3 Methods for Quickly Comparing Your Website to Your Competitors
Do you want to be at the top of the SERPs? Begin with these three quick approaches to competitor analysis, complete with SEO tool recommendations.
As the challenges and obstacles to reaching and remaining at the top of the SERPs have increased, competitor analysis has become more important than ever.
Although Google's webmaster guidelines haven't changed significantly over the years, the core algorithm has.
Furthermore, the algorithm's evolution is occurring at a much faster rate.
With the addition of Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird, RankBrain, and BERT to the Google algorithm, SEO professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to game the system.
We believe it will take an Act of Government for Google to release its algorithm to the public.
And, let's be honest, the algorithm is far too complicated to reverse engineer.
Common patterns can still be discovered by conducting competitive research.
These patterns provide insight into what the algorithm looks for when deciding what results to return for a specific query.
A website can be divided into three parts at the most basic level:
- Technology
- Content
- Backlinks
Here are 3 methods for comparing your website to competitors to see where you can improve your SEO.
1. Examine the Website Technology of Competitors
Every webmaster's goal is to create a well-structured website that is fast, easy to use, and crawlable.
You don't need any special technology to do this, but if you're starting from scratch or considering a redesign, it's definitely worth investigating the competition.
BuiltWith is my go-to resource for this.
They offer a series of technology profiles, including details on:
- Analytics and tracking.
- Widgets.
- E-commerce.
- Frameworks.
- CDN.
- Mapping.
- Mobile.
- Payment.
- A/V Media.
- CMS.
- JS libraries & functions.
- Advertising.
- Verified links.
- SSL Certificates.
- Web hosting providers.
- Name servers.
- Email hosting providers.
- Web servers.
- Operating systems & servers.
- Syndication techniques.
- Webmaster registration.
Architecture of a Website
Understanding your competitors' website architecture can help you establish parent and child page hierarchy and identify potential product or content gaps.
The best and simplest way to do this is to create a competitor analysis sitemap.
There are several excellent sitemap tools available, but for a free tool that has stood the test of time, Xenu Link Sleuth.
Web Essentials
Google is expanding its ranking factors beyond page speed, with the addition of Core Web Vitals.
According to Google, this “initiative provides unified guidance about quality signals that are essential for all sites to deliver a great user experience on the web.”
2. Conduct a competitor analysis of the website's content.
Natural Keyword Research
Creating an appropriate keyword list is still essential. Chances are, your competitors have already spent a significant amount of time developing an excellent keyword strategy.
Don't let all of your efforts go to waste. Utilize this competitor analysis to increase traffic to your website.
Ahrefs is some SEO specialists’ go-to tool for competitor organic keyword research.
They have a large database of website search rankings. They also make it simple to determine which phrases drive traffic and have a high-ranking potential.
They list top pages in addition to keywords and rankings.
Even better, they include the number of keywords for which a specific page ranks, as well as a list of those phrases:
It's not uncommon to see a single page rank for hundreds (or even thousands) of related keywords. It can be far more efficient to focus on improving an existing top-performing page rather than a single keyword or phrase.
"What opportunities are being missed?" is a question that nearly every webmaster has on their mind.”
What are your competitors ranking for that you aren't? That doesn't have to be a mystery.
Simply enter your competitors' names into the Content Gap Tool.
You can limit your search to:
- Display keywords for which any of the target's rank but you do not.
- Display keywords for which at least two of the target's rank but you do not.
- Display keywords for which all of the target's rank but you do not.
This is an excellent way to discover both highly relevant keyword opportunities and potentially new business opportunities.
Optimization of Web Pages
Although Google is less reliant on meta tags since the introduction of Knowledge Graph, having a clear roadmap for both users and search engines is still essential.
Using SEOBook's free Webpage Similarity Comparison Tool is one way to see how your pages compare to the competition.
This tool generates a comparison of:
- Page title.
- Meta description tag.
- Keywords (good for competitor intel, not so much for SEO).
- Text and word count.
- Top two- & three-word keyword phrases.
Looking for patterns is the most effective way to use this tool.
In this case, each title tag begins with the brand and includes SEO and search marketing references on at least two of the three pages with optimized title tags.
Some might argue that this makes you the same as everyone else. That could be true, but if that's what Google rewards, I'm fine with it.
3. Examine the Backlinks of Competitors
There was a time when SEO professionals would go after every backlink a competitor had in order to offset any advantage that the link might have provided.
That all changed in April 2012, with the introduction of Penguin.
Links that had previously had no value suddenly had a negative value. All of the garbage links obtained through indiscriminate backlink mining became risky to have in a link profile.
Penguin 4.0 is much more tolerant, but who knows what the future holds?
That is not to say that competitor backlink mining is a bad idea.
It simply means that you must use your judgment and "score" prospective links to determine whether they are worthwhile to pursue.
(Hint: If no effort is required, the result is almost never worthwhile.)
Again, we find the Ahrefs Link Intersect tool to be extremely useful for mining competitor links.
The tool provides two filtering options:
- Display who is connecting to all targets.
- Display who is linked to any of the targets.
Takeaways from SEO Competitor Analysis
For the foreseeable future, content and links will remain the foundation of Google's algorithm.
Understanding your competition and neutralizing any competitive advantage are critical steps in developing an effective marketing campaign.
Follow that up with the creation of unique and useful content, and nothing will be able to stop you from dominating the SERPs!
BizzDesign can assist you in conducting thorough competitor analyses and staying ahead of your competitors. Please contact us at