements for Outranking Competitors on a Specific Topic:

1. Content Format: Choose a suitable content format that engages readers effectively.
2. Titles: Craft attention-grabbing and relevant titles to captivate audience interest.
3. Keyword Placement: Optimize keyword placement throughout the web page for better visibility.
4. Meta Titles and Descriptions: Create compelling meta titles and descriptions for higher click-through rates.
5. Word Count: Aim for comprehensive content; studies show top-ranking results have about 1,447 words.
6. Content Readability: Ensure content is easily digestible, catering to a wide range of readers.
7. Page Structure: Organize information using clear headings and a well-defined information architecture.
8. Media Integration: Incorporate supporting images, videos, and media to enhance engagement.
9. Answer Format: Consider using bullet points, infographics, or Q&A formats to address queries.
10. Structured Data: Implement structured data markup to enhance search result appearance.
11. Publishing Frequency: Maintain a consistent publishing schedule to demonstrate authority and relevance.

• Competitor backlink profile analysis

Competitor backlink profile analysis is a way to identify what other websites are doing to get links pointing to their site. By examining your competitors’ backlinks, you can learn where they are getting their links from and how strong those links are. This helps you understand what strategies are working for them and gives you ideas for your own website.

When you analyze your competitor’s backlinks, you are essentially taking a close look at the websites that are referring traffic to them. This can give you insights into the types of websites that might be interested in your content too. It is like spying on your competition to see what is making them successful. By studying their backlink profile, you can also find potential opportunities for your own site. Maybe there are websites that link to your competitors but not to you.

You could reach out to those sites and try to get a link as well. It is a strategic way to improve your own website’s authority and visibility in search engines. Competitor backlink profile analysis is a valuable tool for understanding your competition, finding new link-building opportunities, and improving your website’s overall performance in search results. W3Era implements comprehensive link-building strategies to enhance website authority, improve search rankings, and drive organic traffic.

Conclusion

In the dynamic realm of digital marketing, conducting SEO competitor analysis in 2023 is imperative for sustained growth and strategic superiority. By comprehending rivals’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, you empower your SEO endeavours with precision and relevance. Staying competitive requires vigilant adaptation, and competitor analysis provides a roadmap for innovation. As algorithms evolve and user expectations shift, this proactive approach ensures your content aligns seamlessly with search intent and captures market opportunities. You can embrace SEO competitor analysis as a cornerstone of your strategy, enabling you to forge a distinct and impactful online presence in the competitive digital landscape of today and beyond.

W3Era provides exceptional on-page SEO services, optimizing every element of your website for improved visibility, higher search rankings, and enhanced user experience. Our expert team employs proven techniques to boost your website’s performance, ensuring it aligns seamlessly with search engine algorithms and delivers tangible results for your business.