How much should I analyze my competitors?
-
Hi,
Recently I've started a competitor research (aka competitive analysis). A few hours after I began, I've started to feel that maybe I'm doing too much unnecessary work.
What I've been doing so far is analyzing the competitor's links (using the Dr Pete's Link Profiling excel and some other things), and their site optimization. The on-site optimization analysis has been very light, just to see if the competitors are doing something really well, or not.
But still, I think that maybe I'm doing too much work.
So, I'd like to see your thoughs: How much work is necessary when doing competitor analysis? What things do you analyse? And how much do you report to the clients?
Thank you all in advance!
Ivan
-
Take a quick peek at their backlink profiles and top metrics once a month to see if they've had any changes in their strategies or partnerships that you're able to see. I would also monitor mentions of their brand (social and blogs/publications). It'll keep your finger on the pulse of who is talking about them, what they're doing, who they're partnering with, what kind of press they're getting etc.
We typically do quarterly reviews of competitors. This involved a lot of different things, for example, we may look at their top metrics (backlinks, referring domains, anchor percentages) to notice any major changes, look at their visibility (where they're ranking overall in the space for whatever buckets/topics we're monitoring), what kind of pickup they've gotten, if they're heavy publishers then we look at what content went out that month and how it performed, amongst other things. The depth and items really vary because it's tailored to the client, what we initially found during the auditing phase, and what kind of strategy we've implemented.
-
How much work is necessary when doing competitor analysis? What things do you analyse?
I look at the content on the first page of the SERPs for the keywords that I will compete for. If I think that I can beat that content or at least be reasonably competitive then I will start working. I don't look at anything else other than make note of which domains are competing. If the domains are ones that I have not heard of then I feel that I have picked a good place to compete.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My competitor's sneaky link building technique
Hi, I can't figure out how my competitor seems to fit four invisible nav menus into her home page. If you view her page source and type "/about" for example, it shows five examples of the text linking to her "about" page. But four of them can't be located on the web page (they are hidden). How does she do this? She basically has four duplicate links that are counted for SEO but can't be seen on the webpage. address: http:// camilla peffer.com. au/ Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | SleekCopy0 -
Methods for estimating competitor website traffic from natural search
Hi all, I'm currently working on some competitor analysis and estimating website traffic based on rankings and estimated search volume for approximately 500 keywords. I'm then estimating based on click through rate from Webmaster tools. I think this will give me a relatively accurate estimation but was wondering how everyone else does this? Any other methods out there? Thanks, Elias
Competitive Research | | A_Q0 -
Why is our website ranked lower but beats most competitors in full SERP report?
We are analysing why our website ranks so low (currently position 8 in serp). We beat our competitors in most areas. Also we produce by far the most useful content. Do not buy links or do any other malpractice. We have been for a long time ranked in top 3 (well mostly 1-2) positions. In the last year we have seen a decline to position 8-10 and we are not sure why this is the case. Can anyone suggest what we should be focusing on? We are clueless. All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete. m8qIeyC,Kf1LLei#0
Competitive Research | | urkeman0 -
Traffic Data for Competitor Subdomain
Does anyone know of a way to get monthly visitor data for a subdomain that I do not manage? I would normally use SEMRush or Compete, but they only provide domain level data.
Competitive Research | | dsinger0 -
Competitors SERP's
One of our competitors is routinely achieving excellent SERP for brand related keywords within only a couple of months of adding the respective brand to their website. Full details are explained in the attached image to avoid the competitor being notified of this post via Google Alerts. Can anyone identify how they are achieving this and point me in the right direction? The other thing is that I was also achieving good SERPs for these and other brand related keywords but I seem to have dropped off the face of google for them, where my competitor has not and who continues to achieve the seemingly impossible. Thanks TOfVHD8
Competitive Research | | UnderMe0 -
How to top competitor's article
Hello, For bobweikel.com I'm going to work on getting some natural backlinks by making a better article than http://www.medicinenet.com/weight_loss/article.htm even though they're 30 times more of an authority than me. If you think this is a good idea, how do you recommend I top this thing? I'm just brainstorming
Competitive Research | | BobGW0 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
How to track competitor who uses another website on the url?
Hi everyone, The thing is pretty simple: I have a competitor who uses a different format of url, very similar to this: www.example.com - but he started to use a thing like this: example.mtv.com The problem is that every analysis that I make tell me something about mtv.com instead of the site I want. The url is redirected. Sorry about my english, but I think it is very clear. I want to know how to track something like this, because even in competitor analysis I'm getting info about the big site, and not the one I need. Thank you very much.
Competitive Research | | bluehelmet0