SEO and the Role of Competitor Analysis

When it comes to incorporating SEO into your marketing campaign, competitive analysis should not be overlooked. But why exactly is it important, what does it involve and what should you know about your competitors?


Well, the first thing you should know is that your SEO competition is not always the same as the companies you might traditionally consider to be your competition. Essentially, the competitors in SEO terms are the sites currently ranking in the top ten for the keywords you are targeting in your campaign. This is because it's those websites whose rankings you are looking to take!


After you have identified your competition, the analysis should begin by looking at each of their websites. How are they making us of the keywords on the site? How does one page link to another? Look to identify anything unusual or that you would not expect. You shouldn't copy their site, either in design or content. In fact, copying content can be detrimental to your SEO campaign because of issues with duplicate content. You should be looking at their sites purely to ascertain their on page strategy.


You should then look at their linking profiles. You can use free tools such as Yahoo Site Explorer if you do not have access to a premium tool. This enables you to find out how many links your competitors have from other websites. You should also look to establish how they are acquiring their links and also the quality of the sites linking back to them. Again, the important thing here is not trying to replicate their strategies, but is to find ways in which to improve upon them.

When it comes to competitor analysis and understanding their use of SEO, you can start to improve your company's search engine ranking without replication. By finding gaps in their own SEO campaigns, you can start to think of ways to make your website more SEO efficient. Once this is carefully looked at, you can say goodbye to being second best, and hello to beating their rankings!