The Importance of an SEO Competitor Analysis and How to Do It

In this article, you'll learn which aspects to analyse in competitors in terms of SEO and how to use this information correctly

If you want to start a new online business or are frustrated by constantly being outranked by your rivals in natural search results, it's probably necessary to carry out an SEO analysis of your competition. Even if your website is currently in first place for a specific keyword, this position is not guaranteed to last. In the future, rival websites may become more adept at improving their content and overtake you. This is why companies should consistently carry out a competitive SEO analysis.

What is an SEO competitor analysis?

Analysing competitors' websites in terms of SEO involves identifying the strengths and weaknesses of their online presence. Essentially, you should answer these basic questions:

How are your rivals dominating the top positions in certain searches?
How is traffic collected?
How do they manage to turn users into potential customers?
What do they have that we lack and, likewise, what do we have that they don't?

By answering these questions, you can build a well-thought-out SEO plan for your website and implement the essential changes that will produce tangible results.

When should I carry out an SEO competitor analysis?

It's important to regularly evaluate your competitors' websites, especially if your aim is to attract organic search traffic. However, it goes without saying that not everyone manages to do this every month or even every three months. Let's explore the main scenarios in which carrying out an SEO competitor analysis is really crucial.

When you start promoting your website, it's vital to create an SEO strategy, which can't be done without analysing your competitors.

If there's a significant increase in your website's ranking, it's important to analyse the reasons behind it at the highest level. Find out which newcomers have made it into the Top 10 rankings, as well as those who have slipped down the rankings and the reasons behind this.

Follow a major Google update. Whenever Google releases a worldwide update, it's important to examine the differences in the rankings of the leading websites, your own website and your competitors. This will help you identify the specific changes made to Google's algorithms.

We usually carry out a comprehensive analysis of rivals and leading websites every quarter to ensure that we can evaluate and adjust our SEO tactics effectively. We continually observe changes in the top-ranking results for the most pertinent questions. We make sure to check the ranking of our site and the ranking of our competitors on a weekly basis.

Continuous evaluation of rivals allows us to stay up to date and react promptly to any changes in the top search results.

Now that the purpose of competitor SEO analysis is clear, let's determine the correct way to carry it out.

What is the process for analysing the competition?

Let's start by determining who can be classified as a rival for the purposes of the analysis.

Identify your real rivals

At first, it may seem simple: analyse a competitor's website that is ranked in the Top 3 or Top 10 for the appropriate searches and replicate their strategies. However, it's important to realise that not all websites that are at the top of the rankings are necessarily your direct rivals. And this is what I'm trying to say:

Not every company you compete with in person will be your online competitor. Let's say you have a physical shop and have recently introduced an e-commerce platform. However, there's no guarantee that successful businesses nearby will also thrive online.

Some of the sites at the top are not your competitors. Google encourages a variety of content and makes an effort to understand users' intentions when they enter a specific query in the search bar. This is why, when you search for something, the top 10 results often include online retailers, comparison websites, pages with articles and analyses, among others.

To determine who your online rivals are, you should follow these steps:

Put together a compilation of websites with the best rankings for the main search terms that relate to your company;
Identify which of these sites share a common business model.

What is the method for identifying your real competitors?

Any tool that can provide a list of the top 10 search results for key phrases is acceptable. Use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs and SEranking.
Let's start by determining who can be classified as a rival for the purposes of the analysis.

The second step. Analysing the different types of content

At this stage, I start analysing the structure of the competitor's site to determine which sections attract traffic. Determining whether users frequent service pages or focus on information such as blogs and reviews is crucial for sites with several pages and different types of content distribution. The content you see is determined by the type of website you are examining.

What is the method for examining how traffic is split on a rival's website?
We rely on the service provided by ahrefs.com not only to analyse the overall performance of a website, but also to understand the distribution of traffic between its pages. The Top pages report can help us with this. This is my method; if you have access to another tool that offers this information, that's fine too.

Next, we need to download this report and include it in Google Sheets.

We should eliminate irrelevant data from the table that won't help in the analysis. For this scenario, we only need the URL and Traffic columns. We recommend eliminating URLs with no traffic, as they don't bring any benefit and only increase the volume of data.

By carrying out a structural analysis of your competitor's website, you can identify the content that attracts the user and the main strategies for promoting your own similar website.

Although it sounds complex, in reality it only takes 5 to 15 minutes to complete. What's more, it can be expanded; for example, you have the ability to evaluate your competitor's blog posts and determine which areas are generating the most visitors. This will help you discover topics for your articles.

Find out what keywords your competitors are using for SEO

When examining rivals, it's crucial to identify the keywords that generate traffic for them.

What is the process for discovering competitors' keywords?
The Ahrefs service is also able to help us with this. The Organic keywords report list shows the main search terms that attract the most users based on the tool's algorithms.

This data will help build the semantic foundation of your website, allowing you to prioritise user queries effectively. It's crucial to mention that brand keywords are also used to visit websites. They are also considered in this report. It is advisable to filter out these requests in the analysis process, as they will not be advantageous for your site.

Evaluating competitors' pages

Once we have identified the content and keywords that drive traffic to our competitors, it is important to examine the content on those pages.

This evaluation is crucial to understanding how to improve the website, make it stand out and identify the unique features that your competitors have and that you lack. The method for carrying out this analysis varies depending on the type of website you have, for example:

Information website - we assess the quality of the content, the presence of infographics, the inclusion of author names, article publication dates, comments and much more;
Online shop - prices, delivery options, promotions, contact information, exclusive products, etc;
Service websites - certificates, contacts, expert profiles, information, photos, etc.

These are just examples and this list can vary depending on the different types of websites.

For a more in-depth view of the competitor's strategies and motivations, we suggest comparing the pages manually. To do this, it is advisable to create a spreadsheet and include all the characteristics found on competitors' websites.

What is the method for evaluating the pages of competitor websites?
Imagine you have an e-commerce website and you're not sure whether or not to include text on the product pages. In this case, we have to examine the pages of the main competitors. After checking, we see that they don't have text either. So the next question that needs to be addressed is: how can we improve the page to achieve greater relevance? We then revisit TOPO to thoroughly analyse all the relevant aspects of our competitors' pages, such as filter functionality, product card anchors, short descriptions and much more.

Analysing the backlink portfolio

Let's start by analysing the backlinks of rival websites. Google still considers links to be a crucial factor in promotion.

What is the process for analysing the backlink profiles of our competitors' websites?
The Ahrefs service will once again come to our aid. However, it will be more difficult to locate your peers now that your database has been improved. The Batch Analysis tool is needed to carry out this analysis. If it's not possible to compare several sites simultaneously, create a spreadsheet to document important details about your site and your competitors' sites.

By analysing traffic data and key phrases, we will determine the possible results of implementing our competitor's strategy in the future. The number of domains and backlinks indicates the level of our competitiveness. This can give us a general idea of the number of links needed to match their level.

It's important to note that this information provides an overview of your rivals, but it's not enough to create a plan for improving your website's backlink profile. You still need to decide which anchors and pages to link to. This type of analysis is suitable for gaining a broad understanding of the situation.

Carry out a technical SEO analysis

In this case, we're not going to look for technical errors on rival websites or carry out a technical analysis of them. The only metrics we need to examine are the main ones, such as:

It is essential that site loads quickly;
The existence of organised data and its categories;
How the Sitemap is generated and whether there is only one or several;
Which pages and sections are restricted from search engine crawlers via robots.txt or a meta tag.

Let's look at a case of analysing the loading speed of a website, since it is a determining factor for ranking. Having a faster website than your competitors will undoubtedly increase your ranking on Google.

What is the process for evaluating the loading times of our rival websites?
You can use Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool for this purpose. Simply indicate the website you want to examine and the tool will evaluate and measure its performance.

Monitor the featured snippets of rival companies

Featured snippets can increase traffic to your website from search engine results pages by being more visible and improving click-through rates. Make sure you check that these snippets appear in your search results.

What is the method for checking whether your rival has featured snippets?
The simplest option is to examine the main question manually. To do this, enter a suitable search query in the search bar and examine the results displayed. Make sure you do this in private browsing mode to get the most unbiased results possible.
You can locate it using the Keyword Explorer tool provided by Ahrefs - use the SERP features filter to visualise the results.
Examine the structure of your competitors' websites to obtain comparable SERP results for your own site.

Evaluate the behavioural information of rival websites

If a website is ranked in the top 10, but not in the top 3, this usually indicates that internal optimisation is good and that you just need to focus on improving specific aspects. By improving your link profile and optimising behavioural metrics, you can boost your ranking. I explained how to examine the above in step 5. Now, let's examine the specific factors you should consider when evaluating the behavioural metrics of rival websites.

You can do this using the SimilarWeb platform - you can see the total number of monthly visits, the average duration of visits, the number of pages per visit and the bounce rate. In addition to these indicators, this tool provides a range of other valuable information, including the origin of competitors' traffic. In general, it is a reliable and free service.

FAQ

What is an SEO Competitor Analysis?

Competitor SEO Analysis is the process of evaluating the SEO strategies and tactics used by a business's competitors in order to understand how they are positioned in search engines and identify opportunities to improve one's own SEO performance.

Why is it important to carry out a Competitor SEO Analysis?

Carrying out an SEO analysis of competitors helps you understand what is working for them and identify strengths and weaknesses in their strategies. This allows you to take advantage of the opportunities your competitors are missing and optimise your own SEO strategy to get better results.

What are the main elements analysed in Competitor SEO Analysis?

Some of the main elements analysed include:

Keywords: Which keywords are generating traffic for competitors;
Backlinks: The quantity and quality of links pointing to the competitor's website;
Site structure: How the competitor's site is organised in terms of technical SEO (URLs, navigation, speed, etc.);
Content: The type and quality of content that competitors are creating;
Page performance: Which pages are receiving the most traffic and how they are ranked.

How can I identify my competitors for SEO analysis?

Your competitors can be identified on the basis of:

Companies or sites that offer similar products or services to yours;
Sites that rank for the same keywords you want to rank for;
Direct or indirect competitors in your market niche.

What tools can I use to carry out an SEO Competitor Analysis?

Some popular tools for analysing competitors' SEO include:

SEMrush: For analysing keywords, backlinks and traffic;
Ahrefs: For checking backlinks and exploring keywords;
Moz: For tracking keyword rankings and analysing competitors;
SpyFu: For analysing competitors' SEO and paid ad performance;
Ubersuggest: For keyword research and competitor analysis.

How can analysing competitors' keywords help me?

Analysing competitors' keywords allows you to identify the terms that are generating traffic for them. With this information, you can include these keywords in your content and try to position your site for high-value terms that your competitors are already using.

What are backlinks and why are they important when analysing competitors?

Backlinks are links from external websites that lead to your site. They are important because they help improve your site's authority and ranking in search engines. Analysing competitors' backlinks allows you to discover relevant link sources and strategies for obtaining high-quality backlinks to your own site.

How can I use competitor content analysis to improve my SEO strategy?

Analysing competitor content helps you understand what type of content is generating the most engagement and attracting traffic. You can use this information to create similar or even better content, covering topics that have not yet been fully explored or presenting a more detailed and complete approach.

Should analysing competitors' SEO only be done once?

No. Analysing competitors' SEO is an ongoing process. The market and SEO strategies are always changing, so it's important to carry out these analyses regularly to keep up with changes and adjust your strategy as necessary.

What can you do with the information obtained from analysing your competitors' SEO?

With the information from the SEO analysis, you can:

Adjust your keyword strategy to focus on those that generate qualified traffic;
Improve content creation to cover topic gaps and outperform the competition;
Focus on obtaining backlinks from sites that are pointing to your competitors;
Adjusting the structure of your site to ensure better navigation and user experience.

Can analysing competitors' SEO improve my ROI?

Yes, a well-done analysis helps to optimise your SEO strategies, increase visibility on search engines and generate more qualified traffic. This, in turn, can lead to a higher conversion rate and an increase in return on investment (ROI).

How can analysing competitors' website structure impact my SEO strategy?

Analysing the structure of competitors' websites allows you to identify good navigation practices, URL organisation, the use of structured data and optimisation for mobile devices. By adopting similar or better strategies, you can improve the user experience and your site's ranking.

What mistakes should I avoid when carrying out an SEO Competitor Analysis?

Some mistakes to avoid include:

Focusing only on direct competitors and disregarding indirect ones;
Analysing only high-volume keywords without considering search intent;
Copying competitors' strategies without adapting them to your own audience and niche;
Ignoring the importance of technical SEO when analysing.

Summary

In this article, I've outlined the main factors I consider when evaluating rival websites. I think this step is crucial when it comes to any website, because this information guides us in creating the right SEO plan!

In this article, I've provided examples of analysis using services and tools that I use in my work - in my opinion, they outperform similar options. However, if you are happy with your other tools, you can continue to use them with confidence.

If you encounter any challenges in creating an SEO plan or have any questions about SEO, don't hesitate to contact us and we'll be happy to help.

Want to master SEO? Discover everything you need to know to optimise your website, increase your traffic and reach the top of Google with foolproof strategies!

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