SEO Competitor Research – The Hidden Goldmine For Growing Your Traffic

No potential investor in a start-up business would even consider speaking with the founders if they have not carried out comprehensive competitor research. Yet many organizations plow ahead with keyword research and building a SEO keyword strategy without analyzing what works for others in their industry. That can introduce competitive weaknesses from the outset. Competitor analysis should be probably the first step in all keyword research. You need to know what keywords and online marketing strategies work for others in your industry. It’s an old adage in online marketing – find out what works for others and then copy it. Improve on it later.

What are the benefits of competitors’ research?

Marketing success depends fundamentally on understanding who buys a company’s products or services, and why. Knowing what problems they solve for buyers is the first step in identifying the keywords that they use in search engines. Competitor analysis provides this information

Why is it so valuable?

For new startups, it will help to kick start the keyword research task and uncover what they are up against in the market. For established businesses, it will highlight where they may be going wrong or missing out on chunks of target market. It invariably throws up some surprises that can be an eye-opener for business owners. Frequently it leads to strategic advantages and even new revenue streams.

What areas are investigated for competitor research?

The approach for SEO purposes is different than the type of SWOT analysis you would do for business purposes, which is also known as competitive analysis or competitive research. Professional online analysis like our SEO experts carry out at Avada will take a very close look at the following aspects:

• Direct and indirect competitors – Indirect competition could be in another state or city, or in a different but closely related branch of your industry targeting a similar prospect base.
• Keywords – There are many tools that instantly reveal a keyword list that any site is targeting.
• Backlinks – Study the sources of links to their site, both for domain authority (DA) and relevance to the industry and their product or services portfolio.
• Optimization – Assess how their landing pages are set up for their choice of keywords.
• Content analysis – Investigate what type of content attracts their main keywords and why.
• Social media activity – Looks at how active they are, what platforms they use and which techniques seem to work best for them and why.

A thorough investigation would also research offline marketing activities, website design and their Google MyBusiness page.

Your next step

Knowing how valuable your keyword list is to growing your business means you should engage experts in the discipline to obtain professional insights and competitor analysis. We at Avada have been helping businesses to increase their website traffic since 1999. Our Google-qualified SEO experts know exactly what to do to deliver perfectly researched keyword lists. Call today on 888-8888-8888 and let us take your website performance to the next level.