An SEO competitor analysis (sometimes referred to as competitive analysis) is the process of researching your direct search competitors to understand their target keywords, content strategy, backlink profile, and more, for the purpose of reverse engineering the most successful elements of these tactics into your own SEO strategy.
Instead of guessing which keywords to target, which content to create, or which links to build, you can research your competitors, analyze what's already working for them, and build upon that success.
Why is an SEO competitor analysis important?
Rank higher. Get more traffic. Increase conversions. Earn more loyal customers. An SEO competitor analysis works as a powerful research strategy to help you achieve all of these goals. It can help you successfully answer questions like:
Who are my actual SEO competitors?
What keywords should I target?
What does the competitive landscape look like?
What topics should I cover?
How do I find valuable links?
Consider a real-world example:
Imagine you operate a pet supply store and are one of three competing stores in town. Your customers are happy, but you know they also visit other stores because they can't buy everything in one place. So, you go on a road trip to gather competitive intelligence. You visit the other stores to understand the popular items they offer. By offering these items yourself — or even superior ones — you help your customers make fewer trips, and in turn, you gain more business and, eventually, brand advocates!
Beware of guessing!
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Smart competitor analysis isn't about copying — it's about learning patterns of success so you can create something better.The question isn't "What are they doing?" but "How can we solve this problem better for our audience?"
How to conduct an SEO competitor analysis
There are many ways to do a competitive analysis for SEO, but in this guide, we’ll take you through 5 fundamental steps in each of the following chapters of this guide:
1. Identify your SEO competitors
Who are your competitors? You may think you know, or you may have been operating under assumption, but they’re not necessarily brands selling the same products or services as you! Conducting research in the SERP - or even better, using an SEO tool - to identify your SEO competitors is crucial for precision and SEO planning.
2. Run a keyword gap analysis
Ready to do some sleuthing? A keyword gap analysis can help you discover opportunities to improve your visibility by targeting keywords that competitors are ranking for, but your website is not. By addressing areas where your competitors have a stronger online presence, you can capture a broader audience and drive more traffic.
3. Evaluate the SERP for user intent
Savvy marketers tailor their strategies to align with what users are seeking. Whether your audience is searching for a solution, an answer to their question, a product, a service, or a nearby location, understanding their intent is essential. You’ll learn how to analyze the SERP and how your competitors meet your audience’s needs.
4. Analyze your competitors’ content and improve upon it
By dissecting the content that contributes to your competitor's success, SEOs can glean insights into effective content strategies, keyword targeting, and user engagement. Armed with this intelligence, you can enhance your content, and outshine competitors in the ever-evolving landscape of the SERPs.
5. Perform a competitor backlink analysis
It’s time to pull back the curtain on your competitors’ backlink profiles. With the right tools and framework, you can unveil valuable insights into the quality and quantity of links driving your competitor's authority. By leveraging this data and fortifying your backlink strategy, you’re setting yourself up for a SERP takeover!
Throughout this guide, we’ll use examples to demonstrate and help explain the context around frameworks, workflows, and interpreting data. Let’s return to the pet supply store example we referenced earlier. Below is a visualization of the information you’ll collect as you move through a comprehensive competitor analysis. It includes:
Competitors
SEO metric comparison
Keyword gaps
Top competing content
Backlink sources
When should I conduct an SEO competitor analysis?
You’ve heard the saying, “The only constant is change.” In that same spirit, conducting an SEO competitor analysis is not a one-time event, but rather an ongoing process to stay informed about the dynamic nature of your market, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
You should conduct a competitor analysis when:
You launch a new website
You launch a new product or service
You’re entering a new market
You find that your competitors are outranking you
You’re implementing an SEO strategy for the first time
You’re a freelance SEO and have acquired a new client
Your competitors are outranking you in the SERPs, and you’re unsure as to why
You lack benchmarks for a website and need to create them
You’re seeking investors or stakeholders, and want to instill confidence in your strategy
Get a quick competitor analysis report in 2 steps
Domain Overview will give you a snapshot of a competitor - or any site at all - in just a few seconds. We can perform this quick assessment and get a bird's-eye-view of nearly any site:
2. Enter a competitor’s domain, subdomain, or exact page
You’ll see a Summary, kicking off with Domain Search Theme. The Search Theme derives from the most frequently searched keywords associated with this site, and provides insight into how a website meets an audience in the SERPs. If you’re searching your own domain in this tool, it can be helpful for confirming that your domain’s target aligns with the language of ranking keywords.
The Summary also includes Domain Authority®, Page Authority, and Brand Authority™ metrics. Brand Authority is a Moz metric, on a scale of 1-100, that measures the total strength of a brand. We know brands matter online and in the real world, and this metric offers clarity into the relationship between the value of a brand and search engine results.
As you scroll down, you’ll see Domain Keyword Topics. This feature offers insight into how people search for this domain by exploring the primary topic categories based on ranking keywords.
As you continue to scroll and explore, you’ll also see a graph called Brand Authority comparison. This is a powerful visualization that compares this brand and its competitors’ Domain Authority, Brand Authority, and where they fall in this space. This graph combines the online and real-world authority of several brands at once.
As you scroll, you’ll see additional metrics, such as keyword and link opportunities, discovered and lost links, linking domains, and more. Each of these tables and graphs pulls from a Moz Pro tool, and will give you a 360 view of one site.
As we continue through this guide, we’ll dig deeper into nearly all of this data, and discuss how to extract actionable insights!
Brand, authority, and search visibility are all intertwined. Check out this Whiteboard Friday video to understand why tracking your and your competitors’ Brand Authority can lend insight into their strategy and success.
Free SEO competitor analysis template
To walk you through this guide, we've put together a free, downloadable template that you can use to perform your own SEO competitor analysis. This template will also help you create an actionable report.
If you're serious about beating your competition, we recommend reading this guide front-to-back. We've tried to make it as concise and easy to understand as possible, and learning the basics of SEO is a vital first step in achieving your online business goals.
Go through at the pace that suits you best, and take note of resources we link to throughout the chapters — they're also worthy of your attention.
If you want to take a more systematic and comprehensive approach to learning SEO - or train your entire team! - check out the Moz Academy SEO Competitive Analysis Certification. We've consolidated all the resources you need to learn how to confidently implement a competitive analysis strategy with unique learning strategies, task lessons, and quizzes to test your knowledge. To top it off, you can validate your expertise with a LinkedIn Moz SEO Competitive Analysis Certification badge!
Organize your learning with the SEO Competitive Analysis Certification. Learn with on-demand videos & task lessons, test your knowledge with exams, and top it all off with shiny new credentials to share with your LinkedIn network!
