It goes without saying that your business growth depends in part on your ability to dominate the competition and claim the best place in your industry’s online space. Therefore, researching online competitors is one of the many tasks that will help companies fine-tune their digital marketing strategies.
Whether you are about to take the first step towards creating your digital space, or are up and running and are starting to analyze your competitors’ online presence, these five tips will help you gain insight into what your competitors are doing. improve their visibility and growth and offer options to do something even better.
1. Identify your SEO competitors
An SEO competitor is someone who ranks organically for the primary search phrases that pertain to your business.
In many cases, a company’s actual competitors and their SEO competitors don’t line up.
Compile a list of the main search phrases related to your business, products and services. So see who appears for these terms. If a search result ranks for multiple search phrases, consider this your main competitor.
2. Use the search tools
There are a number of tools that you can use to gain valuable competitive insights. In fact, these tools analyze the competitor’s site, compare their reputation to yours, and some even provide data related to paid search and social signals.
3. Check their backlinks
Once you’ve defined the best SEO competitors, you’ll want to check out their backlink portfolio. Backlinks are valuable because, if the links are healthy, they help improve a site’s domain authority. However, if the links are of poor quality, search engines may consider them as spam and you can drop in rankings or in some cases get hit with a Google penalty.
A healthy backlink should:
• Coming from a site with a high domain authority
• Demonstrating trust
• Having content relevant to the content on its landing page
You can use tools like Open Site Explorer to check competitor’s backlinks. Make a list of the strong ones, what these domains are, and then do a little research to see what their guest post guidelines are.
You will need to target the same domains for backlinks as you search for similar domains and any referring domains with a healthy presence related to your industry.
Analyze their blog
Blogging is still a vital component of any digital marketing strategy.
First, determine if the competitor’s blog isn’t exciting but just keyword-filled, or if it focuses on hot industry topics that strive to address consumer needs. Thanks to recent improvements in mobile voice search and the rise of smart home searches, content created to address common natural language concerns not only ranks well, but also converts well.
Remember that blogs serve more purposes than improve SEO. Good content will fuel and convert customers, continue to engage existing buyers, build brand awareness, and differentiate you from similar businesses.
Find out what your competitors are doing well in their blogging strategy and look for opportunities in their shortcomings. Be the expert voice in your industry and over time your online visibility and reputation will likely line up.
5. Identify your social media competitors
Understanding who your social media competitors are is critical to achieving your growth goals through a well thought-out digital marketing strategy. In fact, having an active presence in social media is valuable because:
• Generates valuable social signals on your website to improve SEO
• Allows easy access to targeted audiences
• Gives people the opportunity to “market for you” by sharing your content
• Gives you the ability to promote identity and your brand voice
• Offers entry points into inbound workflows
• Drive traffic to your blog and product pages
There are numerous growth hacking strategies that can be performed using various social media platforms. These can range from complex strategies involving multiple people via automated software, to conversation strategies within groups.
When analyzing your competition’s social media presence pay attention to the types of messages and articles that people like and dislike. You should also identify the times of the day when people engage the most with your competitors and when buyers are least active.
Plan your content, target audience, and post scheduling based on what works best for your competition. Then analyze your extension after a few months of sustained data collection and make the necessary changes to simplify your engagement strategy.
Competitor Analysis Leads to Big Opportunities for Success.
Executing a Comprehensive Competitive Analysis mission will provide you with data and information on improving multiple aspects of your digital marketing strategy. From getting improvements to your SEO efforts to engaging your buyers, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of players in your industry will help you position yourself on the business domain in your digital space.