Learn and apply successful tactics to find insights from competitors to improve your search presence using popular SEO tools
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an inherently competitive activity.
For every popular search term, there are countless websites vying for the top spot in Google's rankings.
And since the top three placements on Google's results pages receive a staggering 77% of all organic clicks, it's easy to see why the competition is so fierce.
One of the best ways to increase your organic search presence is to regularly seek out SEO competitive insights.
Learning what's working well for your SEO competitors and identifying their weaknesses can help you refine your own strategy for a greater competitive advantage.
Today's Grow Easy Digital Agency article will teach you how to analyze your competitors' SEO strategies so you can discover new opportunities to outrank them in search results.
Why competitive insights in SEO matter
We're all familiar with the well-known idiom "know thy enemy."
The idea is that understanding your opponent's strengths, weaknesses, and tactics can help you find ways to navigate the competitive landscape more effectively.
Organic search is no different. You can learn a lot about how to achieve your SEO goals by analyzing high-ranking competitors.
After all, if a competitor is consistently outranking you, they must be doing something right. And once you figure out what that "something" is, you can apply it to your own SEO strategy.
Likewise, if you find a competitor's approach lacking in some way, you can seize the opportunity to do it better.
And the best news? All it takes to find valuable SEO competitive insights is a little detective work.
How to gather SEO competitive insights in 5 steps
Now let's take a look at the basic steps involved in extracting insights from your competitors' search activities.
1. Identify the competition
The first step is to identify your SEO competitors.
No doubt you already know who your traditional business rivals are, but remember that they may differ from your actual search competitors. After all, the internet is a big place.
The simplest way to find out who you're competing against is to Google the type of terms you want to rank for, and take note of the sites that appear consistently.
For example, suppose you want to rank for the term [men's jordans low]. In this case, your SEO competitors would include Nike, Foot Locker, and Farfetch.
You should also check the competition for location-based searches if your business serves customers in a specific geographic area.
Let's assume you run a boxing gym in Nashville. Here's what your local SEO competition looks like.
Bonus tip: Instead of looking at individual keywords to see who ranks, you can also use Ahrefs and go to Site Explorer > Organic Competitors. This shows competitor websites that rank in the top 10 organic search results for the same keywords that your target gets the most traffic from.
See the example below:
2. Analyze their keyword strategy
Once you know who your competitors are, the next step is to build a complete picture of the keywords they rank for. This exercise will help you identify new terms to target.
The most effective way to approach competitor keyword research is to use a dedicated SEO competitor analysis tool, such as Semrush or Ahrefs. Note that these tools require a paid subscription (although Semrush offers a 14-day free trial).
To get a comprehensive list of competitor keywords in Semrush, go to "Organic Research" and enter your competitor's domain name.
In the dashboard, you'll see a section labeled Top Keywords, which you can expand by clicking View All Keywords.
Here's an example from nike.com.
You can then export the keyword list to a spreadsheet and filter out all brand terms (for example, all terms containing the brand phrase "Nike").
This will leave you with a complete list of all the unbranded keywords your competitor is ranking for, including monthly search volumes and a link to each ranking page.
After repeating the process for all of your main competitors, you can compare the data to your own ranking keywords and identify any terms you're not yet ranking for.
Watch out for high volume terms that only one or two competitors are targeting. These will often be easier for you to rank for.
You need to review each keyword individually and assess whether it is relevant to your business. If it's appropriate, you should target it!
3. Evaluate their content strategy
Knowing which keywords you should target is one thing. Knowing how to target them is quite another.
That's why the next step is to look at the competitor's content that performs well for your desired terms so you know what it takes to rank for them.
The first thing to consider for any keyword is the type of content.
Is it presented as a long-term guide? An infographic? A video?
What about the depth and breadth of the content? Does it cover sub-topics or does it stick to the main subject area only?
Remember, Google invests a lot of time and energy into providing users with results that best match their search intent. For this reason, top-ranked results are an excellent guide to how you should approach your own content.
Finally, you should research how successful competitors have optimized their on-page elements for the keyword in question.
The keyword is likely to appear in the URL, the page title, the H1 title tag and throughout the main copy. Be sure to note the use of any variations of keywords so you can incorporate them into your own content.
4. Perform a competitor backlink analysis
It's impossible to overstate the importance of backlinks for SEO.
Not only do they send qualified traffic from recommended users to you, but they also show Google that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. The more high-quality links you get from other sites, the easier it is to rank.
Understanding which sites are linking to your high-ranking competitors will help you develop a roadmap for your own link building strategy.
There are several tools you can use to perform competitor backlink analysis, including Ahrefs and Moz Link Explorer.
Once again, these tools require a paid subscription to access comprehensive data sets, but some also give you a free snapshot of links pointing to your competitor sites.
For example, Ahrefs' free backlink checker tool provides the top 100 backlinks for each domain, including the referring page, anchor, and target URL.
Once you're done exporting your competitors' backlink data, it's time to process the list and highlight any niche-appropriate authority domains that pop up.
These sites will be your prime candidates to reach out to for link building. Since they've already linked to your competitor's content, they might be ready to link to yours.
For example, if one of your chosen websites leads to a broken page or outdated content - and you have a better, more up-to-date resource - you can contact the website owner or editor to suggest a replacement .
5. Evaluate the user experience of your competitors
The next tip for uncovering SEO competitive insights is to evaluate how your high-performing competitors provide a positive user experience to their visitors.
Remember that on-page experience is a signal used by Google to determine where your site should rank in search results.
The most important UX performance metrics to consider are what are called "Core Web Metrics," which include page load speed and the interactivity and visual stability of page elements.
Simply put, the faster your site loads and the more responsive it is to user input, the better the user experience will be.
You can compare your site's user-friendliness to your competitors by entering their domain name into Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool. Remember, your site should work just as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop.
Site structure and navigation are also major considerations for website usability.
If your site is organized confusingly and causes visitors to click multiple times to find the page they want, you need to address the issue as a priority.
On the other hand, if your competitors are outranking you, even though their sites are also poorly structured, there's a good chance you can gain ground in the search results by getting your site in order.
Final thoughts
Researching your competitors' organic search strategies can be a shortcut to building a more effective SEO campaign.
Once you understand why other websites excel compared to yours, you can take steps to reverse engineer their success by incorporating similar tactics on your own site.
By following the steps outlined above, you'll be well on your way to developing a highly effective SEO strategy.
Now go and uncover some insights!