Competitor Website Analysis: Insights and Outcomes

Your website competes against other websites for research and engagement whether you are providing hardwood flooring, custom bioreactors, or capital investment.

Shouldn’t you know where you stand against your competition? Are you relatively invisible, steadily gaining traction, or do you have a head start that needs protecting? Is your intended audience finding your competitors ahead of you?

Wherever you are on your marketing trajectory, it’s never a bad time to take a cold hard look at where you stand. And while you are at it, gain insights into what is and isn’t working for yourself and the competitors in your space. This will help you identify trends, threats, and opportunities for achieving niche dominance which I hope is your goal.

Competitor Website Analysis is often overlooked but it is highly effective. It reliably delivers valuable insights for improving your position in your industry and niche.

1. Create and Compare Competitor Profiles

First, understanding the competitive landscape and level of effort your competitors invest into website performance, SEO, and Ads helps you effectively position and prioritize your efforts.

While we cannot see competitors’ true (private) analytics data, we can surmise quite a bit from traffic estimates, keyword rankings, top pages, SERP features, backlink data, and their subsequent competing domains and pages.

We can also study their messaging, graphical appeal, and overall UX (user experience). What are they doing right and what are they doing wrong?

Finally, while we ask you to provide a starter list of known competitors, this exercise often reveals new competitors previously unknown to you. When appropriate, they are added to the competitors list for further analysis.

Action: Conduct comprehensive assessments of key competitors with a detailed snapshot of their website performance, SEO maturity, Ad spend, UX, and success metrics.

Outcome: This in-depth analysis provides a clear understanding of your competitors' commitment and effectiveness in their digital strategies, allowing you to benchmark your site against theirs and identify strategic opportunities for differentiation and improvement.

2. What Keywords Do Your Competitors Rank For?

Knowing which keywords your competitors target and succeed with can uncover missed opportunities and areas of potential competition. Since nearly two-thirds of all web traffic originates with organic search, it is absolutely crucial that you rank for the relevant keywords that your audience seeks.

“I found this exercise really helpful as we were able to identify some keyword gaps, especially different variations of keywords that competitors were ranking for and we weren't. We were also able to find a few keywords that we're missing that are applicable, and we're going to add. We got a ton of information and have a plan to optimize about 50 pages over the next 6 months based on this info. I wish we'd done it earlier! It would definitely have helped in preparing new pages in the first place. “ – Chloe Wood, Marketing Associate for NanoImaging Services

Action: Perform in-depth analysis of primary, long-tail, and paid keywords for each competitor. This includes understanding the intent behind the keywords (informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial) and identifying which keywords trigger SERP features like snippets or FAQs.

Outcome: This comprehensive keyword insight allows for better strategic alignment of your content and SEO tactics, ensuring you compete effectively for high-value keywords.

3. Find Content and Keyword “Gaps”

What keywords do your competitors rank for that you do not? Identifying keyword and content gaps is essential for targeting missed SEO opportunities and improving your content strategy.

Finding keyword gaps with competitors helps find opportunities for your content.

Action: Conduct a head-to-head comparison to analyze and identify keywords for which your competitors have high search engine rankings but your site ranks poorly (or not at all.) This analysis not only identifies missed keywords but also provides insight into the content and strategies driving their rankings.

Outcome: Targeting these keyword gaps strategically enhances your content and SEO efforts, closing gaps in your keyword portfolio, improving visibility, and increasing organic traffic and conversions from queries where previously only competitors were found.

4. Utilize Topical Maps for Strategic Insights

A topical map, aka the topic cluster model, is a strategy for organizing and linking content around a central theme or main topic. This kind of logical architecture benefits both SEO and user experience, and also helps identify content gaps and reduce keyword cannibalization.

Keyword topical maps reveal what content is and isn't covered.

How does this apply to competitor analysis? With assistance from A.I., we can create topical maps from your competitors’ keyword rankings. This exercise vividly helps us identify competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and the popular/effective topics in their space. It also helps benchmark against industry standards, optimize SEO strategy, and fine-tune content.

Action: Develop competitor topical maps and a master list of all relevant keywords categorized into topical maps.

Outcome: Topical maps help in structuring your website content more logically, improving both SEO and user experience by ensuring comprehensive coverage of all relevant topics. Search engines reward well-structured content that delivers depth and breadth on topics with higher rankings and increased organic traffic.

5. Backlinks Analysis

Investigating the backlinks of competitor websites is essential for benchmarking and gaining strategic insights in SEO. By examining where competitors are linked from, you can identify key influencers and authoritative sites in your niche, uncover link-building opportunities, and better understand the content strategies that are resonating with your target audience.

This analysis helps in assessing the quality and relevance of the links that boost competitors’ search engine rankings, offering a roadmap to refine your own SEO strategies and enhance your site’s visibility.

Action: Analyze competitors' backlink profiles to identify sources and patterns of their high-quality links.

Outcome: Leverage this information to enhance your own link-building strategy, ultimately improving your website's SEO and search engine rankings.

6. Final Reporting and Actionable Suggestions

Accumulating data and insights is only beneficial if it can be translated into actionable strategies.

Action: Compile the findings from the competitor profiles, keyword analysis, gap analyses, and backlinks analysis into a final report that not only summarizes the data but also provides clear, actionable suggestions for improvement.

Outcome: This final report serves as a strategic guide, equipping you with the knowledge to implement SEO enhancements, optimize content, and refine marketing strategies effectively.

Conclusion: Competitor Website Analysis for the Win

Effective competitor website analysis goes beyond mere observation -- it involves strategic actions based on deep insights that provide a competitive edge. By thoroughly understanding your competitive landscape and the SEO tactics of your competitors, you can strategically enhance your website's performance and market positioning.