SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step

SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step | Seo Tools

SEO competitor analysis is extremely important if you want your website to replicate or do better than your competitors, and it should be done before designing your website. The aim of SEO competitor analysis is to understand how your online competitors have gained ranks through the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It will give you an overall picture of your competitors and may expose opportunities for your website. You need to know what keywords they used to make the top positions in the SERPs.

 

SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step

 

 

SEO competitor analysis is broken into two parts – on-page SEO analysis and off-page SEO analysis. Off-page is usually the amount of quality backlinks to a website. On-page is the usually the standard SEO elements of a website such as site structure, keyword focus, page title, internal linking, rich content etc.Before Starting SEO competitor analysis one should know what is SEO ?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. Search Engine Optimization Service is very improtant as this service increases traffic on site and improve ranking of the site .
 
Now ,Let’s start the SEO competitor analysis! You should have 5 international and 5 local websites. You need to get information on the 4 metrics below. Use some SEO tools to get this information. Sign up for a free month trial with Alexa, but be sure to cancel your account before the free trial ends. In my opinion, Alexa is a great tool to compare many websites together for these metrics. It will also allow you to compare them on a country by country basis if there is enough traffic. There is a list of SEO competitor analysis tools at the end of this article.

The following 4 metrics are a good starting point for your SEO competitor analysis.
 
Google PageRank – PageRank determines the authority and popularity of a website. If you want to find more information on PageRank, check Wikipedia. Google PageRank goes from 0-10. 10 is excellent and 0 is poor. From 4 onwards is difficult to get.
 
Alexa Ranking – opposite of Google PageRank. It goes from 1- onwards. Number 1 is the best score. Anything from 1 – 250,000 is a reasonably good ranking.
 
Domain Authority – this is a good ranking measure of the authority or popularity of a website.
 
Website Backlinks – backlinks will only count towards your PageRank if they are from quality and authority websites. 

It may be a good idea to open an Excel file with your 10 competitors as headings and use the above 4 points for your rows. When you have all the information entered, pick the top 5 competitors based on the 4 metrics above. Now, you are left with 5 competitor websites to analyse. The next step is to do an on-page and off-page SEO competitor analysis on these 5 websites.
 
Let’s first start doing an on-page SEO analysis. This will give you a good indication into the amount of  work required on design and development for your website. The homepage for each website is usually a good place to start and look out for the main SEO elements such as the following.
 
Keywords – is there a keyword focus, are there one or many keywords on the page, is the keyword used in the titles?, etc. Start collecting all the keywords and do some keyword research. You should collect around 500 keywords and keyword phrases, categorise them and collate them into an Excel file. Lookout for keywords/ phrases that are rising or declining in popularity and lookout for keywords that have a high number of searches. Market Sumrami, Alexa and Wordtracker are great tools for this job. Researching keywords is very important as it will give you an idea of how to lay out your website. You can structure your website based on the keywords and keyword phrases. Search Google on a particular keyword and see are any other keywords/ phrases returned. This is a good way to expand your list of keywords. Keywords are an important part of SEO competitor analysis.
 
Images, videos – does the website make good use of images and videos, and are they used in the right places etc.
 
Site structure – is the website well structured, are there many pages, and are they in a well structured hierarchy etc.
 
Site performance – do pages and images load quickly, does it have a shopping cart and does that work ok etc.

Internal linking – is there a lot of internal linking and good navigation, does it make good use of anchor text, is there too much internal linking?
 
Other files – does it have robots.txt and sitemap.xml – are these setup correctly? are there any 404 error pages etc.
 
Usability – is it a clear website, are the sections labelled clearly, is it easy to understand, can you find what you are looking for easily, is there a clear call to action etc.
 
Content – is the content rich and unique and is it updated regularly etc.Off-Page SEO analysis
 
Backlinks – use a tool such as ahrefs. Check what backlinks your competitors have. Maybe there are links to niche directories, comments to blogs, relevant forums etc. This will give you ideas to see if you can gain these links also. For example, you may not have known about a particular directory that you can submit your site to. Check out the website that has the blog comment and see if you can add relevant information with a backlink to your own site. Backlinks are a very important part of SEO competitor analysis as backlinks play an important part in gaining a high PageRank.
 
You should set aside plenty of time to do on-page and off-page analysis, as it is an extremely important part of SEO competitor analysis.
 
The next step in SEO competitor analysis is to do a SWOT analysis on these 5 websites. Make sure you have a complete understanding of your competitors website before doing a SWOT analysis. There are many seo service provider which provides seo services and they guide you better about SEO competitor analysis. for example – Biphoo Marketing Solution (BMS) is one of the best service provider which enable its clients to grow their business by making optimal use of various online channels like Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization, Viral Marketing Services, Brand Building, Online Reputation Management .They provides different Digital Marketing Packages an individual can choose the package according to their requirements.  
 

Optimize Your Blog Posts for Landing Pages Using SEO

Search Engine Optimization / Optimize Your Blog Posts for Landing Pages Using SEO

 

It’s so important to remember that the search engines don’t rank websites – they rank individual pages. This means that every page has the potential to become a landing page for visitors and that’s why you should properly optimize your blog posts for SEO as well.


Before you create pages or posts it’s important to conduct keyword research on a page or post basis and then select the appropriate keywords based on that content. Remembering that each blog post has the ability to rank in the search engines and show up in the SERPs (search engine results page) for related search queries. It’s important to take the time to optimize your blog just like you would any other page on your website.Search Engine Optimization Service is one of the best technique which helps in increasing traffic of the site and improving the ranking of the site .

SEO Tools
 
There are still a few free Seo tools that can help you do general keyword research.  
 
As a side note, you should always have a professional do a thorough keyword research of your entire website at least every couple of years as trends change and so do search patterns. Each page should have it’s own keyword research to ensure you are targeting the proper search terms for the content on that page.
 
Remember to place keyword search terms into the title of the post, the H1 and H2 tags (if you use them in your blog) and the content itself, just like you were optimizing a page on your website. In my experience, a well-written blog post is going to be partially optimized already, since you tend to repeat certain phrases when you’re talking about a particular subject.
 
When optimizing your blog post for SEO be sure to incorporate broad and long tail keywords into your content, as well as those you are actively targeting on your website. It’s entirely possible that a page from your website and a blog post can rank at the same time for a particular search query.

Leverage Internal Linking
 
Use the power of internal linking to drive readers deeper into your blog by linking related posts together with various anchor text. From an SEO perspective, internal linking helps spread link juice from one page to another, which can help a new piece of content do better organically because it gets to leverage the SEO value of those other pages on its own behalf.

Use An SEO Plugin
 
If you are using WordPress as your website and blog platform use an SEO plugin like All-In-One-SEO or Yoast SEO plugin. These ensure that you’re meta titles and descriptions are in the proper form and use the allowed number of characters for snippets.  Remember you may get on the first page of Google, but people still have to want to click on your listing.

Promote On Social Media
 
There is a Service i.e Social Media Optimization Service it is a technique of promoting website through social media sites. Posting on social media helps you build back links and drive traffic back to your website. Building social signals and links to those posts will help them become more valuable in the eyes of the search engines. Share them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, plus any niche social communities you might belong to. And not just on your Facebook page, but on all the Facebook and LinkedIn groups that you belong to. There are several companies which provides SMO and SEO Service for example – Biphoo Marketing Solution (BMS) is one of the best service provider which enable its clients to grow their business by making optimal use of various online channels like Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization, Viral Marketing Services, Brand Building, Online Reputation Management .They provides different Digital Marketing Packages an individual can choose the package according to their requirements.

Search Engine Optimization – A Customer Centric and Connected Approach

Search Engine Optimization – A Customer Centric and Connected Approach | SEO Service Provider

 

Search engine optimization beyond the tactics and techniques: relevant, connected, content-intensive and customer-centric.Search engine optimization (SEO), along with email marketing, belongs to the oldest digital marketing techniques. Traditionally, search engine optimization was approached as a relatively technical matter, driven by a focus on how search engine algorithms work and how to get ‘link juice’.  

Search Engine Optimization - A Customer Centric and Connected Approach
Things have changed, however and the focus is increasingly on the question, task, context and customer experience of people looking for answers using search engines. As usual it’s always about a good mix and integrated marketing approach with the user/customer first. This isn’t new: in the end a customer-centric and connected approach always prevailed, in SEO as well and good SEO practitioners knew that. What has changed is that everyone needs to get that now. And realize that search will change a lot in coming years.
 
The aim of search engine optimization is to have online pages, such as website pages, blog posts or other online destinations (e.g. a SlideShare presentation) rank high in the natural or ‘organic’ search engine results for pre-defined keywords or search queries. These keywords can consist of single terms or a combination of words. In the early days of the Web a lot of attention was given to high-volume and short keywords people used. However, as the search behavior of the Internet user evolved and the Web became more crowded, the focus started shifting towards so-called long-tail keywords. Search engine optimization service benefits and the case for relevance
 
The attention for search engine optimization, an evolving and dynamic activity that changes as search engines change their so-called algorithms, has never dropped, even with the advent of many new digital marketing tactics and evolutions such as content marketing, social media marketing (social signals do matter a lot), etc. On the contrary, social signals and content marketing, led to even more attention for search engine optimization and an integrated approach (recommended reading in this regard: Optimize by Lee Odden). Sometimes the focus on changing algorithms seems a bit ridiculous. Each time Google’s well-known Matt Cutts shares another video, bloggers, SEO practitioners and content marketers with an online focus start analyzing and adapting before you can watch the end of yet another Cutts video. Imagine how high the – perceived – stakes are.

Yet, in the end, nothing really ever changes from a more fundamental (non-technical) viewpoint.When looking at the future of content marketing, Lee Odden emphasized that integrated approach of social, search and content and the need to move beyond silos again. And it’s not just about tactics. For me, search is and remains a matter of promises and relevance with the way people search in mind. Search is part of a multi-channel customer journey and Google will be the first to confirm it.
 
Google, even if under increasing pressure, is and remains the number one search engine and with people like Ray Kurzweil on board, who knows what’s coming next. We’re still in the dark ages of search and our children will certainly laugh about the ways we found and shared information. But Google keeps changing the ways we search/find and will keep doing so. Think big fat data. Think fast data. Think AI and semantic. Think context, location, touch, voice and so much more.
 
However, the essence remains: people will find information on their terms and relevance, in the broadest possible sense, should prevail with choice as a key element (if not we would end up in an information prison and sometimes it seems we start getting there). In this and many other senses, content marketing, when approached in a strategic way, and search engine optimization are tightly connected but they are not one and the same despite all the “this is the new that” mantras, even if the search dimension (from keyword research to content optimization) plays a key role in defining a decent (digital) content marketing strategy.Here are some other reasons why search engine optimization remains so popular :

Search Engine Optimization - A Customer Centric and Connected Approach

 

The majority of buyers use search engines during their journey across various stages. In fact, most buyers at one point or the other use search to find relevant information in a commercial context.Search engine optimization is cost-effective and, when well done, leads to good conversions and other marketing results.Emerging digital technologies enable new ways to optimize the position of an online destination in organic search results and go beyond search in the strict sense, including for instance social interaction.
 
As search engines have continued to update their algorithms on one hand and ‘punish’ spammy SEO tactics on the other, the search engine optimization community has been analyzing the impact of all these changes and so-called ‘black hat’ SEO practitioners (or frauds) always came up with new ways to circumvent the latest changes. Now a days, SEO Service is very important for increasing the traffic on the site and for improving the ranking .There are several companies which provides above discussed services like Biphoo Marketing Solution (BMS) is one of the best service provider which enable its clients to grow their business by making optimal use of various online channels like Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization, Viral Marketing Services, Brand Building, Online Reputation Management .They provides different Digital Marketing Packages an individual can choose the package according to their requirements.
 
However, what’s most important – and this doesn’t mean that more technical aspects aren’t important but we shouldn’t be obsessed by them – is that a customer-centric and connected approach towards SEO has always worked, certainly with a focus on relevant and useful content (one of many reasons content marketing is often confused with SEO today). In fact, such an approach works everywhere and across all tactics as we see over and over again.

More technical-oriented SEO practitioners will probably throw lots of terms at you and disagree with some statements. It’s good to apply some technical aspects and if you fully take care of your content for instance, knowing some of them will certainly help.But nothing beats a customer-centric and connected approach. And, yes, content is essential in it, as long as it’s darn relevant.