In this post, I am going to discuss “Search Engine Optimization – Competitor Analysis” with the example of a blog I’m working on. I will first do a brief introduction to SEO competitor analysis and why it is a necessary tool for a successful web marketing campaign. Then I will proceed to teach you how you can do competitor research on any site by yourself. This is a very crucial stage which will help you understand your target audience, their search habits and what they expect from your competitors as well as from your website.
Here, I have listed out the top competitors seo analysis tools, take a hold of it and win!
Followerwonk: Collect data from competitors’ Twitter accounts
Followerwonk is a Twitter research tool that gives you insight into the type of audience your competitors attract.
Collect demographic data about your rivals’ followers, see how customers engage with other brands, then compare the data with your Twitter campaigns.
You can use Followerwonk to find new followers and learn how to create content that resonates with your customer base. It’s a great research tool for any ecommerce company with a Twitter presence.
Pricing: Followerwonk offers a free account that lets you track one Twitter account. Premium subscriptions range from $29 to $79 a month and track data from more competitors.
Click here to create a free Followerwonk account.
Alexa – monitor traffic
Alexa allows tracking global web traffic of your own and competitor websites. “Information is power,” and Alexa is one of those must-have tools that you can use to transform data into competitive value for your business.
If you have the Moz toolbar, it will show you any website’s Alexa ranking. It lets you spy on your competitors’ backlinks, traffic, keywords, etc.
How to best use this tool: It is interesting to compare similar websites in your niche: get data on international competitors and website rankings for an overall picture.
Social Searcher: Get real-time follower interactions from multiple social platforms
Social Searcher is a lightweight competitor monitoring tool. You can use it to track activity across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
You can conduct real-time searches to see who your competitors are engaging with and what hashtags they’re using.
The email alert feature notifies you anytime someone mentions a specific keyword. Social Searcher removes the unnecessary conversations, so you can track the information that helps further your brand.
Pricing: Social Searcher has a free option that gives 100 daily searches and email alerts for two topics. Its premium packages range from €3.49 to €19.49 a month and support more searches and alerts.
Click here to start a free 14-day trial of Social Searcher.
SE Ranking – track rankings
SE Ranking helps you monitor competitors’ search rankings on any engines and target regions, up to five projects per website.
You can get detailed reports on main competitors, including data on their average positions, traffic forecast, and website visibility. You can also gather data for the first page of any tracked query and ordered them by visibility.
How to best use SE Ranking: The tool gives brief information on the top 10 websites for each of your queries. If you want to track anything in more detail, add it to the ‘Main Competitors’ tab and track for getting more details.
InfiniGraph – watch social media trends
InfiniGraph tracks trends in social media circles. It combines consumer-to-brand interactions in real time and uses targeting to find out what brands and content are popular right now.
With Social Intelligence, you can easily pay attention to the most powerful influencers and content for a successful campaign.
How to best use the tool: InfiniGraph allows tracking social media trends of your competitors in your niche and gets insight into your target audience. InfiniGraph is not social listening (it’s keyword-based Social Intelligence and ranked social activities by the ‘relevance’ factor).
Sprout Social: Get detailed analytics of rival social media campaigns
There’s a reason why Sprout Social is one of the most popular social media spying tools. It helps to enhance your social media strategy while monitoring your competitors’ campaigns.
Sprout lets you gain insights from your competitors, keep track of changes in your industry, and manage your social campaigns from one platform.
Sharpen your marketing plan by researching trends that customers love, then track your top competitors for content ideas.
Pricing: Sprout’s premium packages start at $89 a month and monitor five social profiles. They also offer enterprise packages for $149 and $249 a month if you need to track more accounts.
Click here to try Sprout Social free for 30 days.
Ahrefs
“Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool allows you to simply enter the URL of your competitor(s) against your own site to get a detailed breakdown of where your competitors rank, for which keyword, to help you identify which keywords to pursue and create/optimize content around,” says Tim Dugan of Zero Gravity Marketing.
This is the Content Gap feature–something Dugan thinks that by analyzing, “you can identify what keywords your competition is ranking, for which page and at which position.”
Michael Keenan adds: “Filter out the top volume keywords with low keyword difficulty and referral domains (using Ahrefs or another tool), and plan to create better articles than them for those keywords.”
Christina Pigol explains: “For example, CIENCE specializes in outbound B2B lead generation, and when I perform content gap research, I usually include Hubspot (CRM provider for both inbound and outbound marketers), SalesHacker (B2B sales-related media) and other more narrowly specialized companies (e.g. MailChimp or Woodpecker who provide email software).”
“To see the most complete picture, I recommend analyzing all 10 websites that Ahrefs allows, with 2-4 being influencers, not competitors, and choose the option to show 3 or more target intersections.”
Ever Increasing Circles‘ Alistair Dodds also explains how use Ahrefs to find opportunities to overtake your SEO competitors: “Use Ahrefs to research their search numbers, find the top 10 competitors per term and export the table to excel. Order by URL, filter by do-follow links and then filter out sites your competitors have built or do the marketing work for.”
“Then work through red-lining anything that’s non-industry or location related, anything that’s spam or clearly a paid submission and then see what’s left with a reasonable UR and DR combination.
“Those are your top tier targets. Are they realistic for you to achieve?”
(There’s a reason why Ahrefs was found to be the most popular SEO competitor analysis tool.)
WebCEO: Track rival SEO and digital marketing campaigns
WebCEO gives you insight into your competitors’ keywords and SEO strategies.
See how your business compares to other brands in your industry using the competitive analysis roadmap.
This feature gives you a breakdown of your competitors’ performance and compares it with your SEO strategy. It also highlights the areas you need to work on.
You can even use the platform to discover new keyword opportunities to improve your search engine rankings.
When it comes to SEO, WebCEO does it all.
Pricing: Packages range from $35 to $299 a month, depending on your needs. Their pro packages offer more keywords to research and let you track multiple competitor domains.
Click here to register for a free 14-day trial of WebCEO.
Monitor Backlinks – look at backlink profiles
Monitor Backlinks is new to the market, but has already earned a great reputation. You can track various competitors’ backlinks, disclose a bunch of negative backlinks, and find quality ones.
It can help to analyze the backlinks of bloggers and webmasters in your field to build up your own link building strategy, build quality links from your competitors, and write link bait content.
You can also estimate the traffic increase based on keyword positioning and efforts to boost good backlinks to a certain website.
How to best use Monitor Backlinks: You can easily check out new links from your competitors, analyze good and bad links, get an overall SEO snapshot, compare the results, and build up a new marketing strategy.
KW Finder: Collect keyword data to increase organic traffic
KW Finder is a keyword research tool that helps to identify which keywords your customers are using in their Google search.
You can also use it to conduct a competitor analysis on other brands’ SEO strategies. Simply enter the domain of the competitor you want to track, and KW Finder will give you a breakdown of their top-ranking keywords.
You can then use that data to create SEO-driven content that brings more users to your site.
Pricing: Packages range from $29 to $79 a month based on the number of keywords and competitors you want to research.
Click here to sign up for a free 10-day trial of KW Finder.
MOZ Link Explorer: Collect valuable backlink data
MOZ provides detailed information on backlinks, anchor texts, and other key SEO data—for either your website or your competitors’ sites.
The reports are great for identifying areas of improvement within your SEO strategy.
MOZ will generate a backlink profile of your competitor and how they’ve acquired their link-building opportunities.
Pricing: MOZ offers tiered packages ranging from $99 to $599 a month, depending on the number of keywords and websites you want to research.
Click here to try Moz free for 30 days.
Conclusion
A competitor analysis report is one of the most important documents an SEO can create. This SEO tool can determine your position in SERPs, help you to improve your overall authority level in Google, and create an effective link building strategy. I’ve made it my mission here at Quick Sprout to provide you guys with the authority tools you need to succeed in the SERPs.