One of the most important activities for any SEO process is the initial competitive analysis. This process should correctly identify your SEO targets and provide fundamental input to establish your overall strategy.
Depending on the type, industry, and scope of the SEO process, this analysis can become quite complex, as there are many factors to take into consideration—more now than ever before.
In order to facilitate this process (and make it easy to replicate, control, and document), I've created a step-by-step workflow with the different activities and factors to take into consideration, including identifying SEO competitors, gathering the potential keywords to target, assessing their level of difficulty, and selecting them based on defined criteria:
If you prefer, you can also grab a higher resolution version of the workflow from here.
The four analysis phases
As you can see, the SEO analysis workflow is divided into four phases:
1. Identify your potential SEO competitors
This initial phase is especially helpful if you're starting with an SEO process for a new client or industry that you don't know anything about, and you need to start from scratch to identify all of the potentially relevant competitors.
It's important to note that these are not necessarily limited to companies or websites that offer the same type of content, services, or products that you do, but can be any website that competes with you in the search results for your target keywords.
2. Validate your SEO competitors
Once you have the potential competitors that you have gathered from different relevant sources it's time to validate them, by analyzing and filtering which of those are really already ranking, and to which degree, for the same keywords that you're targeting.
Additionally, at this stage you'll also expand your list of potential target keywords by performing keyword research. This should use sources beyond the ones that you had already identified coming from your competitors and your current organic search data—sources for which your competitors or yourself are still not ranking, that might represent new opportunities.
3. Compare with your SEO competitors
Now that you have your SEO competitors and potential target keywords, you can gather, list, and compare your site to your competitors, using all of the relevant data to select and prioritize those keywords. This will likely include keyword relevance, current rankings, search volume, ranked pages, as well as domains' link popularity, content optimization, and page results characteristics, among others.
4. Select your target keywords
It's finally time to analyze the previously gathered data for your own site and your competitors, using the specified criteria to select the best keyword to target for your own situation in the short-, mid-, and long-term during your SEO process: Those with the highest relevance, search volume, and profitability. The best starting point is in rankings where you are competitive from a popularity and content standpoint.
Tools & data sources
The data sources and tools—besides the traditional ones from search engines, like their keyword or webmaster tools—that can help you to implement the process (some of them mentioned in the workflow) are:
- To identify competitors: Alexa Top Sites, SimilarWeb Websites Ranking & Sites Profile.
- To identify keywords: SEMRush for keyword data, SuggestMrx (you can also use Ubersuggest or SEOchat Suggestion Keyword Finder) to gather Google suggestions for your keywords.
- To identify rankings: Authority labs, Positionly, Advanced Web Ranking, among others.
- To identify popularity: The Moz SEO Toolbar SERP overlay view, OpenSiteExplorer, CognitiveSEO Backlink Explorer and MajesticSEO for link related data and easy to develop popularity analysis.
- To identify page optimization: Moz On-Page Grader, SEOchat's Page Comparison tool and Web page SEO analysis tool for a quick on page content optimization analysis.
- To semi-automatize the process: There are tools that have already automatized some of the phases in the process that can help you to advance faster: Moz Keyword Difficulty and SERPs analysis tool, SERPIQ, SEMRush Keyword Difficulty Tool.
Hopefully with these resources you'll be able to develop more and better SEO competitive analysis!
What other aspects do you take into consideration and which other tools do you? I look forward to hear about them in the comments.
Hola Aleyda,
I always like your visuals, which are able to make complex topics simple to understand.
And competitive analysis is one of those steps in SEO auditing that people tend to comply fast and superficially. And what worst: companies tend to do it just once, at the beginning, and forgetting to maintain a constant look at what competitors do, and so not being able to react or preview their actions, or not being able to see new agents in their niche.
You didn't mention any tool for doing competitive analysis of the social media activity (or success) of competitors, and it is quite logic as this post is totally focused on SEO and Keywords.
But, I consider that it is something needed, as we know how social contributes in amplifying the overall "web popularity" of a page.
So:
Finally, in some cases we should not forget the YouTube world, so checking out how our competitors perform there can be important... and this is also a field people tend to forget even more:
you are always the first to comment, anyone interested could compete with Gianluca Fiorelli and take this seat, LOL
Lol; Edwin Its impossible to compete with Gianluca Fiorelli. He is on Moz since 2008 with 11876 moz points and I think he get special notification when a post go live so that he can comment first :D :P
or he is a Moz Ninja!
My special notification is twitter... Nothing else :)
Let's try at least once, lol
No one would! :D
Thanks Gianluca! Great contribution.
I actually added "Social Metrics" for the ranked content (check-out phase 3), not because it's an SEO factor but since it can be super useful to identify the audience preferences - which are the topics that the audience prefers to share and should also be taken into consideration to be prioritized-; but yes, didn't added "social tools" as complementary information on the post as I did for the rest, since the fundamental social metrics (tweets, likes, +1s) can be gathered from the same tools than the link related metrics.
Maybe I need to do a post "only" about that since I certainly have *a lot* to share in that space now with Tribalytics ;)
Stay tuned.
Excellent illustration. I really love the way you explained it. I also use similar flow chart with my clients and it becomes very easy for them to understand things.
Presenting information in this way and following the steps always helped me rank sites in top Google searches, brought traffic on sites and helped in generating revenue for my clients.
Thank you Aleyda for sharing this post. I will share this post with my clients too.
Yes, the visuals are amazing in this post and make it easy to make sense of some fairly complex data. A+ work!
Awesome Aleyda! In my experience, explaining the right way to go through the competitive analysis process can be a real challenge. Most people just find the #1 result for a keyword, pop it into OSE and call it a day when they don't find any link opportunities. And explaining the big picture/other steps isn't always easy.
That's why your visual guide rocks!
If you Google your keywords you need to be cognoscente of the differences in Google searches. Being logged in, geography, and many other variables can affect where you show up and how you ultimately perceive the prominence of your competition. I've seen a lot of errors in judgment particularly by higher ups that don't understand Google's personalization.
Brilliant Aleyda. This workflow is practical to follow. I will now start moving to this strategy. Few days back I analyzed my competitors only. But this kind of long work detail is unique and precious for me.
Aleyda, this flow-chart approach is awesome. Now, for your beginner users, would you be interested in spelling out how to put this incredible research to use in one's landing pages, posts and social messaging? We get questions all of the time, asking for that next step, that we all take for granted! If you want to take that on, I've got a home where it can live and reach many.
Hi Aleyda, this is very detailed analysis of potential competitors, thank you for sharing this with us. I would only add website age of the keyword potential competitors. Maybe you can put that in "ranked page popularity" or somewhere else.. I think website age, especially the age of the specific page from your niche is very important factor that must be considered in SEO evaluation of the competitors.. EDIT: My friend is finishing now a new SEO tool: "SEOWarden" and we are testing that tool for my page: www.bmxgames247.com/bike-games. I will inform you about test results..
Perfect! Simple to follow and just whats necessary to implement!
I think we could use this as poster, to remind our selfs of the process...
Thanks!
I was wondering if we could use that in a blog post on our site, if we link back to the MOZ blog article, your twitter page, and website? I will not duplicate any content, or use it in any way that would have a negative effect. Please let me know! Thanks!
I also sent you a PM
Wow. I am going to do a case study for one of my clients, using some of these great ideas. Thanks!
Excellent infographic. Very easy to read and comprehend, unlike some of them out there.
Will be sharing on G+
Hello,
Thanks for the great article. I have a question that is indirectly linked to SEO analysis, and figured I could write my pain here to get more insights!
I noticed that Google is not indexing a specific product page. As a result, the product page doesn't show up despite all the keywords meta tags, and meta description + title included. The product page is not new and it is even highlighted in Google Webmaster Search Appearance Tool.
The product page is:
https://www.nizoralshop.com/en/sports-nutrition/28-berocca-performance-effervescent-tablets-orange.html
I was wondering the possible reasons why Google is not indexing the product page and how to fix the issue.
Would love to hear from you! Thank you
I Have been Fan of your posts, Infographics & specially your PPT's. Its always great to read them.
Thanks for this great post on competitive analysis.
Just Checked your site https://www.allseosoftware.com/ its really great collection of SEO Tools & Softwares & also subscribed to get notifications.
Hey Aleyda,
great post for everybody who actually tried explain SEO competitive analysis for client who wanted know how it's done. Really helpful resource.
Cheers,
A sense of awe with this post, I am far behind with internet knowledge, with a post like this, hopefully can help catch up.
Great stuff Aleya, printed it out and will share with my team.
Hi Aleyda (and Gianluca), great article and great value\information. A few things have evolved in 2014 around competitor analytics and I think more and more companies now see the benefit of competitor insights and how it can impact their overall strategies. At Sociolus we've now launched our latest platform fully focused on affordable, intelligent competitor analytics. Would be great to show you a quick demo or you can try it yourself with our free account at https://www.sociolus.com.
Hi Aleyda!
Illustration easy to understand, summarizing each step to be taken to arrive at a complete analysis well. The model is applicable for a blog like e-commerce site.
Great graphic and post Aleyda! I would add SpyFu to the list of competitive keyword tools. It takes a bit of filtering but I find that it is a powerful way of uncovering paid and organic search keywords. This also shows keyword areas of specific importance to the competitor where they are bidding on paid and focusing on organic.
Thank you Aleyda for the amazing vizual aid! This can almost double as an audit guide as well.
Hola Aleyda...muy buen artículo...saludos desde Venezuela!
Great Post thanks for sharing mate
Hi Aleyda Solis,
I have a question will you explain second didn't understand 2nd step difference of both sub steps in it. Kindly explain it. If I have website which have started SEO and the are providing business service like "IT consulting services, Software Development Services, ERP Solutions, ibm software services, managed IT services, IT software solutions, IT solution providers, software licensing". Are these keywords are good enough for 3 page rank website to rank on Google but currently these are not ranking anywhere in Google. Kindly suggest me to find out the best keywords for my client website.
I love the image and process, very comprehensive.
I would add something around checking if you're competitors are actively investing in SEO. Are the number of organic rankings or actual keyword rankings consistantly increasing over time? Do they have new links being built * or "earned" * on a regular basis. Just because they are currently ranking doesn't mean they are actively trying to rank. Competing with companies that are actively engaged in SEO tactics present a unique challenge compared to simply who is currently ranking because they their domain authority is high.
Just came across this one.
Great post Aleyda, as always! The flow-chart/visual guide is a great way to show all the phases in a cohesive and easy to comprehend manner. Thank you!
Thank you so much for this. I am working on the competitive analysis for an architecture firm in Singapore and had no idea where to start. Your guide is easy to follow and is helping me stay organized. I am curious about one thing....are all those third party research tools (similarweb, alex, semrush etc) necessary? I don't really see a huge difference between them. Wouldn't it be more efficient to just stick to one? I personally feel that using a variety of these tools gets me frazzled and slows down my work.
Thanks for citation. Please fix the name of my tool: SuggestMrx.
hai .. thanks for sharing.. this very useful tool when we planned to analysis the competitor for keywords ... its nice source .. like vise is there any tool to find current high pr submission site .. if any one know also please give comments ...
This is a great way of displaying the SEO competitive analysis process… I'm definitely saving this image. But to address a topic Rand tackled with a WB Friday a couple of months back, this is a perfect example of a visual asset/infographic that's actually useful and helpful for the reader.
Without that graphic, this post would've been harder to understand and truly grasp for a lot of readers. Great job hitting both SEO topics out of the park, Aleyda!
This is one of the first steps to any SEO campaign and perfectly summarized on this page.
By analyzing your competition, this allows you to identify easy link targets and low competition high volume keywords.
By acting on these newly discovered opportunities, even if you are helping a new client that just started up their company, you can help them to jumpstart their SEO campaign and quickly rank for keywords that will generate leads.
This strategy when implemented can bring a new client quick gains, and now you have a client for life.
I think it is important to realize that this page equals your first step to any SEO campaign when it comes to a new project or client.
Great post Aleyda! Thank you for the in-depth, yet easy to understand step-by-step Infographic and the great tools. I was not familiar with SuggestMtrx. I like it. It's going to be part of my tool-set.
Muchas gracias por la ayuda, Aleyda. This is a topic that is very hot for us right now, and we've been working internally this week to come up with a framework on how to do competitor analysis across the many verticals our company competes in. I think we had about 60% of the stuff you mentioned in our outline, so you've definitely made our process a lot more robust.
Gianluca is absolutely right in his statements about how often this work is neglected, or done once and forgotten. Even this week as we've been developing our framework, I've been surprised by new competitors getting strong footholds what I thought was an established space. This work just went from "maintain our lead" to "buckle-up, it's about to get bumpy".
Damn! Simplified all this in 4 stages!
Ma'am, here is a Fan++
Though we all know the process, but figuring out the next thing to do is so confusing. Those tools given in the post and some additional ones by Gianluca Fiorelli are gna be useful. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Aleyda,
Good one. The synopsis is really awesome. Also, the tools that you have mentioned are quite helpful to refer to get a stratagem for conquering the search engines algorithm and also keeping a check on the competitor metrics.
This is a really unique way for me to do competitive analysis. Before this, I was just trying for a couple of points like backlinks of compititors, social media impact and etc., but, here I got lots more valuable information. Thank you Aleyda for your deep research on competitor analysis. :)
Hey Aleyda,
Undoubtedly, it's a great resource for the professionals. You listed every step with details and the relevant tools.
I'm gonna print it out in a high resolution and paste it up at my work desk over the weekend. :)
Thanks again.
Perhaps the most effective way to sniff out competitors was overlooked due to its obvious nature as an answer, but if you REALLY want to know who your competitors are.... Google your keywords. If they show up on the same page as you, above you, below you, 2 pages ahead of you for the same phrases... they're your competition.
The "real" online competitive are the ones outranking you (even if they are wikipedia, Amazon and so forth). Great tip!
Another really cool sneaky thing you can do in ad words is put your competitors in as a landing page under "Search for a new keyword & group ideas" and you can get some great insights!
Great post, Aleyda! This is the best competitive analysis workflow that I've seen, and I've read quite a few of them.
Another option to consider for semi-automating the process is a new tool that I built (full disclosure!) called CanIRank? CanIRank follows pretty closely the process you recommend, automatically collecting competitors, suggesting keyword ideas based upon what those competitors are targeting, then comparing the value potential of each keyword to its ranking difficulty. We determine difficulty by looking at both the strength and relevancy of each of the competing pages and websites, collecting Page Authority, Website Authority, link volume, top anchor texts, keyword usage in title/ URL/ anchor texts, topic relevancy for the page and website, social shares, and everything else that an SEO data geek like me could want. Here's what a sample report looks like: https://www.canirank.com/reports/example
The only thing I might suggest adding to your process would be (in step 4) considering the value potential of keywords relative to your existing rankings rather than using absolute figures like search volume. Sometimes it can be brutally difficult to move from say, position #7 to #4 (hardly adding any traffic at all), but relatively easy for another keyword to move from say page 3 to page 1 (resulting in a large traffic boost). You can calculate your highest potential keywords by weighting search volume and value figures according to expected CTR, and then compare that potential to their difficulty.
Hi Aleyda,
Great infographic and breakdown! Thanks for sharing.
Awesome workflow. Think I may use this in my next project. Many thanks.
Great post about Competitive Analysis. The infographic is just rock no need to read post if you can get a great overview through this infographic. Also thanks for mentioning the tools at the end of the post. Some of them are new to me and I will surly use them during competitors analysis.
This is Great representation of SEO competitive analysis workflow. Here SEO competitive flowchart itself says everything about SEO competitive. I think, this is very useful post for all newbie SEO experts. Thank to share this good post with us.
A helpful visual flow here Aleya - and thanks for listing all the tools in one place!
It's always interesting when clients come to us talking about their competitors and then we present another set of competing sites/companies. It can be a real eye-opener, as very often clients talk about the established ones they've been competing with for years - and still do - and we talk about any page which is taking the space they should be.
It works both ways, because we don't always know all of their established competition either but it can a be real educating moment when 'competition' is broader than the client realised.
Good post! By simply doing some online search, one will be sure to search some mistake that a competitor have built, social media is also an important place to research what people are saying about competitors.
Thanks for this resource, Aleyda. I'm still surprised at how often clients think they know who their online competition is only to have us prove otherwise by using tools like SEMRush. Often they have a great idea who they're competing against offline but obviously, that knowledge doesn't always translate to the digital space.
hey Aleyda let me share my thoughts..
1. Instead to check competitor ranking by using semrush I recommend to check ranking of competitor for the keywords which you are targeting to see what they are exactly targeting.
2. The important factor "back links" and compare their quality with yours.
3. Comparing the authority of social profiles and what are the interaction their and info-graphic color didn't impress me their are more color options which can double the impact of it..
Great article @Aleyda. Tools and data sources are really helpful to find competitor metrics. It will save lot of my time in doing competitor analysis
I have some of the doubts hope i would have cleared them now,let me follow this procedure to improve my seo quality and reduce the time consuming