How to do an SEO Competitor Analysis: 5 Easy Steps +Top Tools to Use

An SEO competitor analysis helps businesses find ways to outrank their rivals on search. Learn how to conduct an SEO competitor analysis and the steal strategies we use everyday for our clients.

Here, you’ll find:

1. What is an SEO competitor analysis?
2. Why is an SEO competitive analysis important?
3. Benefits of SEO competitor analysis services
4. Our SEO competitive analysis process
5. How to find out who your SEO competition is
6. 5 steps to conduct an SEO competitor analysis
7. 10 best SEO competitor analysis tools

Not keeping an eye on your competitors is a risky move.

After all, if you can’t see how fast your competition is going, they’re more likely to pass you by.

That’s where SEO competitor analysis services come in. By learning what your competition is doing, you can adjust your marketing strategy to dominate the search engine algorithms and get your brand to the top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Let’s explore the definition of an SEO competitor analysis, why you need SEO competitive analysis services, and how competitor insights can help you stay on top of your game.

What is an SEO competitor analysis?

An SEO competitor analysis is the process of evaluating and comparing the search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, types of content, and performance of your website with those of your competitors.

The goal of this analysis is to gain insights into what your competitors are doing well in terms of SEO, identify areas where you can improve your own SEO efforts, and enhance your online visibility, organic search rankings, and organic traffic.

Why is an SEO competitive analysis important?

Conducting an SEO competitor analysis does wonders for your overall SEO strategy. Not only can an analysis report provide valuable insights to help you improve your rankings, but knowing the competitive landscape can also improve your online visibility and help you outrank your competitors.

Here are key reasons an SEO competitor analysis is essential to success:

• Benchmarking and comparison
• Learning from successes and mistakes
• Keyword research
• Content marketing strategy enhancement
• Link building opportunities
• Effective strategy development
• Measuring progress

Benchmarking and comparison

Competitor analysis allows you to benchmark your website’s SEO performance against your competitors’. By understanding your top competitors’ search rankings, traffic, and other metrics, you can do a gap analysis to determine where you need to catch up or excel.

Learning from successes and mistakes

Studying your competitors’ sites means you can learn from their successes and mistakes. If they rank well for certain keywords or have a popular content piece, you can gain insights into what works. Conversely, if they are struggling in certain areas, you can avoid making the same mistakes.

Keyword research

Competitor analysis helps you discover relevant keywords that you might not have thought of. If your organic competitors rank for top keywords, it’s a signal that those keywords are important for your industry.

Content marketing strategy enhancement

Analyzing your competitors’ content can give you ideas for creating high-quality, relevant content that resonates with your audience. You can identify topics they’ve covered, assess the depth of their content, and find ways to offer a unique perspective.

Link building opportunities

Understanding your competitors’ backlink profiles can help you find valuable link-building opportunities. If they have backlinks from reputable sources, you can try to get similar links to boost your site’s authority. You can also find and take advantage of backlink gaps.

Effective strategy development

Like anything in digital marketing, a well-informed SEO strategy is more likely to succeed. Competitor analyses provide data-backed insights to guide your decision-making and strategy development process.

Measuring progress

Regularly analyzing your competitors’ performance lets you track your progress over time. If you consistently outperform your competitors, it’s a sign your SEO efforts are paying off.

Benefits of SEO competitor analysis services

Competitor analysis services give you a detailed look at your competitors’ SEO strategies without you having to do all the heavy lifting. By hiring an SEO expert to conduct the competitive analysis for your business, you can save significant time and effort. And focus on other important aspects of your business, knowing that the information you receive is accurate and reliable.

Save time and money

The SEO competitive analysis process is time-consuming, especially for those who haven’t done it before. When you hire an SEO consultant, you save hours of time that you would’ve spent going through the research process.

Conducting an effective SEO competitor analysis also requires specialized tools — many of which have a subscription fee. When you do the analysis yourself, you’ll likely have to invest money in tools and spend time learning how to use them.

Get data-driven insights

The competitor research alone isn’t enough to improve your SEO strategy. When you hire an SEO expert, you get an overview of the competitive SEO landscape and data-driven insights to improve your SEO marketing campaigns.

Someone new to SEO may not know what to do with the competitive research findings. But an SEO agency knows how to turn those findings into recommendations for improvement.

Know your next steps

Once you have the research and know how to use it to improve your digital marketing strategy, it’s time to implement. Hiring an SEO agency gives you the benefit of knowing your exact next steps.

A full-service SEO agency like HawkSEM can even support you with the implementation.

Our SEO services include:

• On-page SEO
• Technical SEO
• Local SEO
• Ecommerce SEO
• Conversion rate optimization

We also offer content marketing services to help brands develop high-quality website and blog content to support their SEO strategy.

HawkSEM process for SEO competitive analysis services

At HawkSEM, we take a data-driven approach to SEO management services. Our competitive analysis process allows our team to get the information we need to develop an SEO strategy that gives your business a competitive edge.

Identify the competition

The first thing our team does is identify direct and indirect competitors. We look at their online presence, content marketing, and digital marketing strategy to understand their approach to SEO.

Audit competitor keywords

Then, we do a deep dive into the keywords your competitors rank for organically and those they’re bidding on for paid ads. Understanding the keywords they rank for allows us to identify new keyword opportunities for your business.

Conduct content gap analysis

Our team looks at the content your competitors are publishing to see what content gaps exist. These gaps are excellent opportunities to outrank your competitors for relevant keywords.

Analyze competitor backlinks

Looking at your competitors’ backlinks allows us to see what content performs best with your target audience. It also gives our team a chance to find opportunities to build high-quality backlinks to your website.

Develop a data-driven SEO strategy

After we have done a comprehensive analysis of your competitors’ SEO, we have all the information we need to make data-driven changes to your company’s SEO strategy. Based on our findings, our team develops strategic recommendations for improving your rankings.

Who is your SEO competition?

You probably already have an idea of who your business competitors are. But these are hardly the only companies you must consider when fighting for the coveted top spots of Google search results. You may be facing competitors with your SEO campaigns who don’t belong in your niche.

For example, if you want to rank high for the “best flowers in LA,” you aren’t just competing with the local florists. You could be fighting against designers and review sites, making your climb to the top spot twice as tough.

The truth about SEO competitors is simple: They’re top-ranking companies for the keywords you’re targeting — even if they aren’t your business competitors.

To get started, enter your keywords into the search field (always with search intent in mind) and see what pops up on the first few pages.

Analyze the competition so you can:

• Strengthen your keyword search
• Improve your content
• Capitalize on your competition’s weaknesses
• Find out what works and what doesn’t in your industry

All’s fair in love, war, and SEO, so you shouldn’t feel guilty about finding inspiration in your competitors’ campaigns.

5 steps to conduct an SEO competitor analysis

While analyzing your competition, look for weaknesses or gaps you could fill. If the competitor ranks high for the same keyword, find where they make mistakes or seem to come up short. Improve your efforts in those sectors, and you could come out on top. Here’s how to do it.

1. Identify their keywords

To strengthen your keyword research, figure out which short- and long-tail keywords your competitors rank for. This can help you find new target keywords, keyword gaps, and specific keywords with high search volume that they aren’t using enough. It can also help you understand what works in your specific industry.

Doing all that is fairly easy, thanks to numerous analysis tools that can examine other websites and their keyword rankings.

For example, when we put a competitors’ URL into Semrush, it gives us an overview of the competitors’ keyword rankings:

These programs also show how well your website ranks for some keywords compared to the competition. You could discover money keywords you’ve overlooked.

2. Analyze their content

Since content is the pillar of SEO, you need top-notch ideas. An excellent place to get them is through analyzing what the competition is doing.

How do you figure out how well their content is working? Find out which content got the competitor the most backlinks. Achieving high-quality backlinks is imperative to ranking high with search engines and developing and maintaining domain authority.

Again, this is where your competitor analysis tools will make it easy to find your competitors’ backlinks.

Once you find the competitor’s top content, check for flaws. Maybe the word count is too low, the info is outdated or not in-depth, or their imagery is low-quality.

Take advantage of the information you’ve gathered to create similar content, only better. Your goal is to come up with content that offers significantly more value to the target audience.

You don’t always need to go deep into content analysis. By using the above tools, you can get inspiration for tweaking your SEO content strategy.

Pro tip: While it’s natural to cover similar topics to your competition through content, never imitate. You don’t want to look like a copycat (or dip into plagiarism territory), so make sure the content you publish follows your brand’s voice and tone.

3. Find dead pages

Sounds spooky, but this is a critical step in your analysis. A “dead page” is a webpage that can’t be found on the server. Often called an “error 404 page” or a “404 page,” these pages often contain valuable linking opportunities that you can now take advantage of.

Here’s a quick step-by-step to follow.

Find competitor’s dead pages

Seeking dead pages is a time-consuming yet highly effective way to exploit your competitor’s mistakes. This part of the competitor analysis involves finding dead pages on your competition’s website that other companies have linked to.

The first step to finding dead pages is identifying and analyzing your competitors’ websites. Next, use website crawling tools to scan their websites and identify dead pages. Simply enter the URL of your competitor’s website, and the tool will scan it for various issues, including dead pages.

Once the scan is complete, you’ll see a list of URLs that are broken or dead. These can include pages with 404 errors, 500 errors, or other issues. Review the list to identify pages that are relevant to your industry or content strategy.

Analysis tools come in handy here too. Look at how easy Ahrefs makes it to find these dead pages.

Not all dead pages are created equal

Some dead pages might not be worth pursuing action on. Filter the results based on relevance, potential traffic, and importance. Focus on pages that were previously popular, had high backlinks, or contain content that aligns with your strategy.

Depending on the nature of these pages, you have a couple of options to help drive more conversions:

Repurposing – If the content is still relevant and valuable, you can recreate it with your own unique insights and updates to make it better than the original.

Creating new content – If the dead pages aren’t directly relevant to your SEO plan but you see an opportunity to provide valuable information, create new content around those topics.

Reach out to get backlinks

Once you find dead landing pages and determine which topics to pursue, reach out to those who’ve linked to this content, show them the page isn’t working, and provide them with a link to your content instead. (If you already have a relevant article, great! If not, write one up and publish it, then send it away.)

Links to dead pages can affect a website’s ranking factor. So people are more than happy to replace them with live alternatives.

• Find the 404 pages on the competitor’s website by using Ahref’s Site Explorer or ScreamingFrog
• Use Dead Link Checker to verify that the links to this page aren’t working
• Recreate content and offer the website owner to link to your article instead of your competitor’s 404 page

4. Analyze their website

If your competition is ranking high for your favorite keywords, see if you can find some flaws in their website design. From there, you can focus on making your website better and nullifying your competition’s efforts. Things to pay attention during a competitor audit include:

• Site structure – How the content is organized on the website (subdomains, internal links, etc.)
• Site speed – How fast do pages load? Can you make your website’s loading speed better?
• Mobile-friendliness – How good does the website look on mobile devices? Are all the necessary features available to mobile users?
• User interface – Is the site easy to navigate? Is the user experience a positive one?

You can crawl the entire site to find out how your competitors structure subfolders, use internal links, and take advantage of on-page SEO. These tools can help:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Wildshark
• Spotibo

5. Look at their Google Business Profile

For local companies, a Google Business Profile (formerly a Google My Business page) can be a highly important SEO tool. Ask yourself: What is our competition doing to look appealing on this page?

• Do they update the page regularly?
• Do they use images?
• Are there reviews?
• How many people are following the page?

If these components are lacking, you can capitalize on mistakes and hone your profile page accordingly. If they do a great job maintaining this page, see what you can do to mirror them.

10 best SEO competitor analysis tools

There are a lot of options out there when it comes to tools you can use for SEO competitor analysis. And each on this list features unique capabilities that can help you on your competitor analysis journey.

Here are our picks for the 10 best SEO competitor analysis tools:

1. Semrush

Semrush is an SEO standby – and for good reason. This multifaceted tool has a slew of key features to help with SEO competitor analysis including domain overview, organic research, backlink analysis, and more.

2. SpyFu

SpyFu is another popular digital marketing tool that provides features for SEO competitor analysis. It focuses on competitive intelligence, keyword research, and PPC analysis.

3. BrandVerity

BrandVerity is primarily known for its brand protection and compliance monitoring solutions, but it has some key features geared toward SEO competitor analysis, as well such as affiliate program compliance and data and reporting.

4. iSpionage

iSpionage is typically focused on PPC advertising, but this tool has plenty of features you can use for SEO competitor analysis.

From keyword monitoring to ad copy and landing page analysis, iSpionage’s suite of capabilities can take your SEO to the next level.

5. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool known for its robust features. When it comes to SEO competitor analysis, Ahrefs provides a wide range of tools and data to help you understand your competitors’ strategies and identify opportunities for improvement.

6. BuiltWith

BuiltWith is a tool primarily focused on web technology and website profiling rather than traditional SEO competitor analysis. However, it can provide useful insights that may indirectly support your SEO efforts.

Chief among these is BuiltWith’s ability to analyze which Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) your competitors are using. This information is relevant to a website’s speed and performance, which can impact a site’s SEO.

7. Surferseo

Also known as Surfer, this tool focuses on on-page SEO analysis and optimization rather than traditional SEO competitor analysis. It provides various features to improve the on-page SEO of your website by comparing it to top-ranking pages in search results.

8. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content research and social media analytics tool that primarily focuses on content discovery, social engagement metrics, and influencer identification.

This tool has a ton of features that can support your SEO efforts, especially in terms of content strategy and social media engagement.

9. SparkToro

SparkToro is a unique audience intelligence platform co-founded by Rand Fishkin, one of the co-founders of Moz.

While it primarily focuses on audience research and understanding your target audience, it can indirectly support SEO competitor analysis by providing insights into audience behavior, preferences, and where they engage online.

10. Frase.io

Frase.io is an AI-powered content optimization platform designed to help content creators and marketers improve their content’s search engine rankings.

While it primarily focuses on content optimization, it offers features that can support SEO competitor analysis by providing insights into your competitors’ content strategies.

Why choose HawkSEM for an SEO competitor analysis

There are a lot of SEO agencies out there you can hire for SEO competitor analysis services. But at HawkSEM, we have unique strengths that make us the best option for many businesses.

“SEO is a core competency at HawkSEM,” says CEO Sam Yadegar. “Our team takes a data-driven approach to developing tailored SEO strategies for our clients. Our goal is to optimize return on investment while helping our clients outrank their competitors.”

Our SEO marketing agency also specializes in PPC management services. Often, pay-per-click ad campaigns can accelerate SEO results. By using paid search ads to show up at the top of the search engine results page, you can drive leads and boost sales while you take time to implement your SEO strategy.

Just like our SEO competitor analysis services, our team also offers PPC competitor analysis to help you understand the competitive landscape for pay-per-click ads in your industry.

And we never take a “set it and forget it” approach to SEO. Our SEO specialists are always monitoring campaigns and tracking performance with ConversionIQ, our proprietary software. It helps us better understand your target audience across the buyer’s journey.

The takeaway

SEO competitor analysis services can help you gain valuable insight into what works in your industry. It’s a win-win: You can see what they’re doing right and determine ways to follow suit, and you can capitalize on their mistakes or areas where they fall short.

Looking at what your competition is doing isn’t just a smart trick — it’s an integral part of a solid search engine optimization strategy.

Ready to hire an SEO agency for competitor analysis? Let’s talk.