How to do competitive analysis but more importantly, why do you need to analyze your competitors?
Competitor analysis is the starting point of any effective web marketing campaign.
If you have a business, whatever products or services you may offer will be similar to those of other companies.
But you already know that.
What about on the web?
On the web it is even worse because the time factor is crucial.
Businesses that have been doing web marketing, SEO and pay per click for years have a huge advantage over those who are new to the Internet.
But don’t be discouraged, studying the competition and what they do (poorly) and what they don’t do at all can open up considerable possibilities.
For these reasons, competitive analysis is the starting point of any web marketing campaign.
The information you can gather about those who offer similar products and services to those you offer helps you understand the kind of threat and difficulty your company faces in achieving in your niche market, success on the Internet.
Studying your competitors gives you the right knowledge to put yourself at an advantage over theirs.
How to prepare a competitor study
Identify your competitors
Who are the brands, the companies that are your competitors in your niche market?
Whatever product or service you sell, you surely have dozens of competitor companies in your business sector.
If I asked you to name your competitors, you would probably be able to list two or three of them on the fly.
But that’s not enough.
If you try to Google your product or service, you will find a precise list of your main competitors.
On the first page are the fiercest, those who spend the most on SEO optimization and web marketing.
Competitor content
Focus on about ten competitors, let’s say for convenience, those that appear on the first page for the product or service you sell.
Analyze their sites, particularly those at the top of the list, to get a better understanding of the type of their content.
What are they publishing and how?
Through a blog?
Do they have a newsletter with which to inform customers of news?
Do they publish videos?
Do this for your competitors’ top ten sites and determine the difference with yours.
If you identify content that most of your competitors are offering to their audience and you are not, that is a starting point on which to take action.
Of course, the reverse is also true.
Don’t waste resources on content that you only propose if you don’t have a result in terms of website traffic.
Observe how often they publish their content and at what times.
For example, observe your competitors’ blogs.
If your competitors publish two posts a week on topics of interest to your niche, and you stop at one post a month, you have a problem.
Specifically, your competitors will have, numerically, much more content and probably, much more traffic than you.
But watch the quality.
A high number of blog posts does not necessarily imply more traffic, particularly if they are not quality content, that is, if they do not pique the interest of your niche.
Another reason to spy on your competitors’ blogs is to find out the trending topics in your target market.
If your competitors are talking about a topic, you should be too.
Your competitors’ SEO
This is the hardest part of the job.
SEO, which I hope you know and apply on your website, if done well, can give you a big boost to advance on Google’s SERP.
Try looking at your competition from an SEO perspective.
For example, Google’s efforts over the years have focused on identifying search engine user intent, particularly with the algorithm update, called BERT.
Understanding search intent helps you build better SEO focused on keywords, topics, and subjects that are really interesting to your customers.
Chances are your competitors have already done their research on this.
Use web tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer or Google’s keyword research tool to select the best keywords to solve the search intent.
Let me give you an example.
If you are a plumber you should respond to the search query plumber h24, emergency plumber, urgent plumber, rather than professional plumber, expert plumber.
Look at your competitors’ pages in this light and the efforts it takes to outrank them.
You may find that for some keywords, even if the best in your industry, you would have to spend too many resources for some result.
But you might also find keywords that offer opportunities at reasonable cost.
Also, aim for quality.
If a competitor has a post where he offers 10 tips on how to solve a certain problem, propose a similar post where you offer 20 tips.
If he/she proposes a video, make a better one, more in-depth and detailed, in good substance, with more information.
Identify your competition’s shortcomings and use them to your advantage.
Your competitors on social media
Your goal on social media is only one: interaction with your customers, existing or potential.
The first step is to determine on which social media your competitors interact.
This is because not all social media is functional for every business.
For example, social media such as Instagram, are ideal for a flower store where every day and several times a day, you can post photos of new arrivals and floral arrangements.
Instagram for a professional, does not seem suitable, better Linkedin.
But your competitors already tell you that.
What social media sites do they regularly post content on?
What information do they post?
How often?
At what times?
Which of their posts, get the most interactions?
How many followers?
How liked is their content?
How much are they being shared?
Watch what they are doing and do it better.
Don’t forget Google Business Profile if you have a local business
Google Business Profile or GBP, is the new brand name replacing the old Google my Business, which provides a company’s information in searches from mobile devices.
When you do a search, text or voice on a smartphone, and identify a business, Google Business Profile comes into play, providing even practical information, (address, location, phone and website) of the business.
Remember that Google Business Profile, answers those geographic queries such as restaurant near me or restaurant in Turin.
Look at your competitors’ profile to figure out what information to include and how to include it.
Understand the areas where you can improve
At the end of your competitor analysis, you should have a pretty good idea of what your competitors are doing to reach the top positions on Google.
What you should do now, based on the information you have gathered from your competitors, is to identify the areas you can improve.
Your competitor analysis will allow you to identify:
- The SEO activities you need to put in place to optimize your website.
- The planning and creation of valuable content for your customers.
- The collaboration with blogs and sites in your industry.
- The selection of social media to preside over and with what content.
Don’t think this is a minor achievement.
In today’s extremely competitive marketplace, the information your competitors offer with their websites, content and social profiles, and pay-per-click campaigns allow you to replicate and improve their marketing strategies.
Take a cue from those who rank better than you and, regardless of your niche market, plan a strategy that sets you apart from your competition.
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