Your competitors are a goldmine of accusation you tin usage to amended your hunt motor optimization (SEO) strategy.

In this post, you’ll larn however to find that accusation with an SEO rival analysis.

An SEO rival investigation is wherever you excavation into the SEO strategies of your competitors. The purpose is to find their strengths and weaknesses truthful you tin outrank them.

Performing an SEO competitory investigation allows you to:

• Learn what works and what doesn’t successful your manufacture and debar mistakes.
• Capitalize connected your competitors’ weaknesses.
• Replicate your competitors’ strengths.
• Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward.
• Understand however hard outperforming competitors is apt to be.

You should execute an SEO rival investigation when:

• You person a caller website.
• You’re readying your SEO strategy.
• Competitors are outranking you oregon erstwhile your keyword rankings person dropped.

For this process, let’s unreal we’re a caller infographic plan tool. This is however your hypothetical SEO rival investigation volition look like:

1. Identify your SEO competitors

Your SEO competitors are the websites competing for your desired people keywords successful integrated search. These may not beryllium the same arsenic your nonstop concern competitors.

For example, HubSpot ranks for “how to marque infographics” adjacent though it’s not a nonstop concern rival of immoderate infographic plan tool:

Here’s however you tin place SEO competitors fast:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your domain
3. Go to the Organic competitors report

This study shows you competing websites that fertile successful the apical 10 for the aforesaid keywords arsenic your website. 

These are apt your SEO competitors.

If your tract is new, this whitethorn not springiness you large results. So here’s what you tin bash instead:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
2. Enter immoderate keywords imaginable customers whitethorn usage to hunt for your merchandise oregon service
3. Go to Traffic stock by domain

For this example, we tin spot that our imaginable top-ranking 5 competitors are sites similar Canva, Visme, Venngage, Piktochart, and Adobe.

Pro Tip

Companies similar Adobe and Canva are well-known brands that typically person precocious Domain Rating (DR). This is an Ahrefs metric that you tin usage to estimation a website’s authority. This gives them a competitory advantage, truthful you whitethorn privation to regularisation them out. 

You tin cheque a site’s DR by plugging each competing domain into Site Explorer individually oregon pasting each of them into our Batch Analysis tool:

So if you’re a DR 50 site, you astir apt tin vie with sites similar Visme, Venngage, and Piktochart, arsenic opposed to Adobe and Canva.

2. Investigate however they’re getting traffic

You tin look astatine your competitor’s website architecture to recognize wherever astir of their hunt postulation is going. 

Here’s however to spot your competitor’s website structure:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Site operation report

For example, we tin spot that Venngage gets 260,000 estimated monthly hunt visits to its template subfolder, which is 9.9% of its full integrated traffic.

If we click 1 level deeper, we tin spot the types of templates that nonstop it the astir traffic.

From this, it looks similar creating brochure and infographic templates is simply a cleanable SEO accidental for a competing tool. 

3. Find and screen contented gaps

Content gaps (also cognize arsenic keyword gaps) are keywords that your competitors fertile for, but you don’t. 

Here’s however to find contented gaps for your site:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool
2. Enter your domain successful the Target section
3. Enter your competitors’ domains successful the Competitors section
4. Hit “Compare”
5. Click the Content Gap report

Hit the Main positions lone toggle to exclude your competitors’ rankings successful SERP features similar “Top stories” and “Image packs.”

Look done the study and place keywords that are applicable for your site.

For example, “infographic examples” looks similar a bully keyword to target:

Pro Tip

If determination are excessively galore keywords to look done oregon they look mostly irrelevant, click the Competitors’ positions dropdown and cheque each competitors. This volition amusement you the keywords that all your competitors are ranking for successful the top 10.

4. Spy connected your competitors’ featured snippets

Featured snippets are speedy answers successful hunt results that Google pulls from a leafage ranking successful the top 10. 

If you tin find featured snippets your competitors ain wherever you fertile successful the apical 10, you tin perchance “steal” these featured snippets. 

Here’s however you tin spot these opportunities:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool
2. Enter a competitor’s domain successful the Target section
3. Enter your domain successful the Competitors section
4. Hit “Compare”
5. Click the Content Gap report
6. Set the SERP features filter to “Where people ranks” and cheque “Featured snippet”
7. Set Target’s position from “No” to “Any”

Look done the study to spot if determination are immoderate keywords wherever you could optimize an existing leafage to drawback the featured snippet.

For example, Venngage owns the featured snippet for “how to marque posters,” which is simply a database of steps:

If you’re targeting this keyword, you’ll privation to re-optimize your leafage and adhd wide steps in H3s.

5. See wherever your competitors’ postulation is coming from

Knowing which countries your competitors get the bulk of their integrated postulation from helps you recognize whether you tin get much postulation by translating oregon creating your contented successful different languages.

Here’s however to see this:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Look astatine the Traffic by state section

We tin spot that the U.S. is wherever Venngage gets the bulk of its traffic. So arsenic a competitor, you’ll people privation to absorption connected English-language content. 

However, determination are opportunities for countries similar Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, and India too. You could perchance construe your homepage and landing pages into Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Hindi. You could adjacent motorboat a multilingual blog to maximize postulation from these countries.

In fact, Venngage has done that for a fig of languages, similar Spanish:

6. Find backlink gaps

Links are an important Google ranking factor. Generally speaking, the much links you have, the higher you’ll apt fertile connected Google (and perchance different hunt engines).

If you tin fig retired however your competitors person been acquiring links, you tin perchance replicate the aforesaid strategies.

Here’s however to do it:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your domain
3. Go to the Link Intersect report
4. Enter your competitors’ domains successful the apical section
5. Enter your domain successful the bottommost section
6. Hit “Show nexus opportunities”

This study volition amusement you the websites that are linking to your competitors, but not you. 

You’d privation to look for easy replicable links that mightiness person worth for you. 

For example, clicking connected the fig for cnet.com reveals that your competitors are listed arsenic to-try tools:

If you’re competing with these sites, you’ll privation to beryllium added to CNET too.

7. Spot nexus bait opportunities

Links are important if you privation to fertile higher connected Google. But it tin beryllium hard to get radical to nexus to your “money pages,” arsenic they supply no value. 

You tin lick this by creating link bait and past redistributing the “authority” your nexus bait attracts to your astir important pages. This tin assistance boost their hunt motor rankings.

To find large nexus bait ideas, you analyse your competitors backlink profiles and piggyback disconnected what’s moving for them.

Here’s however to find them:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Best by links report

This study shows you which of your competitors contented has the astir backlinks. Eyeball the database to spot what benignant of formats and topics resonate with your niche.

For example, we tin spot that statistic posts enactment good for Venngage:

8. Find your competitors’ breached pages

If our competitors person breached pages with backlinks, we can:

• Publish moving replacements.
• Ask everyone linking to the dormant pages to nexus to america instead.

Here’s however to find these breached pages:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Best by links report
4. Set the HTTP codification filter to 404 not found

This volition amusement you each the breached pages with links connected your competitor’s site. Go done the study and spot if determination are immoderate applicable pages you tin perchance replicate. 

For example, this station connected Gestalt plan principles seems decent and has 33 sites linking to it:

Click connected the caret and click connected View connected Archive.org. 

This volition unfastened up the leafage successful Wayback Machine truthful you tin cheque however it looked successful the past.

You tin perchance amended it and get radical to nexus to you instead. Follow the usher beneath to larn however to do this.

9. Check your competitors’ Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are portion of Google’s Page Experience signals utilized to measurement idiosyncratic experience. They’re Google ranking factors. 

So you’d privation to spot their Core Web Vitals—alongside their wide method health—and comparison them to yours.

You tin bash this investigation by entering your competitor’s pages 1 by 1 into PageSpeed Insights.

Doing that tin beryllium tiresome. So a amended mode is to tally a crawl of your competitor’s domain utilizing Ahrefs’ Site Audit, link PageSpeed Insights’ API, and spot your competitor’s Core Web Vitals unneurotic with different method SEO issues.

10. See what keywords your competitors are bidding connected successful paid search

If your competitors are bidding connected definite keywords, past it’s apt those keywords are profitable.

Here’s however to spot the keywords they’re bidding on:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Paid keywords report
4. In the Keywords filter, adhd “Doesn’t see [brand]” to filter retired branded keywords

Looking done this study tin assistance unearth low-volume, high-converting keywords that you whitethorn person missed during keyword research.

For example, this seems similar a bully keyword to target:

11. Learn from your competitors’ PPC ads

Google rewards much applicable ads with a little outgo per click (CPC). So it’s successful your competitors’ involvement to marque definite their ads triumph the click.

Typically, that means amended headlines and descriptions. We tin usage them arsenic inspiration to constitute rubric tags and meta descriptions that summation click-throughs.

Here’s however to spot your competitors’ ad copy:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Paid keywords report
4. Hover implicit the magnifying solid icon beside the keyword you privation to target

This is the existent advertisement Venngage is utilizing to people the keyword “infographic design.” Looks similar it’s utilizing words similar “customizable,” “few clicks,” and “design wiz” to pull clicks. 

They could beryllium utile additions to our ain rubric tags oregon meta descriptions.

Final thoughts

When it comes to rival investigation for SEO, everything supra is simply the extremity of the iceberg. There’s much you tin do, but it’s bully capable for you to get started. 

Our proposal is to tally done the process supra and commencement applying the insights to your SEO strategy. Execution is important, after all.

Any questions oregon comments? Let maine cognize on Twitter oregon Threads.