The competition in the business industry is extremely tough. If you stand just stand still, you will get left behind by your competitors, who are innovating and constantly striving to be the best. In other words, they'll bite and swallow you up.
Business owners will do whatever it takes to be on top. Since there is a lot of pressure to succeed in the business world, some may resort to illegal or unethical means just to get ahead. This is where the term "cutthroat business" comes from.
And this is especially true in the online world. With technology ever-changing and new businesses sprouting up left and right, it's hard to keep up. You need to have a good website, an active social media presence, and a whole host of other things just to be competitive.
It's not enough to be good anymore. You need to be the best. And that's a tall order for anyone. One way to stay ahead of your competition is to do a competitive analysis. It will give you an idea of what they are doing and how you can improve upon it.
A competitive analysis is basically a way to spy on your competition. It's like a SWOT analysis, but for your competition. You take a look at their strengths and weaknesses and see how you can use that information to your advantage.
This post will cover:
- two types of businesses competitors
- seven valuable insights you can get from the top pages of your competitors
Who are your competitors?
There are a few ways to go about doing a competitive analysis. The first is to find out who your competition is. You can do this through a quick Google search.
For example, if you have a local dentistry office, do a quick Google search “dentist near me” or Family dentist in [city name]” will reveal that your competition includes big names such as brightnow, westerndental. There are two types of competitors: Direct and Indirect competitors.
Now, indirect competition means two or more businesses are targeting the same client need in the same market but offer different products and services.
Brightnow and westerndental would be considered direct competitors because they are both in the dentistry business. However, there are also indirect competitors some for dentist could company selling whitening strips, straighten teeth without braces like smiledirectclub and toothpaste companies.
In our case, as a search engine optimization company and digital marketing agency, a quick Google search will reveal that our direct competitors are other SEO companies such as Moz and HubSpot. However, our indirect competitors are companies that offer other services such as social media marketing.
Your potential customers may be interested in shoes, but they may also be interested in apparel. That's why it's important to keep track of both your direct and indirect competitors.
Identifying your competition starts with comprehensive research. When conducting a Google search, use keywords that best describe your business. Let's use the same example of a business that sells shoes.
The keywords "shoes" and "sneakers" would be good places to start. If you're selling a specific type of shoe, like running shoes, then you would want to use keywords that reflect that.
Be specific and search every combination of terms you can think of that apply to your business. Don't forget to include terms that are relevant to your indirect competitors as well, such as "apparel" and "clothing."
Determine the top results for businesses similar to yours and find out how your products or services compare to theirs. Once you understand your competition well, you can start to glean insights that will help your business grow.
The most valuable insights you can learn from your competitor's top pages
Have you ever wondered how your competitor's top pages rank so well in search engines or SERPs (search engine results pages)? Or how do they manage to get so much traffic? Well, with competitive analysis, you can learn a lot about your competitor's top pages. Here are some of the most valuable insights you can learn:
Your competitors' possible number of customers
Out of all your competitors' top pages, you might be most curious about those that have "free trial," "pay," "basket," and "cart" in their URLs. These pages likely represent the company's money pages, where they make most of their revenue.
And why shouldn't you be curious? After all, understanding your competitors' revenue is the first step in understanding their entire business.
So, how can you find out how many visitors your competitors get? Well, you can use tools like SEMRush and Spyfu Just enter your competitor's domain and click "Domain Analytics" in the left sidebar. Then scroll down to "Organic Research," and you'll see a graph that shows your competitor's estimated traffic.
Of course, this is just an estimate. But it's a good place to start if you want to get an idea of your competitor's possible number of customers.
Once you know your competitor's traffic, you can start to reverse engineer their business. Meaning, you can start to figure out how much revenue they're making and what their costs are. And from there, you can start to create a plan to outpace them.
For example, let's say you have a competitor that gets 100,000 visitors per month. And from SEMrush, you know that they're getting about 50,000 of those visitors from organic search.
If you can get just a fraction of those 50,000 visitors, you'll be well to outcompeting your competitors. Another example is if one of your competitors gets at least 1,000 backlinks from other relevant websites.
When you know where your competitor gets their backlinks from, you can start to build relationships with those same websites and get backlinks for your own site.
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Your competitors' top products and services
Another insight you can gain from your competitors' top pages is what their top products and services are. Again, learning and understanding what your competitors' customers are buying can give you a significant advantage.
Try to learn what doesn't sell, what sells mediocre, and what sells the most. Then, again, using SEMrush, you can see what products and services your competitors are selling by going to "Domain Analytics" and then clicking on "Top Pages."
You'll see a list of your competitor's pages, sorted by traffic. The list reveals the most visited and most promoted pages on your competitor's website.
From there, you can start to understand what it is that their customers want. And you can use that information to create products and services that are even better.
Suppose, for example, one of your competitor's top pages is a product page for a particular type of widget with at least 100K visitors per month.
You can be pretty sure that there's a market for that widget. And you can start to create your own version of it, or come up with a new and improved version that you can sell to the same customers and attract new ones.
Your competitors' top media and blog content
In today's times, media and blog content are essential for businesses. Not only do they help businesses attract new customers, but they also keep existing ones engaged.
That's why you need to focus on assessing the types of content that your competitors are creating and sharing. Are they creating videos? Podcasts? Infographics? Written articles?
All of these content types can be extremely valuable for your business. And if you're not creating them, you're missing out on an ample opportunity.
To find out what content your competitors are creating, you can again use SEMrush. Pay attention to your competitors' top blog pages and see what kind of posts they share on social media.
Say, for example, you see that one of your competitors is consistently sharing blog posts on Facebook. You can be pretty sure that their customers are interested in that type of content.
And you can start to create similar content for your own business. If you do it well, you'll be able to attract some of your competitor's customers and followers to your own business.
You can also use Google Alerts to get notified whenever your competitor publishes new content. This way, you can be one of the first to share it and get even more traffic.
Then, you can use this information to create a plan to outsmart your competitors. You can even recreate their content in a better way or come up with new and innovative ideas to attract even more customers.
Your competitors' marketing campaign focus
Now, you have to dig deeper. First, you'll need to identify and understand your competitors' marketing campaign focus. It will give you insights into what they're trying to achieve with their marketing campaigns.
Are they trying to increase brand awareness? Drive more traffic to their website? Sell more products or services? Or are they implementing successful SEO campaigns?
Detect any trends on your competitors' top pages. For example, if a few product pages are getting more traffic than others at a particular period, it might be because they're running a marketing campaign for those products.
You can use this information to come up with your own marketing campaigns. You can even try to outdo your competitors by running more effective campaigns.
Learning the marketing campaign focus of your competitors will also help you manage your own campaigns. In addition, you can use this information to track your progress and see how well you're doing compared to your competitors.
All of this information is valuable. And it can help you take your business to the next level by outsmarting your competitors.
Your competitors' lead-generating landing pages
Another insight you can gain from your competitor's top pages is the type of landing pages they're using to generate leads. So, why should you care about this?
If you see that your competitor's landing pages are successful and effective, perhaps you can learn from them and create your own.
You can use tools like SEMrush, Spyfu and BuzzSumo to find out which of your competitor's pages are getting the most social shares and traffic. These are usually the pages that generate the most leads.
Please take a close look at these pages and see what they're doing right. Is the design attractive? Is the copywriting compelling? Are they using an effective call-to-action?
You can use this information to create your own lead-generating landing pages. And if you do it well, you'll be able to generate more leads than your competitors.
Conclusion
Although you may never know everything about what your competitors are doing, these five insights can give you a valuable glimpse into their strategies and help you stay ahead of the curve. Remember that these findings are specific to the pages that rank highest for your target keywords – your results may vary.
Be sure to use a competitor analysis tool like SEMrush to get all the data you need on your top competitors and formulate an intelligent strategy based on what you find.
If you want to drive more traffic to your site, start by looking at what your competitors are doing right. Or we can help you. We are an SEO company, and we offer the Best SEO Services in Los Angeles.
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