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.