Competitor analysis in SEO - why do you need it?

An essential element of any business is a competitor analysis, which allows you to learn about your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge allows you to create an appropriate strategy and adjust your marketing activities so that you can strengthen your position in the market. Therefore, competitors should be viewed not only as opponents in the battle for customers, but also as a source of valuable information. However, you may find that the competitors that come to mind first when you think of your business are not at all the ones you are competing with in search results. In this article, we take a closer look at competitor analysis SEO. How is it carried out, why should it be done and what tools should be used? Read on!

Why actually carry out a competitive analysis? What will I get out of it?

If you decide to positioning of your website by an experienced agency, you can be sure that it will carry out a audit. It includes not only the verification of the site itself, its strengths and weaknesses, but also an analysis of the competition in terms of SEO. Why? Because it allows you to see what strategies they have chosen, whether they are effective and in which aspects a positioned site can offer a better experience to web users.

First and foremost, SEO competitive analysis makes it possible to verify, on which phrases your rival companies are positioning themselves and on which keywords they are visible. It is by discovering this information that you can improve your own site's SEO and climb the Google rankings. Conducting an analysis provides an overview of the entire market, competitors and gives you an insight into the current landscape in search results for important keywords.

One more thing. Although it seems obvious, it is worth pointing out that competitive analysis is not meant to copy someone else's ideas! The actions of your competitors are meant to become a starting point for drawing conclusions and can only inspire you.

How do you find out who your direct competitors are on Google?

Before you can start winning over the competition, you must first learn:

• Who are your "real" competitors in the search engines

• For which keywords they receive organic traffic competitive websites are positioned

One step at a time. You probably know who the biggest players in the industry are, but can you name your main SEO rivals? These are not necessarily the same companies. In fact, you may have a number of SEO competitors that exist outside of your niche that you have to fight against in the SERPs. Your top SEO competitors are those who rank on the first page of search results for keywords that are important to you - regardless of whether they are also your business competitors.

Fortunately, discovering who your competitors are is as simple as entering your most important keywords into Google and writing down the domains displayed. You can also enter your keywords into a competitive analysis tool and let it do the rest for you. Later in this article you will find out which tools you can use.

Attention: Sometimes it may not be so important or even profitable to try to outrank some sites. We are talking, for example, about giants such as Wikipedia or Pinterest.

What aspects are worth comparing when analysing?

Once you know the list of your competitors in the search results, it is time to move on to analysing their pages. Areas to focus on in particular are: visibility in search results and keyword gap.

Researching visibility in search results With the Ahrefs tool, for example, you will find out, among other things, how much organic traffic the sites in question receive and where they get their inbound links from. You will also learn about parameters such as DR and UR. These are Ahrefs' own statistical indicators developed by Ahrefs. DR stands for Domain Rating - indicates the popularity of a domain in relation to the other pages in the tool's database on a scale of 0 to 100. The rating is influenced by the links pointing to the page - their number, quality, uniqueness. UR stands for URL Rating - This indicator determines the strength of the links pointing to the URL under investigation. Ahrefs takes into account both external and internal links.

Another important area is keyword gap, i.e. a gap in terms of key phrases. In simplest terms, these are those phrases for which your direct SEO competitors are ranking in search results and you, for some reason, are not. Keyword gap analysis is a valuable source of information on which phrases have been overlooked so far in your SEO efforts, and from which you could gain valuable traffic. Efficient analysis content The gap is made possible, inter alia, by the Polish tool Senuto.

SEO competition analysis tools to make your job easier

Senuto

This is an analytics platform and a set of consultancy services for SEO and marketing on Google, created by Damian Salkowski. It also allows the preparation of a competitive analysis in terms of key parameters.

To conduct an SEO competitive analysis in SenutoIf you want to compare your domains, select the "Competitor analysis" option in the "Tools" panel. Once you have activated it, you will need to provide a link to your domain and to the domains you wish to compare yourself with. Senuto allows you to display common keywords, your competitors' keywords and the words on which your domainand the competition's domains are not.

Ahrefs

Direct competition can also be checked in the aforementioned Ahrefsie. Among other things, it enables you to find out which areas within your competitors' sites have the most links and where these links are sourced from. This allows you to verify your own positioning and linkbuilding strategy. Ahrefs also enables analysis of key phrases (module Keywords Explorer), visibility analysis of competing sites and analysis for key phrase gaps.

Always be one step ahead of the competition!

Do you know the saying "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer"? Perhaps the term 'enemy' in relation to your competition is too strong, but you can understand why this saying is apt when it comes to analytics. Having your competitors well identified and analysed is a way to gain data that will help increase your website's visibility online. Now that you have mastered competitor analysis, the only thing left to do is to make improvements and monitor your position in the search results.