Competitor analysis, three aspects to compare for better results
Technology, content and backlinks: wanting to summarize to the maximum, these are the main aspects on which to focus our attention in the execution of a quick analysis of online competitors, to try to compare our project with those of the best positioned or most emerging opponents, who are gaining the approval of Google. It is in fact always complex to follow the evolution of Google’s algorithms and therefore the old tactic of “spying on opponents” can still give the right cues to gain positions and visibility in SERP.
Chuck Price on Search Engine Journal also reiterates the current importance of the competition analysis, and offers his 3 methods to quickly perform this check to find areas where you can improve the optimization of our site. According to the expert, the challenges and obstacles to reach the top of the SERP and remain there have become increasingly greater and “The introduction of Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird, Rankbrain and BERT in Google’s algorithm has made it much more difficult for SEO professionals to play with the system“.
Although over the years the guidelines for Google webmasters have not changed much, in fact, the same cannot be said for the core alghoritm, which indeed has “an evolution that takes place at a very fast pace” and is “too complex for reverse engineering”.
For this, it is useful to find common patterns “digging into competitive research”, performing a careful analysis of organic competitors that can give us “an idea of what the algorithm is looking for when determining what results to return for a particular query”. There are three elements in which, at the most elementary level, you can divide a site – as we said, technology, content and backlinks – and these are the tips to compare our site with those of competitors.
Assessing the technology of the competitor’s website
The goal of every webmaster is to create a well-structured site that is fast, easy to use and easy to scan for crawlers.
To achieve these results no specific technologies are needed, but “if you are starting with a new site or are considering a redesign, it is definitely worth taking a look at the competition“, suggests Price, which also indicates a specific resource to obtain this information, namely Builtwith, a tool “that SEO can use for competitive research”.
Analysis of this tool provides data on a set of installed technology profiles, including information on:
- Analytics and tracking systems.
- Widgets.
- e-Commerce.
- Frameworks.
- CDN.
- Mapping.
- Mobile.
- Payment systems.
- A/V Media.
- CMS.
- Libraries and JS functions.
- Advertising systems.
- Verified links.
- SSL certificates.
- Web hosting provider.
- Names of the servers.
- Email hosting provider.
- Web server.
- Operating systems and servers.
- Syndication techniques.
- Webmaster registration.
Studying the website architecture
Understanding the way the competitor site structure is organized can be useful in terms of defining the hierarchy of pages and to discover potential product or content gaps.
Again, the author suggests a tool to map the site of the competition – in particular, Xenu Link Sleuth, a free tool that “knew how to resist the test of time”.
Verifying Core Web Vitals parameters
We know that Google is going beyond the simple speed of the page as a ranking factor and that, in a few months, the Core Web Vitals will become a complex signal used for the rankings.
Using Google’s words, the three essential web signals provide “a unified guide on quality signals that are essential for all sites to offer an excellent user experience on the Web”.
Analyzing the performance of our site and comparing it with those of our opponents allows us to find out the level of optimization for the parameters chosen by Google – and the road we still have to take to achieve the quality goals.
Analyzing competitors’ content
It is perhaps more immediate the second area of investigation of competitor sites, that is the content and keyword that work for our opponents: in terms rather practical and opportunistic, thanks to tools (such as Seozoom!) you can take advantage of the work already done by our competitors to drive organic traffic to our site.
What is needed is a tool that can give us an overview of the competition’s organic keywords – of course, we refer to the various features of SEOZoom – through which we can easily determine which queries drive traffic and their potential positioning and, above all, how the content is organized (in which pages and with which search intent).
Equally important is to find out if there are opportunities that we are missing, that is keyword we could work on but for which we have never thought of a content, executing what is called content gap analysis, an ideal way to find keywords highly relevant to our site topics and some potential new business opportunities.
Studying the onpage optimization
Price acknowledges that “Google may not be so dependent on meta tags from the introduction of Knowledge Graph, but having a clear roadmap for both users and search engines is still important”.
Again, there are various tools to understand the relationship between our site and that of competitors, and in particular the author cites the SEOBook Webpage Similarity Comparison Tool, which generates analysis related to page title, meta tag description, keyword, word and text count, main long tail keywords of two and three words etc. All information that, as we know, we can also find in the various tools of SEOZoom, from the function “domain vs. domain” to that of comparison of url, up to the tab Analysis competitor that allows you to view the snippets of competitors better positioned.
When we use these tools, Price suggests, we have to remember to “look for patterns“, that is, to understand which formulation model Google likes at the moment (and we are not using), so as to redirect our optimization work in the light of this information: this obviously does not mean simply copying, but taking inspiration in a creative and original way to accommodate trends.
Checking the competition’s backlinks
Of course, are well behind us the times when “SEO professionals chased every backlink of a competitor, in order to neutralize the advantage that the link could provide”: everything changed after the introduction of the Penguin update in April 2012, that has upset Google’s approach to links in the fight against spam, making in practice suddenly negative the value of some “junk” links, which have gone to dangerously stain the backlink profile of a site.
Despite this, however, Price argues that “mining the competition’s backlink is not a bad idea”, if we know how to use the head and understand which potential links “are worth the effort to acquire them”.
Wanting to offer more precise advice, find out which sites link to pages of our competitors offers us two types of indication: on the one hand, highlights which are the most valuable pages of our opponents sites (those that are linked naturally or that are at the center of link building campaigns for their conversion potential) and then makes us understand what are the keywords to focus on. On the other hand, it also allows us to find new sites that host links, with which to get in touch to promote our work, especially in case of vertical themes in topic with the contents of our site.
SEO competition analysis, the base to optimize the site
In conclusion, we saw 3 quick ways to spy on competitors and draw useful pointers to improve our site.
As Chuck Price points out, “content and links will continue to be the backbone of Google’s algorithm for some time to come”, while the definition of the best structure can evolve according to the demands and needs of users.
What matters is to understand who we are facing as opponents and “neutralize any competitive advantage“, two important aspects in the development of an effective marketing campaign, to which he must do – of course! – followed the development of unique and useful content, which represent the lever with which to try to “domain SERPs”.
