Find out competitor website traffic and backlinks with SEO Competitor Website Analysis.
No matter what your SEO strategy might look like, you should always consider what your competitors are doing to boost their organic search traffic, so that you can improve yours. After all, they might be ranking for some valuable keywords that you are not targeting yet. Or even worse, they might be outranking your website for valuable keywords.
By understanding your competitors’ SEO efforts, you can adjust your strategy and improve your rankings.
In this article, we will show you how to perform an SEO competitor analysis in six steps.
Step 1: Identify your Competitors
The first step is to identify your competitors. You can start by doing a simple Google search for keywords that are relevant to your business.
Remember, not all your competitors might be engaging in SEO strategies, and you might find new competitors you didn’t know about by doing some research. Don’t assume you already understand the digital landscape of your industry before taking a look around.
For example, if you sell shoes, you would search for something like “shoe store.”
From there, take a look at the results and make a list of the websites that come up most often. These are your direct competitors.
If you want to discover more keywords that your website might be ranking for, we recommend using Google Search Console. It’s a free service provided by Google that gives you insights into how your website is performing in organic search.
Here you can find various reports detailing the keywords that your website is ranking for in Google Search. Use these to expand your research and find more competitors.
Step 2: Choosing an SEO Analysis Tool
Once you have identified your competitors, it’s time to choose an SEO analysis tool. There are many different tools out there, but we recommend using SEMrush.
SEMrush is a powerful tool that allows you to see detailed information about your competitor’s website traffic, keywords, backlinks, and more.
Plus, SEMrush offers a free trial to get started. This can help you get used to the tool and unlock some valuable insights before spending a single cent.
Not only is it great at analyzing competitor websites, it is also great at analyzing your own website’s SEO as well.
This is important because you need to know how your website is performing in comparison to your competitors. SEMrush can reveal the data behind both websites and let you identify new SEO opportunities.
Want to learn more? Check out this guide on 12 great reasons to use SEMrush for your Content and SEO strategies.
Step 3: Identifying Top Competitor Keywords with SEMrush
Once you have signed up for a SEMrush account (make sure to take advantage of their 7-day free trial), the next step is to identify your competitor’s top keywords.
To do this, go to the “Competitive Research” section on the left sidebar and click on “Domain Overview”. Here you can enter your competitors’ websites to start analyzing them. You can find even more competitors by using SEMrush’s Market Explorer feature.
Immediately, a dashboard with numerous metrics will load up. We will go over some of the most important ones through these steps. For now, we’re focusing on your competitors’ Top Organic Keywords.
To find these, scroll down to the “Organic Research” section and find the “Top Organic Keywords” table. At the bottom of the table, click on “View Details”.
This will load up a full table where you can see all the keywords your competitor is ranking for. You can use the “Position” and “Volume” columns to sort the keywords by their position and monthly search volume, respectively.
You can also use the “Add to Keyword List” button to add specific keywords to your project so you can track them later on. Additionally, you can also export this data into an Excel Spreadsheet for further analysis.
These valuable keywords can then guide your content strategy. After all, the best way to rank for any keyword is to write high-quality, engaging content that is optimized for that keyword.
If you want to learn more about how to write content that ranks higher on search, read this guide on How To Write High-Quality Blog Posts for Search Engines and Readers.
Step 4: Competitor Ranking and Traffic Analysis
Once you have a list of your competitor’s top keywords, it’s time to start analyzing their rankings and traffic.
This will give you an idea of how well they are doing in organic search and how much traffic they are receiving from it.
To do this, go back to the top of the page and switch to the “Position Change” tab. Here you can see how your competitor’s ranking has changed over time for the keywords you are tracking.
This is key information as just the position number for a keyword does not tell the whole story. You might want to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is your competitor gaining, maintaining or losing rank on key competitive keywords?
- Are there any high-traffic keywords that your competitor is losing ranking on? Can you capitalize on this opportunity?
- Are there any high-traffic keywords that your competitor has a stronghold on?
- Are there any keywords for which you have a stronghold; outranking your competitors?
You can also switch to the “Traffic Analytics” section on the left sidebar. This will give you an overview of your competitor’s website traffic.
Here, you can see metrics like the total number of visitors, page views, and bounce rate. This is helpful information to have as it can give you an idea of how popular your competitor’s website is.
This is important to know as it can give you an idea if your competitor is growing, stagnant, or declining in terms of traffic. It can also help you understand where their traffic is coming from (i.e. organic search, direct, referral, etc.).
Step 5: Technical SEO Competitor Analysis
The next step is to analyze your competitor’s website from a technical standpoint. This will help you identify any potential areas where you can improve your own website’s SEO.
To do this, go to the “Site Audit” section on the left sidebar and click on “Add New Project”.
Enter your competitor’s website URL and click “Create Project”. SEMrush will then start crawling your competitor’s website to look for any technical SEO issues.
Once the audit is complete, you will be presented with a list of all the technical SEO issues found on your competitor’s website.
You can use this information to get the edge on your competitors by comparing it to your own site’s audit. Are there any technical SEO issues on your competitor’s website that are not present on yours? If so, this could be a potential opportunity to improve your own website’s SEO.
Remember, some of the most important technical SEO issues include: Page speed, Mobile-friendliness, responsiveness, Security (SSL), Sitemaps, Backlinks and Duplicate content.
Want to learn more about Technical SEO? Read this guide on How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit in 15 Steps.
Step 6: Competitor Backlink Gap Analysis
The next step is to analyze your competitor’s backlinks. This will help you understand what kind of links your competitor has and how you can get similar ones for your website.
A backlink is a link from another website to your own. They are important for SEO as they help search engines understand the quality and relevance of your website. If other websites are linking to your content, search engines assume that your content must be of high quality and informative.
Backlinks are valuable because they are not that easy to get. After all, why would another website want to link to your content if it is not good? This is why a backlink from a high-quality, relevant website is valuable.
They also help increase your website’s domain authority which is a metric that measures the quality and quantity of your website’s links.
To analyze your competitor’s backlinks, go to the “Link Building” section on the left sidebar and click on “Backlink Analytics”. Here, you can enter your competitor’s website URL.
SEMrush will then start crawling your competitor’s website to look for any backlinks.
Once the crawl is complete, you will be presented with a list of all the backlinks found on your competitor’s website.
You can use this information to get an idea of what kind of links your competitor has and how you can get similar ones. For example, you can look at their list of referring domains under the “Referring Domains” tab to find possible websites to add as targets for your backlink strategy.
In the “Overview” tab you can also see if the number of Referring Domains for your competitor has been increasing over time, giving you a glimpse of their backlink strategy and how aggressive it might be.
Taking on a backlink strategy of your own might seem daunting, but there are several ways to get started. You can read this in-depth guide on 12 Strategies to Get Backlinks to get started.
Step 7 – Taking it to the next level
We’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a competitor SEO Audit.
There are many other things you can do such as analyzing your competitor’s PPC campaigns, their social media presence, and their on-site content.
All of this information can be useful in giving you the edge over your competition.
We recommend you review our in-depth guide on how to perform a Competitor SEO Audit with SEMrush.
