Analyzing Competitor SEO Performance

In SEO, you're not operating in a vacuum. Your website's performance is relative to your competitors. To win the top spots in the search results, you need to understand what your competitors are doing well and where their weaknesses lie.

A competitor SEO analysis is the process of researching the keywords, content, and backlink profiles of your main competitors to identify opportunities for your own strategy. It's one of the most valuable exercises you can undertake to make your SEO efforts more strategic and effective.

This guide will walk you through a simple framework for analyzing your competitors' SEO performance.

Step 1: Identify Your Real SEO Competitors

First, you need to know who you're actually competing with in the search results. This is not always the same as your direct business competitors.

• How to find them: Go to Google and search for your top 5-10 most important target keywords. The websites that are consistently showing up on the first page for these terms are your primary SEO competitors. Make a list of 3-5 of them to analyze.

Step 2: Analyze Their On-Page SEO and Content Strategy

Start by looking at what they are doing on their own website.

What Keywords Are They Targeting?

• Look at their page titles and URLs. These are strong indicators of the primary keywords they are targeting on their key pages.
• Read their content. What topics are they focusing on? What kind of language do they use?
• Use an SEO tool. There are many tools that can show you a list of the top organic keywords that are driving traffic to your competitor's site.

What to look for: Identify "keyword gaps"—relevant keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you are not yet targeting.

What is Their Top-Performing Content?

• Find their "power pages." Use an SEO tool to find which of your competitor's pages get the most organic traffic. These are their most successful pieces of content.
• Analyze this content. Why is it so successful? Is it a comprehensive guide? A free tool? A detailed case study? How is it structured? How long is it?
• Your Goal: Your objective is not to copy their content, but to understand what makes it successful and then create something even better and more valuable.

Step 3: Analyze Their Off-Page SEO (Backlink Profile)

A website's backlink profile is a major driver of its authority and ranking ability. Analyzing where your competitors are getting their links from is crucial.

How to Analyze Their Backlinks:

• You will need a backlink analysis tool for this. There are many industry leading tools, and some that offer free versions.
• Enter your competitor's domain into the tool to see a list of all the websites that are linking to them.

What to Look For:

• Common Link Sources: Are all your competitors getting links from the same handful of industry blogs or directories? If so, these are sites you should probably be targeting as well.
• High-Authority Links: Identify the most authoritative and reputable websites that are linking to your competitors. A link from one of these sites would be a huge win for you.
• Guest Post Opportunities: Look for links coming from author bios on other blogs. This is a clear sign that the site accepts guest posts.
• Linkable Assets: See which of their pages have earned the most backlinks. This tells you what kind of content in your industry naturally attracts links.

Step 4: Analyze Their Technical SEO Health

Do a quick check of their technical fundamentals.

• Site Speed: Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to test their site speed. If their site is slow, a faster site could be a competitive advantage for you.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Is their site easy to use on a mobile device?
• Security: Are they using HTTPS?

Step 5: Synthesize Your Findings and Take Action

The final step is to turn your analysis into an actionable plan.

• Update Your Keyword List: Add the new keyword opportunities you've discovered to your own keyword strategy.
• Generate New Content Ideas: Create a list of content ideas inspired by your competitors' successful pages, with a plan to make your version even better.
• Create a Link Building Target List: Make a list of the high-quality websites that are linking to your competitors and start thinking about how you could earn a link from them too.
• Identify Your Competitive Advantages: Where are your competitors weak? Is their site slow? Is their content outdated? These are the areas where you can focus your efforts to outperform them.

Conclusion

A competitor SEO analysis is like getting a free roadmap to success. By systematically dissecting what is working for the top players in your space, you can save time, avoid mistakes, and build a more effective, data-driven SEO strategy. Don't operate in the dark—learn from your competitors, identify their weaknesses, and position your own business to win.