Semalt: What Tool To Rely On To Conduct SEO Competitive Analysis?
Ultimately, a qualitative competitor research process should give you an operational action plan for promoting the site, which will focus on areas where you can generate a comparative advantage over your customers' competitors.
Indeed, we all know that deep knowledge of SEO will not be enough to conduct detailed competitive research. Therefore, you need to use the best SEO tools to do so.
In the rest of this guide, we will present not only the usefulness of a tool in analysis but also the right tool to use to conduct your competitive analysis.
What is competitor research and why is it important to conduct it?
When promoting a site to competitors we must always keep in mind that SEO is a process done "in front of" Google but especially in front of our competitors in the same niche. One of the things to do, beyond a thorough review of their site and the actions they take online, is continuous monitoring of their locations.
This can be done using various SEO tools, but we recommend using next-generation tools like the SEO Dedicated Dashboard; to look for competitors that are a little more powerful and can provide you with broader information about how their sites are performing - like external links, on-site actions and more.
What information can be extracted with a thorough examination of your competitors?
Competitor research done with a good tool should give you as much data as possible about your competitors' work.
Let's then find out what the end result of a thorough review of your competitors (in our opinion) should include.
The service your competitors provide
The final result of an in-depth competitor study must necessarily take into account the service that the competitors provide. Because you must know what different types of services the competitors offer, and in particular what services the competitors offer that you do not. It will be important for you to understand who is the target audience of these services and how difficult it is to provide them with a quality service. It is these services that you need to be able to provide using unique knowledge, special equipment, massive investments in infrastructure, etc.
To make such an analysis, it is important to use an advanced SEO tool that can give you detailed information about the service that your competitors provide. Otherwise, you will never be able to elaborate on a promotion plan capable of outperforming your customers' competitors.
The value added by competitors?
This is also a critical test that will help you shed light on the activities of competitors. What is the main added value provided by competitors? Faster delivery? Better quality products? 24-hour support? Local product? Reliable products? A brand that customers will want to show off? Increased warranty? Once you understand the real value added by competitors, you will also understand their promotion strategy, their choice of relevant keywords, the choice of anchors they choose to distribute via links, etc.
To get this information you need to use a tool capable of doing a very thorough search on your competitors' sites. In this way, you will not have to provide much effort to get in possession of this information which will help you in your turn to set up your promotion strategy.
The target audience of competitors?
Remember that using a good SEO tool allows you to determine the essential characteristics of your competitors' target audience. It allows you to have information such as:
- Are they in a certain age group?
- Are they all men or all women?
- Do people have a certain education or hobby?
- Is the target audience digitally and technologically active?
- Where is the target audience? Is it on social networks?
- Is the target audience looking for the product or service or are they required to market to them at the initiative of the company?
- Does the target audience buy out of emotion or out of real need?
- Are they considered frugal or wasteful?
Such information will allow you to understand who your competitors' target audience is to better understand their activities.
What is the content strategy of competitors?
Content is a powerful medium that can greatly help promote a business when used correctly. At this stage, you will need to understand what content strategy the competitors have chosen. Besides, you will need to find out for example:
- How often is the content announced?
- How deep is it?
- Is dedicated training required to produce it?
- Are special resources needed to complete it? Is the content technical or narrative and fictional?
- Who are the content writers in this niche?
- Where can you find them? How do they rate their services?
- What is the level of competition in this niche for quality content writers?
All this information will help you know what type of content to use for your SEO strategy. But to get to this stage, you need a very powerful SEO tool.
The link profile of competitors
To quickly outwit your competitors' strategy, you just need to know their link profile. But this is not easy if you do not have a quality tool. Indeed, understanding what the profile of external links received by competitors looks like, will allow you to know:
- How many links go to their site?
- How many of them are follow-up links?
- From which sites are they getting links?
- Are competitors getting links from sites that you are not getting links from?
- What is the anchor text of the links and how is it distributed?
- How well do competitors' link profile scores in the various search tools?
- How often are links received on the competitors' site?
- Is there a big difference between the link profile of the first ranked and the second-ranked competitors?
The terms for which competitors are ranked
Do you actually know why your competitors are ranked on the first page of Google? The answer to this question is not easy if you don't have the right competitive analysis tool. Such a tool would help you to know:
- For what conditions are your competitors ranking well on Google?
- Do these keywords provide them with traffic?
- Is there a growing trend in the number of terms on which competitors are ranking?
- What are the common phrases on which you and your competitors rank?
- Which of these phrases are really worthwhile?
- Which phrases bring in quality leads and not just surfers who have questions and want to know more about the topic?
Competitors' landing pages
Landing pages are supposed to be the most critical meeting point of your website. Therefore, they must be clean, have a clear and unique message, motivate the user to action and increase the customer conversion rate as much as possible.
During your competitive analysis, you should also check the quality of your competitors' landing pages, i.e:
- How many fields does the user have to fill in to complete the landing page form?
- How many of these are mandatory fields?
- What caption appears on the action box?
- How fast does the landing page load?
What tools can you use to test your competitors?
So far, you have understood that what your customers want from you is to succeed in outperforming your competitors in order to increase their turnover. To this end, the real way to satisfy them is to choose a better SEO tool. Because no matter how much you know about SEO, a good tool is The Key to your SEO mission as an SEO agency or freelance SEO manager. The choice of a good SEO tool should remain your focus.
So how do you choose a good SEO tool?
We already know that there are a variety of SEO tools on the market. However, it should be noted that the performance of an SEO tool does not lie in its age, but rather in its ability to perform several tasks at once, quickly and efficiently while giving real results.
Furthermore, given the demands of the current market and the fierceness of the competition, Semalt's experts have decided to provide unwavering support to the SEO agency or SEO manager through the latest generation tool called SEO Dashboard.
The special and unique mission of this tool is to help any SEO agency or freelance SEO manager to rise to the challenge and serve the clients who request their services.
Discover some of the features that make Semalt's SEO Dashboard a tool, which every SEO agency or freelancer needs to carry out their SEO mission.
Google SERP analysis
Despite the many functions of the dedicated SEO dashboard, it allows you to show your clients the positions of their sites in Google search. As well as the TOP pages and keywords for which they are ranked. The dedicated SEO dashboard also allows you to analyse the competition; identify the main competitors in the right niche, their traffic attracting keywords and understand their promotion strategy.
SEO-technical audit
One of the competitive advantages of this tool is that you can perform a complete analysis of your client's site. This feature allows you to do:
- technical and content audit of the site;
- speed control;
- plagiarism check.
You can do all this, on the same platform.
SEO reports
The Reports Center tool is focused on innovation. Using the Report Centre, you can create a schedule of report distribution for each of your clients individually. The benefits of this tool for your business are undeniable. Because it allows you to provide your clients with complete SEO reports with your logo and brand name.
The DSD Admin Panel
The DSD administration panel is also a feature of the tool. Indeed, it is an all-in-one panel that allows you to monitor:
- statistics;
- customize settings;
- manage leads.
You are free to create as many accounts as you need, and grant access to each member of your team. The basic panel options are available in the Standard package.
However, if you're looking to expand your customer base and manage your leads effectively, consider the Leadgen add-ons to the Dedicated SEO Dashboard.
Get a free 14-day trial
You'll have unlimited access to all the useful services included in the Standard package during the 14-day trial period. Whether you need to track customer inquiries or manage prospect data, we have everything you need. During this period you will have time to fully appreciate the performance of this tool before committing.
So, if you have any questions about the functionality of this tool or any other concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.
It will always be a pleasure for us to listen and help you!