SEO Competitive Analysis – How to Beat Your Competition

SEO Guide Step 3

Competitor Analysis

SEO Competitors: a SEO competitor is a site that ranks well in a search engine for your target keywords. These are sites you will analyze to see where they are doing the right things, and using the right keywords, so that you can beat the competition in the rankings.

By this point in the SEO Guide, you’ve discovered which sites are your main keyword competition. Next you’ll play detective and take a closer look at these top-ranked websites.

Here’s what to look for when you do SEO competitive analysis:

Keywords: What other keywords is the competing webpage optimized for?
Content: How much content is there for the keyword you’re targeting (words on the page and pages on the site)?
SEO: How is the webpage ranking for this keyword? Does it seem intentional and according to SEO best practices?
Authority: How much authority do the page and website have (based on links, social media shares, etc.)?
Weaknesses: What weak areas do you see that could be opportunities for you to compete?

Time to put on your detective’s cap …

With the SEO tips and free tool on this page, you’re about to start doing SEO competitive analysis. It’s critical that you identify the best search terms and keywords used on your competitors’ sites so that you can evaluate how your pages can better compete in search results.

Spy on Your Competitors’ Keywords

It’s actually not difficult to get a closer look at your top competitors’ webpages and see what topics and keywords they are focused on. The free SEO tool below makes it easy.

The goal is to find out which keywords the competing site is optimized for. You want to see not just the one keyword (search term) that led you to discover that page, but the set of keywords that, together, signal relevance.

Search engines may examine hundreds of factors to determine a page’s relevance to a search query. Two essential ingredients are having content that’s focused on the right keyword topic and satisfying what searchers are looking for.

For that reason, as you look at the top-ranking websites’ keywords, you may find clues to additional supportive words and phrases you need on your site. Don’t miss out on these keywords that could help bring converting traffic to your site. Spy them out and add them to your keyword list!

Ready to start sleuthing? First, you’ll use our Single Page Analyzer tool. This is a free version of the most popular of our SEO tools. Here’s what you need to do:

Enter the URL of a competitor’s webpage that is ranking for your desired keyword phrase.
Scan the reports to identify the keywords that appear frequently or prominently on the page. Note: Page keywords may be truncated in this embedded version of the Single Page Analyzer to preserve a fast site for everyone. There is a full version of this tool in the SEOToolSet^® that provides all of a page’s keywords and a lot more data. You can go here to subscribe to the SEOToolSet if you need in-depth page analysis.
Keep track of the top keyword phrases the competitor uses if they are new to your keyword research list and applicable to your site.

SEO Tools – Single Page Analyzer

Next in the SEO guide, you’ll learn how to combine keywords and sort your keyword list in order to match targeted, high-conversion types of searches.

Related blog posts and articles:

Need more help with SEO and competitor research? SEO training can make a huge difference in a successful SEO project. Bruce Clay’s SEO Training course, taught in multiple locations, covers basic through advanced SEO in a classroom setting. Materials are continually updated to reflect the latest search engine changes, so many attendees come back year after year.