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Who are your SEO competitors, and how do you analyse them?

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Many businesses already growing in the digital space are doing what you’re doing. These successful businesses outrank yours in search results and conversion. To meet and exceed them, you need to study what they’re doing better and how you can improve on that. Below is how to go about it.

Step 1: know your true SEO competitors

Some companies that appear on the top result of your target keywords are not your main competitors. For example, if you use a tool like Ubersuggest or SEMrush to analyse the keyword “sports shoe,” under the content ideas (SERP Analyses), you’ll see the following sites.

Some of these sites are marketplaces, online shops, and blogs. Suppose you’re a shop; your ideal competitors will be online shops outranking you, not the marketplaces or blogs. However, if you’re running a shop and blog, your ideal competitors will be other shops and their blogs.

Now analyse all your primary keywords. Take note of the businesses that appear repetitively across these terms offering the same solution as you. These are your primary competitors.

Step 2: Streamline your ideal competitors

Your primary competitors have different domain authorities and backlinks. Depending on their authority, they might be ranking for keywords that are too difficult for you to compete with at the time. So what to do? Start by analysing each competitor’s site to know their:

 

  • Domain authority.

 

  • The number of backlinks.

 

  • Region and age.

 

  • Amount of traffic.

 

  • Social signals.

 

  • Catalogue listing and any other helpful data.

 

Based on this data, focus on competitors that are easier to outrank.

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Step 3: Conduct on-page analyses

Now you have a smaller number of ideal competitors to learn from, here are your next steps… using your SEO tool, check for their top-performing pages. Look for the following data on those pages:

 

  • Topic relevance.

 

  • Keyword gap.

 

  • Metadata.

 

  • Internal linking strategy.

 

  • Headline strategy.

 

  • Content formats.

 

  • Video length, audio length, and word count.

 

For each of these elements, do pay attention to what’s working for them and what isn’t. Incorporate the things that are working for them into your strategy, and improve on those areas they’re lacking in.

Step 4: Conduct backlink analyses

Now, analyse the links leading back to this page. These are instrumental to the page search result position. So you’ll want to look for the following:

 

  • The number of backlinks the page has.

 

  • The domain authority of the linking sites.

 

  • The nature of the link.

 

  • The type of linked content.

 

Note down the sites with the highest domain authorities and quality backlinks to your competitor. To hasten this process, use the Backlink Gap subtool of your SEO analysing tool to access this data from 5 competitors at a time.

Based on this data, see what you can improve in your backlink strategy; and what of their strategy you can benefit from.

Step 5: Track performance

As you implement the new strategies derived from your analyses, make sure to routinely analyse your website to see your performance and know what areas still need improvement. This will help limit the opportunity of other competitors to outrank you.

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    Frequently asked questions about donations journey

    • SEO tools help you identify your target keywords, see your mistakes, know what’s working for your competitors, and improve your SEO strategy in minutes. Here are some of the bests on the market to meet your diverse needs and budgets.

    • Backlinks and internal links (inner links) are integral to your SEO success. Both improve your page’s traffic and ranking on the SERP. See how and why here.

    • As your business moves towards your goals, you want to ensure it remains on the right track and improves in specific areas to ensure success. Here is what your checklist should contain.

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