How to do Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis allows your brand to better understand how your competitors position themselves on the SERP. You can gain greater insight into your own optimization process if you see what works and what doesn’t work for others in your industry. A quality competitive analysis, therefore, will want to look at a variety of factors. Here is how to do a competitive analysis.
- Identify top competitors
- Examine your domain's ranking compared to competitors
- Look at competitor's market share and position
- Look at your competitor's reviews
- Examine their social media performance
The Purpose Of Competitive Analysis
Identify your top competitors. Before you begin with a competitive analysis, you need to first quantify exactly who your chief competitors will be. This requires looking at a variety of spaces. For example, you might have certain competitors who are your main competition in brick and mortar stores, but your online competitors might differ. Similarly, your competition might differ from one geographic location to the next. Look at all of these different types of competitors and determine the ones that compete most closely with your organization. Examine the market share for your niche. This will be highly personalized for your business. Create a list of your most important competitors.
Examine your domain’s ranking compared to your top competitors. Next, you want to take the domains of these main competitors and compare them to your own. Run a competitive analysis that will let you see the keywords that these domains rank for, and how those rankings compare to your own. Look to uncover any keywords that your competitor ranks for that you do not. Check the query volume for these keywords and use this to begin creating a list of words that you want to target.
This is simple to do on the BrightEdge platform. By plugging both URLs into the Data Cube, you can get an analysis of how your site compares overall to the other domain. You can compare the performance of different types of content as well as the keywords where one site ranks but the other does not.
Look at your competitors’ market share and market position. You also want to examine the market share of your competitors. See how much of the digital conversation they control. This will not only help you see areas where you need to focus, but you will also clearly be able to track your progress as you begin optimizing to overtake particular competitors.
Examine also how your competition positions themselves within the market. For example, see if they promote themselves as a more affordable or more user-friendly option. You also want to examine how their site is set up, including details such as the quality of the pictures they offer, how their visuals help buyers, and how they handle details such as customer service and shipping. If they outperform you, then these areas will give you a good place to start considering improvements.
Look at your competitors’ reviews. As a part of your competitor analysis, you also want to consider carefully how customers themselves regard the competition. Look at the reviews they have received on different sites within your industry. See what actual customers did like and did not like about this particular competitor. This will provide you with greater insight regarding the preferences and interests of the customers.
You can then use this information to guide your own marketing campaigns.
Examine their social media performance. Finally, in the current digital environment and the importance placed on social media, a competitor analysis should also include looking carefully at the social media profiles of your main competitors. Look at the content they post and how people respond to it. You can use this information to then improve your own social media performance, as you see what customers will engage with and what topics spark their interest.
Building a strong digital presence requires organizations to also closely examine what their competitors do online. By running a competitive analysis, you can gain insight into what customers want to see, but also where your own marketing strategy needs to improve.