Checking your competitors’ SEO is an important part of improving your business, especially if you’re just starting off as a business owner.
It is actually highly recommended and can give you valuable insight into what to do and how to do it.
Whether you’re uncertain about your next step or are just curious about how your competitors are doing, here’s how you can check your competitors’ SEO.
Let’s dive in.
The best ways to find SEO competitors
Have you ever wondered who your real competitors are in the online world?
When it comes to ranking in search engines and attracting organic website traffic there is a lot more at stake.
So if you’re feeling brave enough, let’s dive into how to sniff out your SEO competitors. Here are 7 ways to find your SEO competitors:
- Google (Search and Maps)
- Competitor keywords
- Domain data and backlinks
- Social media presence
- Top websites
- On-page SEO
- Website speed
1. The God of SEO – Google
Finding your online competitors has never been easier or freer thanks to Google.
The search engine giant can help you ferret out the secret murmur of the interwebs and uncover who your true competition is. You can do it by using google search or google maps.
Google search
With your list of premier keywords in hand, it’s time to take the next step and research their success within a Google search.
Identify which sites are regularly featured among the top 10 positions for each word or phrase.
It is important to mention that the results you find will depend on your location and how Google personalised your search.
So, to avoid this, make use of incognito mode when browsing the web.
Incognito mode ensures your browsing history, cookies, and site data are not stored, so anyone with access to the device you’re using can’t view this information.
Not only does this make your searches more secure, but it also helps keep personalized recommendations, ads, and content tailored to you off of the results page.
Google maps
For local businesses looking to stay ahead of the competition, Google Maps is an invaluable tool. With a simple search for “keyword + Location“, you can quickly identify nearby competitors and plot your next move on the map.
Related: How SEO helps outrun competitors in dental niche.
2. Look at your competitors’ keywords
Second on our list is competitor keywords, because it is useful to businesses that are planning to get their own websites.
Many people start a business without really thinking about keywords, which are crucial when it comes to people finding their website.
Aside from organic search, keywords also impact your ranking on the search pages, so the better you use them, the higher your rank will be.
If you would like to see which keywords and related keywords your competitors are using, there are a number of online tools that can help you.
For example, Ubersuggest is one of them, and it lets you see your competitors’ keywords in organic search and in Google Ads.
It will show you their top keywords, estimated monthly PPC clicks, and their competition and competitors’ keywords. However, it limits the number of features you can use and the results you can see, so you will have to register for free to use all of them.
There’s also Ahrefs, a very powerful tool with numerous features, designed for competition SEO analysis and niche research. Their offers start at $99 monthly, and honestly, it pays off.
In addition to Ubersuggest and Ahrefs, there is another good tool – Semrush. On this platform, you can do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing.
These tools will let you see your competitors’ SEO as detailed as possible. They’ll show you their backlinks, the keywords they use, their best-ranked pages, top content, organic keywords, and many more. Money well spent, if you’re asking us.
Why is keyword research important?
By researching what your competitors are ranking for, you’re essentially learning what makes them successful and brings organic traffic.
Keyword research is useful because it can give you ideas about your own keywords and help you outrank your competitors.
Utilize the term frequency–inverse document frequency, or tf-idf, to see how they use the keywords in their content.
This tactic can help you get a better ranking for certain keywords and optimize your content.
3. Learn about their domain data and backlinks
Speaking of keywords, they aren’t the only important element of SEO. Many others affect the way both you and your competitors rank on search pages.
There is domain authority, which assesses how relevant a website is for the area they’re specialized in.
Two more similar elements are domain country and age since different domains bring different SEO points, and older domains mean more points and authority.
In addition, there are free tools on the internet that will help you check all of the three mentioned elements, but this isn’t all of it.
Backlinking is one of the most important parts of SEO.
It consists of having links that point to your website on other websites. These links tell the search engine that your website is quality and worth linking to, which gives you ranking points.
Using the tools we mentioned earlier, check your competitors’ backlinks to see how many links they have, what they’re about, and which websites feature them.
This can give you ideas about the topics you can write about and what kinds of websites you should seek out for your own backlinks.
4. Gather data about your competitors’ social media presence
Aside from Google, keywords, and backlinks, you should check out their social media profiles.
The social media presence of a brand means everything nowadays. No matter if you already have profiles for your business or are in the process of creating them, looking at your competitors’ profiles will grant you immense insight.
You will be able to see how they interact with their followers and customers, what they post about, what the formats of their posts are, as well as how active they are.
Be careful not to accidentally replicate their profile – this research is solely for inspiration, you don’t want to copy them and look like you have no ideas on your own.
But what does social media have to do with SEO?
You will find many articles saying that social signals do not affect SEO, but that isn’t true. In the more recent ones, you will find evidence that social shares indeed do impact SEO.
5. Analyze the top websites
If you want to know how to get to the top, analyzing the best-ranked websites is the way to do it.
Online tools such as aforementioned Ahrefs, SEMRush, and UberSuggest can analyze and tell you a lot about them and how they obtained that rank.
SEMRush will provide you with not only SEO information but will also tell you about their ad campaigns, social media efforts, web traffic, and visitor engagement.
This way, you will learn how to build your social media presence and how to get people to stay on your website for long amounts of time.
UberSuggest is another great tool for analyzing your competitors’ SEO.
Using this tool, you can find out the number of their backlinks, what there are, and where they’re located.
Even though SEO is the priority, do keep in mind that content is just as important, because backlinks do wonders for website rankings.
Their importance lies in the fact that they convince search engines that your website is legitimate and credible.
6. Check their on-page SEO
Analyzing on-page SEO is an important part of checking your competitors’ SEO.
On-page SEO is the practice of website optimization using elements such as meta descriptions, meta titles, image alt tags, internal and external, and others.
For learning more about your competitors’ on-page SEO, you can use Screaming Frog, one of the best SEO tools out there.
It will allow you to learn more about your competitors’ page titles and metadata, so you can know which length and format to use.
When it comes to image alt tags, it will give you insight into how to properly use image descriptions, so bots have an easier time crawling through your website.
Related: Most Important On-Page SEO Factors
7. Look at your competitors’ website speed
Here’s another thing that you can do to check your competitors’ SEO – website speed.
Website speed is one of the most important ranking factors. Google isn’t shy about voicing its dislike of slow websites. They place their users in the first place, so they want only the best experience for them.
As such, Google gives fast and relevant websites a good ranking on their search pages, as opposed to the slow ones, which may not even appear on page 10.
You can get ahead of your competition if your website speed is faster than theirs.
There are several factors that search engines consider before ranking you on their pages, and if you succeed in being better than your competitor in all of them, you will outrank them.
There are free speed tools that you can use, the most popular ones being GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Web Page Test.
They’ll show you valuable data on the speed of various elements, such as the code of the website and image optimization.
It is recommended that you analyze the speed of your own website, too, preferably every few weeks. The internet is ever-changing, after all.
For detailed competitors analysis
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More useful tools for checking your competitors’ SEO
If you are wondering how to do an SEO competitor analysis, there are many useful tools that can help you.
We will tell you about everything in one place – the helpful tools and their prices, so you can decide whether they are worth it or whether you will still rely on good ol’ Google.
But if you want a detailed analysis, it’s definitely better to use tools, and some of our favorites are the already mentioned Semrush and Ahrefs.
Semrush starts from $119 per month. Ahrefs starts from $99 per month.
Both have comprehensive suites of features that help you monitor and analyze your website’s traffic, giving insight into what is working and what needs improvement in order to maximize visibility.
Not only does this enable more accurate monitoring for target audiences, but also gives you an idea of how well competitors are doing in comparison.
Other good SEO competitor analysis tools are:
SE Ranking
With SE Ranking’s competitor analysis tool, you’ll have the edge in monitoring organic rankings and discovering emerging competition.
Not only does it provide valuable insight into SERP movements for up to 100 competitors each day over a period of one year, but also calculates an invaluable visibility score that reveals strategic opportunities based on keyword search volume and page ranking power.
You can unlock SE Ranking possibilities with pricing starting from $31.20 per month.
SpyFu
Tracking competitors just got easier with SpyFu.
Get instant insights into their organic search and Google Ads strategies, analyze your niche potential, and discover new keywords to test – all within a few clicks.
With this powerful tool in hand, you can quickly get an edge over the competition by tracking which words they’re targeting and optimizing accordingly.
The basic version of SpyFu costs $39 per month, but if you pay annually you will get a discount and pay $33 per month.
STAT
STAT is another SEO competitor analysis tool for uncovering who your main competitors are in the search engine space.
After inputting a domain and seed list of keywords, let it work its magic for at least 24 hours – results will soon appear.
To better understand how you stack against one another per respective keyword segmentation, head to the “Competitive Landscape” tab where top rivals based on defined terms can easily be identified.
This is also paid tool, but you only pay for the keywords you track – everything else is rolled right in. And big-data SERP traffic starts at $720 per month.
Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics is a tool that provides a detailed analysis of your online presence and that of your competitors, both organic and paid.
By subscribing to this service you’ll be able to take advantage of the Competitors tab in SEO Research which displays up to 250 different rivals on one graph.
At a glance, it provides a comparison between user-shared keywords compared with each competitor’s keyword portfolio.
Starting at $69 per month, Searchmetrics Essentials provides a nice all-around search engine optimization (SEO) tool kit.
Serpstat
Serpstat is a robust SEO platform with integrated competitive analytics capabilities. With its extensive backlink and keyword database, it provides great value for money.
Get started by entering your website URL into their domain analysis tool to uncover who the biggest competitors are in terms of SEO performance.
All-important metrics such as traffic estimations and ranked keywords are clearly displayed through Serpstats’ easy-to-use interface.
For an even more granular comparison, try out the Domain vs Domain feature to compare several competitor websites simultaneously – providing unparalleled insight into which ones have superior search engine visibility.
With four different plans available (lite, standard, advanced, and enterprise), finding the right one can be easy. Each comes with access to 230 Google databases and the most basic version starts at $55.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a tool for analyzing any content, including competitors.
Search your competitor’s URL to get access to the content that has generated their success, based on social media engagement and an “evergreen” score.
In addition, monitor their brand mentions across the web for public relations or link-building tactics. You can even receive instant alerts whenever they publish something new.
With BuzzSumo, you can start your journey to success with a 30-day free trial. Once the trial has ended, decide which plan is right for you – Pro ($99/month), Plus ($179/month), or Large ($299/month).
WebCEO
Uncover your competition’s digital marketing strategies and unlock the power of SEO with WebCEO.
This SEO competitor analysis tool is a comprehensive toolkit packed with 23 professional-level.
Achieve a competitive edge by running detailed analysis on competitor’s metrics – from search visibility to backlinks, website traffic to social citations.
Choose from four tailored pricing editions – ranging from $37 to $299, and don’t forget that the free 14-day trial is also available.
Conclusion
Checking your competitors’ SEO can be of significant help – It can help you improve your own website and get ahead of your competition.
Luckily for us, many ways and tools allow us to check our competitors’ SEO.
To see how they’re doing, you can check which keywords they’re using via the SEO competitor analysis tools that we mentioned. And they will tell you more about their keywords, ad campaigns, social media efforts, backlinks, and web traffic.
On-page SEO is another thing that you will want to check and learn more about, both in general and when it comes to your competitors, as well as website speed and how to make sure it’s the highest it can be.
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn something about checking your competitors’ SEO.
If you want professionals to do your SEO, don’t hesitate to contact our team!
Thank you for reading!
