SEO Competitive Analysis – How to Spy on Your Competition

At this point in the SEO tutorial, 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 web page 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 web page 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?

Here we’ll cover the SEO tips (and a free tool) you need to put on your detective hat and 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.

Spy on Your Competitors’ Keywords

It’s actually not difficult to get a closer look at your top competitors’ web pages and see what keywords they are focusing 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 that led you to discover that page, but the set of keywords that, together, signal relevance. Search engines examine over 200 factors that indicate a page’s relevance to a search query. Having content focused on the right keywords is an essential ingredient. 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.

1. Enter the URL of a competitor’s web page that is ranking for your desired keyword.

2. Scan the reports to identify the keywords that appear frequently or prominently on the page.

3. Keep track of the top keyword phrases the competitor uses if they are new to your keyword research list and applicable to your site.

Next, the SEO tutorial will show you how to combine keywords and sort your keyword list in order to match targeted, high-conversion types of searches.

Now that you’ve spent some time choosing the best keywords, combining them and organizing your keyword categories, you probably have a better idea of where your website content may be lacking. The next few steps in our SEO tutorial lead you through creating new content that uses your keywords appropriately. Read on for what to consider before writing content.

Competitive Research – Who’s Your SEO Competition?

Now that you’ve brainstormed a long list of potential keywords, you may be wondering which keywords are most important. Good question! We’ll spend two lessons on competitive research to help provide some answers. First you’ll learn who’s your SEO competition among the top-ranked websites.

Identify the Top-Ranked Websites for Your Keywords
In this step of the SEO tutorial, you begin to evaluate your potential keywords by finding the websites currently ranking for those terms. Knowing these “keyword competitors” helps you determine whether your site belongs in the competition for that keyword.

Look at the keyword competition and ask, is this really my field?
You can think of a search engine results page (or SERP) as a competitive field. Each search query changes the game and the opponents entirely. Identifying who’s competing for a particular keyword can tell you what type of game is being played and whether you should even step on that field. Some keyword competitions just won’t be your game.

Since your keyword choices influence who can find your website, optimize your pages for keywords that buyers, not just masses of window shoppers, might use. You must select keywords that interested site visitors would search for. Whatever you hope your site visitors will do (whether to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter or other), you need to figure out which keywords those people will search for.

Fortunately, the search engines are trying to figure out the same thing — what people really want — for every search query. So the best way to tell whether a keyword could lead to conversion on your site is to see what kinds of results the search engine delivers. If at least some of the top 10 websites offer the same types of products, services or information that yours does, then that’s probably a relevant keyword worth putting on the list. But don’t worry. We have another free SEO tool to make your competitive research easier.

Here’s how to use the Top-Ranked Websites by Keyword tool:
• Enter a keyword or phrase below and click “Research Keyword.”
• View the list of URLs returned for each search, which may be your keyword competition (more on that in a moment).
• Keep these lists of keyword competitors in your spreadsheet (next to each keyword), as these are sites you may want to analyze later.

SEO Tools – Top-Ranked Websites by Keyword Search Word:

What the Competitive Keyword Research Shows

The Top-Ranked Websites by Keyword tool lists the sites with the most top-25 rankings and shows the specific pages that rank highest for the keyword you entered. The numbers represent each site’s current (real-time) ranking position in several search engines (1 means first position, 3 is third, etc.). Keep track of the individual page URLs that are ranked best and are your major competition (we’ll identify your true competitors in a moment). The example to the right shows the top-ranking web pages for the keyword “campsites in southern california.”

Can’t I just run a search? If you search directly on Google or Bing, your results are biased by your personal settings, city, and previous searches and clicks. Using our SEO tools eliminates almost all bias and personalization. This unbiased ranking information provides helpful benchmarks for SEO competitive research. However, if you’re a local business or service, you’ll want to run your keywords through the search engines directly (with personalization turned off, but your location set to the market area) to see the local competitors.
Know Your True Competitors Are all the top-ranking sites really my keyword competition? Well, yes and no. In the above example, one result is the Parks Service, an authority .gov website. Will your campground ever be able to compete against it? Probably not for this keyword. You may not consider the government or other high-clout sites (like Wikipedia) to be competitors. Nevertheless, where these and other search result giants are competing for the same SERP space, they’re among your keyword competition.
Still, the results reveal what kind(s) of pages search engines think are most relevant to this keyword’s perceived user intent. If ALL the top-ranking sites serve a different kind of visitor from the person you want to attract, then maybe you don’t want to compete for that keyword.

For example, if your business designs go-kart tracks, should you optimize for the keyword “go-kart racing”? Looking at search results shows the answer: none of the top-ranked websites offer what your company offers. The search engine assumes that everyone searching for “go-kart racing” wants to go for a ride, so it will probably never consider your design company a relevant match. You’d better keep doing keyword research looking for more relevant keyword phrases whose top-ranking websites include some true competitors.

You can see how keyword research leads to competitive research, which leads to more keyword research, and so on.
Now that you know who’s your SEO competition for the important keywords, keep their URLs handy. Next in our SEO tutorial, you’ll use competitive research tools to spy on those websites and do some SEO competitive analysis.