SEO Competitor Analysis: Here’s How to Do It Step-by-Step

To excel in SEO, you need to understand not just your own website’s performance, but also what your competitors are doing. As digital marketer Seth Godin said, “You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” Or, as Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu puts it: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles".

While an SEO competitor analysis might feel a bit like espionage, it's not just a sneaky tactic. It’s your first step to dominating the search engine results page (SERP). Let’s walk you through a comprehensive, easy-to-follow guide on how to carry out an SEO competitor analysis. Here we go!

1. Get to Know Your Niche and Your Competitors

To succeed in your business, it's important to be familiar with your market and the other players in it. Start by clearly identifying the unique area—your niche—where your business operates. Understanding who else is playing in that space is crucial for strategizing effectively.

Competitors generally fit into two main categories:

Direct Competitors: These are businesses that provide products or services very similar to yours and aim to attract the same group of customers. For example, if you own a coffee shop, another coffee shop in the same neighborhood would be a direct competitor.

Indirect Competitors: These companies target the same customers but with different offerings. Continuing with the coffee shop example, a bakery selling muffins and pastries might be an indirect competitor because it attracts people looking for breakfast items, even if coffee isn't their primary product.

Tips and Tools to Find and Analyze Competitors

• Use Google to search for keywords related to your business. The websites that rank on the first page are likely your top competitors.
• Analyze your audience. Where else are they spending their time online? These websites are also competitors.
• Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb to discover competitors you may not have considered.

2. Identify Keywords and Find Keyword Gaps

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. Understanding which keywords your competitors are targeting can help you create and refine the strategies to effectively outrank them.

Steps to Identify Competitor Keywords

• Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to analyze the keywords your competitors are ranking for.
• Look for high-volume, low-competition keywords that your competitors are targeting but you aren’t. These are your keyword gaps.
• Pay attention to long-tail keywords, which often have less competition and higher conversion rates.

Pro Tip: Don’t just focus on the keywords your competitors are ranking for—look at the ones they’re not ranking for. These gaps represent opportunities for you to dominate.

For example, if a competing restaurant ranks for "vegan pasta," but you notice a gap for "gluten-free vegan pasta," you can target that keyword to attract a different audience segment.

3. Track and Compare Rankings

After pinpointing the keywords your competitors are focusing on, the next crucial step is to track and compare your rankings. This process provides valuable insights into how you measure up against the competition and highlights areas for improvement.

How to Track Rankings

Utilizing reliable tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SERPWatcher is essential for monitoring your keyword rankings over time. These tools allow you to track fluctuations, assess traffic, and understand how specific keywords impact your overall visibility.

DAXRM's rank tracking tool: DAXRM is a custom-built user-friendly CRM platform for digital agencies. It comes with a sophisticated rank tracking tool that allows you to monitor keyword performance and compare your rankings against competitors.

By regularly comparing your rankings with those of your competitors, you can quickly identify keywords where they outperform you. For example, if your competitor ranks higher for “gourmet coffee,” you can focus on optimizing your content or adjusting your SEO tactics to close that gap.

4. Conduct Site Comparisons

Your website’s structure, content, and technical SEO play a huge role in your search engine rankings. Comparing your site to your competitors’ can reveal areas for improvement.

Key Areas to Compare

Content Quality: Is your content more engaging and valuable than your competitors’? Compare image and video SEO performance and uncover room for improvement.

Site Speed: Google PageSpeed Insights is the popular tool to measure site loading times for your client and their competitors. It allows you to benchmark your website against competitors’ as well as discover the specific areas where you’re doing better or worse.

Mobile-Friendliness: Ensure your site is optimized for mobile devices by using Google's Mobile Usability report available in Google Search Console, which identifies issues affecting mobile user experience.

User Experience (UX): Analyze navigation, design, and ease of use by employing heatmap tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to see how users interact with your site.

Technical SEO: Check for issues like broken links, duplicate content, and proper use of meta tags by using tools such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider or SEMrush Site Audit feature.

5. Compare Backlinks

Backlinks are a major ranking factor in SEO because they depict how trustworthy or valuable your content is. Analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles can help you identify opportunities to build high-quality links for your own site.

How to Analyze Backlinks

• Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to explore your competitors’ backlink profiles.
• Identify the websites linking to your competitors and reach out to them (or similar websites) for potential link-building opportunities.
• Look for patterns in the types of content that attract backlinks (e.g., blog posts, infographics, case studies).

Pro Tip: Employ guest blogging to acquire backlinks from authoritative, relevant websites in your niche.

6. Analyze SERP Features

Some of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features include featured snippets, knowledge graphs, image pack, and local pack. These are quite prominently displayed and can drive significant traffic, apart from providing visibility to your brand. It’s important to analyze how effectively your competitors are leveraging them.

Steps to Analyze SERP Features

• Search for your target keywords and see which SERP features appear.
• Note if your competitors are dominating these features (e.g., are they winning featured snippets?).
• Optimize your content to target these features. For example, use structured data markup to increase your chances of appearing in rich snippets.
• Identify any gaps in the content landscape that you can address. For instance, are there insufficient relevant image results or unanswered key questions within your industry? Filling these gaps can help you position your content as a valuable resource for users seeking information.

7. Monitor Content Strategy

Content is king not only in SEO but also in user experience and conversion rate optimization. Analyzing your competitors’ content strategy can provide insights into what works in your industry.

For example, if you notice that your competitors are generating a lot of engagement from certain blog posts, maybe you can think about creating written or visual content on similar topics to build on their success.

What to Look For

• Types of content they’re creating (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.)
• Frequency of content updates
• Engagement metrics (comments, shares, likes)
• Topics they’re covering and how you can create better, more comprehensive content

Pro Tip: Use tools like BuzzSumo or Exploding Topics to identify your competitors’ most shared content and replicate their success.

8. Evaluate Social Media Presence

While social media isn’t a direct ranking factor, it can indirectly impact your SEO by driving traffic and increasing brand visibility. A strong social media presence can enhance customer engagement and promote content sharing.

How to Analyze Competitors’ Social Media

• Visit your competitors’ websites and social media profiles to determine which platforms they actively use, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
• Assess their engagement rates by looking at likes, shares, comments, and overall interactions. This will help you understand what content resonates with their audience.
• Analyze their posting frequency and the types of content they share, such as articles, videos, or infographics. Determine which formats are most effective in engaging their audience.
• Look for opportunities to differentiate your social media strategy. What unique content or engagement tactics can you offer that your competitors aren’t currently providing? This could include interactive posts, contests, or behind-the-scenes content to attract and engage your audience.

9. Create an Action Plan

Once you’ve gathered all this data, it’s crucial to turn insights into action. Create a prioritized list of steps to inform and refine your SEO strategy based on your findings.

Example Action Plan

Target Keyword Gaps: Identify and create new content around keywords where competitors are strong but you are lacking.

Improve Site Speed and Mobile-Friendliness: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to pinpoint issues, optimizing your website for better load times and responsiveness on mobile devices.

Build High-Quality Backlinks: Develop a strategy to acquire backlinks from reputable sites, focusing on guest posting and outreach to industry influencers.

Optimize Content for SERP Features: Revise existing content to target rich snippets and other SERP features, ensuring your content answers common queries directly.

Revisit Your Content Strategy: Adjust your content strategy based on competitor analysis. Make sure you are focusing on successful topics, formats, and engagement techniques that are performing well for your competitors.

Don’t Copy…Learn

The goal of an SEO competitor analysis isn’t to copy your competitors but to learn from their successes and failures. Use the insights you gain to refine your own unique approach and create a website that truly stands out. In Picasso’s words, steal their ideas, then work on them and make them better.

Ready to get started? Check out DAXRM’s real-time rank tracker and see if it works for you as beautifully as it does for most agencies.