It is quite important to keep a watch over your competitors. Carrying out a SEO competitor analysis can be of great value by helping you identify opportunities; it can give you an idea about what can work and what can’t, while helping you assess your website SERP performance against the other competitors in the market
Here are 7 tips which that will help you carry out your SEO competitor analysis
Look out for keywords competitors use
A software like SpyFu can be used to identify the keywords that competitors are using. After identifying these keywords, you can using the keywords that have are low competition and identify those keywords that are not being used by the competitors.
Assess rankings with keywords
After finding out the keywords the competitors are using, Accuranker– an SEO ranking tool can be made use of to compare your progress with your competitors. The software could also be used to see how differently the competitors are progressing using keywords targeted by you. In few cases where competitors do better than you, checking their website to find any content that is helping them get the advantage over you is one way going about it. Another way is to find out a way to do what you are doing in a better way.
Study their most shared content
A tool such as BuzzSumo allows users to find out content that has been largely shared socially by topic or brand. Simply enter a keyword or subject and a list of the most popular content will be produced. This is a great way to see how well competitors are performing and to even come across competitors that were never thought off. In essence, BuzzSumo draws attention to the most popular sections of content that is being created by your competitors.
Get Informed with latest content
Use google alerts as a method to keep an eye on your competition. A simple and free method through which you can be alerted for specific keywords , so that you can see who is frequently showing up on them . It would be of great help if notifications can be created for your own identified terms in order to oversee brand reputation.
Identify latest links
LinkResearchTool is one such tool that will help you identify any new links that your competitors are getting hold of. You will be sent an email with their Link alert functionality as soon as your competitor obtains a new link. If you want to discover the exact content that has helped your competitor perform well , insert the URL into the Majestic Tool Bar. This particular tool will give you with a list of domains that will be related to your niche and will therefore help you come up with a potential list for contents that are similar.
Observe social activity of competitors
Monitoring the social platforms of your competitors will give you an understanding of how your competitors are interacting with their audience, what are they posting and most importantly areas of topics that are working for them
The simplest ways to monitor your competitors is to create facebook and Twitter lists. It is advisable to follow and like the competitor’s social channels from your own personal account as opposed to the business accounts before sorting them out into lists. This way, it is simpler to keep an eye out for their content by clicking through the list on a frequent basis, without having to rely on content showing up on your newsfeed
It is easier to trace what a competitor is regularly posting with the use of Hootsuite ,where posts and hashtags related to specific profiles show up.
Follow their blogs and Newsletters regularly
Regularly reading your competitors content on their blog can help come up with ideas for yourself. Subscribing to their newsletter is also a great way to stay on top of their latest posts and happenings. Organizing your mail inbox to ensure that emails go to specific folders , will make it easier to go through emails at your own time. Moreover, it is important to take a note of the topics that could form one’s content calendar. If you come across posts that performing well on a regular basis, then think about how you could do something on a similar level.
Right from monitoring the keywords targeted by the competitors to regularly reading their blog posts and observing the social channels of the competitors , it is important to carry out SEO competitor analysis as it will help one stay on top of what is popular and working in the market .
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