How to Find Your True Local Competitors
Who are your clients’ true competitors if every SERP is a local SERP these days? We'll help you answer that question.
Competitive Research
Competitive research in SEO means, in a nutshell, stealing your competitors’ rankings and traffic.
Well, not exactly stealing.
But it does involve reverse-engineering what's working for your competitors, and using that information to your advantage!
Competitive research typically follows a few common lines of inquiry: identifying competitors, keyword research, content gap analysis, and backlink exploration . If you're not sure where to start when it comes to establishing your competitors, check out the True Competitor feature in Moz Pro, and start building your competitive strategy.
In addition, we've listed some companion resources on competitive research and analysis for SEO.
How to Do a Competitor Analysis for SEO : A terrific introduction to SEO competitive analysis with a free template to copy for your own campaigns.
The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide : An effective competitive research process starts with keywords, and this guide outlines a step-by-step process you can implement today to identify keyword opportunities.
Link Gap Analysis for SEO : Identify opportunities to increase your authority based on your competitors’ backlink strategy.
SEO Competitive Analysis Certification : Learn how to confidently build an SEO competitive analysis plan and get certified with this 6-part series. This certification combines on-demand video lessons with tasks and quizzes to affirm your understanding.
Most Recent Articles on Competitive Research
Win That Pitch: How SEO Agencies Can Land New Business
Learn how a flexible SERP tracking solution like STAT can snag you all sorts of new business.
We Dipped Our Toes Into Double Featured Snippets
Double-snippet SERPs started trickling in last year, so we took a peek at what they’re up to.
Make Sense of Your Data with These Essential Keyword Segments
Knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.
Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
Moz Academy Training
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Keyword Research Master Guide
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Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
Mapping the Overlap of SERP Feature Suggestions
We explored the search suggestions packed into SERP features to see how much overlap might exist as a result of Google's endless topical organization.
Just How Much is Your Website Worth, Anyhow? An Easy Guide to Valuation
What goes into valuing a website? If you've ever considered selling your online business, you've likely wondered how much it's worth. This post lays the foundation for what you'll need to know to prepare your selling timeline, build value, make smart cost-cutting decisions, and move forward with the process.
The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist
This comprehensive competitive analysis guide & checklist will help you ID areas of opportunity and expose niches where your site can beat your competition, without having to guess which “best practice” you should test next.
How to Use Your Competition's "Top Pages" Data to Bolster Your SEO Efforts
By comparing top pages data from multiple sources against one another, you can get some really cool, powerful advanced SEO opportunities in your content and keyword targeting. Rand explains how in this Whiteboard Friday.
Is Quora Skirting the Edge of ‘Spammy’ When it Comes to SEO?
While Google says all spam is treated equally, taking a deep, hard look at Quora made this author wonder if that's really the case.
Be Your Site's Hero: An Audit Manifesto – Next Level
SEO comes with a lot of "whys" that can be difficult to answer. Jo Cameron is here to remove some of the mystery and level up your site audit skills with the help of ace tips, Bonnie Tyler, and a hefty toolkit in the newest installment of our Next Level educational series!
Here's How to Supercharge Your Competitive Research Using a URL Profiler and Fusion Tables
Competitive analyses usually mean sifting through a ton of data. Craig Bradshaw's here to share an 8-step process that combines free data collection tools, fusion tables, and network graphs to take care of the heavy lifting when doing competitive research.
The Brand Halo Effect: Does Brand Awareness Impact Organic Search Rankings?
How much weight does brand carry in the SERPs? It might be more than you think.
Where & How do Top Startups Get Their Links?
Do the top startups build links? If they're getting traction, SEO is super important to their livelihood and future fundraising and revenue. So how are the top startups getting links, and how do their link counts change over time?
How to Optimize for Competitors' Branded Keywords
It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor, from determining their worthiness to properly targeting your funnel to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.