How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis (Step-by-Step Guide)

SEO competitor analysis evaluates your competitors’ SEO strategies, tactics, and performance. By understanding your competitors’ strategies, tactics, and performance, you can identify opportunities, refine your approach, and improve your search engine rankings. This guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools to conduct a thorough competitor analysis, providing actionable insights for benchmarking against competitors and uncovering SEO opportunities that can drive long-term success.

Why Competitor Analysis is Key to SEO Success?

Competitor analysis is essential for driving SEO success as it uncovers valuable insights that help refine your strategy. You can drive long-term SEO success by leveraging competitor insights and;

• Uncover insights to refine your SEO strategy by identifying untapped opportunities.
• Identifies keyword gaps and opportunities to target new terms.
• It allows you to benchmark your SEO performance and compare rankings and traffic.
• Improve link-building by analysing competitor backlink profiles.
• Gain insights to outperform competitors’ content strategies.
• Adopt best on-page SEO practices while avoiding common mistakes.
• Uncover technical SEO improvements for optimised performance.
• Stay competitive by tracking industry trends and adapting to shifts in the search landscape.

SEO Competitor Analysis: A Step-By-Step Guide

• Step 1: Identify Your Top SEO Competitors
• Step 2: Analyse Competitor Keywords
• Step 3: Compare On-Page SEO Elements
• Step 4: Compare Tech SEO Elements
• Step 5: Analyse Competitor’s Backlink Profiles
• Step 6: Review Competitors’ Content Strategy

Step 1: Identify Your Top SEO Competitors

You must identify both direct and indirect competitors to effectively identify your SEO competitors. Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Conductor, Similarweb etc, can help uncover the key competitors impacting your search rankings.

Direct Competitors

These are businesses offering similar products or services to yours. They are the most obvious competitors who cater to the same market. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can help pinpoint these competitors by showing which websites overlap with your offerings.

Example: For Sportsdirect.com, direct competitors include JD Sports, Nike, Adidas, Pro Direct Sport etc.

Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors are websites that don’t sell the same products or services as you but still compete for rankings on SERPs. These can include platforms like Wikipedia, media outlets, news websites, social media sites, YouTube and large brands such as Amazon.

Example: Balenciaga competes with Wikipedia, and Instagram for broader brand search terms.

Step 2: Analyse Competitor Keywords

Competitor keyword analysis is a vital part of any successful SEO strategy. By examining the keywords driving traffic to your competitors, you can uncover new opportunities and improve your rankings. Here’s how to approach competitor keyword analysis effectively:

Keyword Gap Analysis

A keyword gap analysis helps you identify the keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, revealing untapped opportunities. By comparing your keyword portfolio with your competitors’, you can focus on high-value gaps that are worth targeting.

Steps to Perform a Keyword Gap Analysis:

• Identify your top competitors based on search rankings or industry relevance.
• Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, SimilarWeb, SpyFu, or Moz to conduct competitor keyword research and compare rankings. These tools provide insights into your competitors’ keyword performance, including metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive positioning.
• Identify high-value keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t.
• Prioritise these keywords based on their potential to drive traffic, competition level, and alignment with your content strategy.

Here are a few examples: while Sports Direct might perform well for “Adidas trainers”, they could miss more niche terms like “Adidas Samba”. Similarly, House of Fraser may rank highly for “women’s trousers” but overlook opportunities like “cargo pants”.

Step 3: Compare On-Page SEO Elements

When analysing competitors’ on-page SEO, it’s crucial to evaluate how they optimise various on-page elements to rank higher on search engines. This section outlines the key on-page elements to review:

By reviewing these on-page SEO elements, you can identify key areas where competitors are strong or falling behind, which provides valuable insights to enhance your SEO strategy. To learn more about on-page SEO elements, visit this comprehensive checklist.

1. Title Tags

The title tag plays a crucial role in rankings.

Understand how your competitors are placing target keywords within their page titles and creating titles that are both engaging and optimised to drive clicks. Additionally, ensure the title tag is relevant to the page’s content and includes target keywords, stays within the ideal length of 50-60 characters and is unique for each page to avoid duplicate content issues. For more insights on optimising title tags, refer to the title tag’s best practices.

2. Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions may not directly impact rankings, but they could influence your CTR.

Understand how competitors are crafting persuasive meta descriptions by naturally integrating target keywords and incorporating compelling calls to action. Ensure that the meta description offers a concise summary of the page’s content, stays within the ideal length of 150-160 characters and encourages users to click through with an engaging call to action. For more insights on optimising meta descriptions, refer to the meta descriptions best practices.

3. Header Tags

Header tags (H1, H2, H3) are essential for organising content and communicating the page’s structure to search engines.

Analyse how your competitors use heading tags to clearly structure their content, enhance readability, and incorporate target keywords.  Ensure you follow a logical hierarchy, with H1 reserved for the main title and H2, H3, and so on used to indicate the relative importance of different sections.

4. Keyword Use Within Content

Keyword placement within the content is essential for strong SEO performance.

Review how competitors naturally incorporate keywords throughout their text without overstuffing. Check whether they are optimising for long-tail keywords and how they strategically place them throughout the content in key areas, ensuring natural integration without keyword stuffing, which could negatively affect rankings.

5. Internal Linking

Internal links play a vital role in guiding both users and search engines to important pages on a site.

Understand how your competitors have structured their internal linking to enhance SEO, utilizing keyword-rich anchor text to provide context. Additionally, assess how frequently they link to other pages across their site and whether they strategically direct internal links to cornerstone pages to boost visibility. Ensure your internal links are structured logically, with relevant anchor text and a balanced distribution to improve overall page authority.

6. Image Optimisation

Image optimisation enhances user experience and helps Google better understand your images.

Understand how competitors optimise images by analyzing whether they properly compress images for faster loading times, use keyword-rich alt text and descriptive file names, and effectively incorporate images to break up and enhance content.  Ensure your images feature descriptive alt text to improve accessibility and SEO, file sizes are optimised for faster web performance, and file names include relevant keywords to boost SEO performance.

7. Content Quality and Length

High-quality, well-researched content that satisfies user intent and demonstrates strong EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is essential for ranking higher on search engines.

Understand how your competitors utilise content quality and length to enhance their SEO. By analysing their content, you can identify opportunities to improve your own website’s content strategy. Compare their content length, depth, detail in answering queries, and uniqueness of insights to yours, but prioritise high-quality content that delivers value to your audience.

Step 4: Compare Tech SEO Elements

When analysing competitors’ technical SEO, it’s important to evaluate how effectively their websites are optimised for search engines to crawl and index. This section outlines the critical tech SEO elements to review:

By reviewing these tech SEO elements, you can identify key areas where competitors are strong or falling behind, which provides valuable insights to enhance your technical SEO efforts. To learn more about tech SEO elements, visit this comprehensive checklist.

1. Mobile Optimisation

As mobile traffic surpasses desktop, it’s crucial to ensure your site is mobile-friendly, with fast loading times and a responsive design.

2. Schema Markup

Schema helps search engines understand the page content better, which can earn you rich snippets that can increase click-through rates and drive more traffic.

Understand how your competitors utilise schema markup (e.g., product, FAQ, review etc) to enhance their SEO. By analysing their websites, you can identify opportunities to improve your own by assessing whether they are using schema, the types of schema they are implementing, and if they are appearing in search results with rich snippets.

3. Website Speed and Performance

Page load speed is critical for both user experience and search engine rankings, with slower websites often facing higher bounce rates and lower rankings, particularly on mobile.

Understand how competitors’ websites perform by measuring their load times on both desktop and mobile devices. Assess their Core Web Vitals scores, such as CLS, INP, and LCP. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to analyse their performance and apply similar improvements to your site. For larger enterprise websites, consider using performance monitoring tools like Honeycomb and Dynatrace to gain deeper insights.

4. Crawlability and Indexability

Search engines need to crawl and index web pages efficiently. If a website has poor crawlability or indexation issues, it can lead to ranking problems.

Understand how your competitors utilise crawlability and indexability to improve visibility and rankings. Compare whether they are effectively using robots.txt to control what search engines can crawl, have a proper XML sitemap submitted to search engines, and avoid blocking important pages from being indexed using robots.txt or noindex tags.

5. HTTPS and Security

Secure websites (HTTPS) are a ranking factor, and users tend to trust secure sites more, especially for e-commerce. A lack of HTTPS can negatively impact rankings and user trust.

Assess whether your competitors are using HTTPS across their entire site, avoiding mixed content issues, and effectively managing other security elements. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your website is secure, and trustworthy, and positively impacts your search engine rankings.

6. Canonicalisation

Proper use of canonical tags helps prevent duplicate content issues and ensures that search engines index the preferred version of a page.

Understand how your competitors implement canonicalisation to prevent duplicate content, including their use of self-referencing canonicals on key pages and avoiding problems caused by incorrect or missing canonical tags.

7. URL Structure

SEO-friendly URLs are short, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. Structure your URLs to reflect the page’s content. Opt for static URLs whenever possible.

Understand how your competitors manage their URL structure, ensuring their URLs are short, keyword-rich, and consistent across their sites. Additionally, identify if they avoid unnecessary parameters or dynamic URLs that could hinder crawlability.

8. Redirects and 404 Pages

Proper use of redirects and handling of 404 pages are essential for both SEO and user experience. Poor redirect management can cause crawl inefficiencies and loss of ranking potential.

Understand how competitors are using 301 redirects for permanently moved content, and how they manage 404 errors – whether they provide custom 404 pages that help users navigate back to relevant content. Additionally, check if there are any redirect chains or loops that could negatively affect crawlability. Redirect chains can slow down page load times and confuse search engines, while well-designed 404 pages can enhance user experience by handling broken links gracefully.

9. Pagination and Infinite Scroll

Proper handling of pagination or infinite scroll helps search engines understand the structure of multi-page content and ensures important pages get indexed.

Proper handling of pagination or infinite scroll is crucial for helping search engines understand the structure of multi-page content and ensuring that important pages are indexed.

Understand how competitors use self-canonicalised pagination URLs to guide search engines through multi-page content while ensuring their setup facilitates efficient crawling and indexing. If they implement infinite scroll, assess how they address its SEO implications to avoid any indexing challenges.

10. Site Architecture and Internal Linking

A well-structured site architecture and internal linking strategy ensure that important pages are easily accessible to users and search engines.

A well-structured site architecture and effective internal linking strategy are key to ensuring that important pages are easily accessible to both users and search engines.

Understand how competitors organise their site architecture to ensure it is logical and easy to navigate. Assess whether they are using internal linking effectively to enhance the ranking potential of their key pages, and examine how deep important pages are buried within their site structure. Use these insights to optimise your own site architecture and internal linking for better SEO performance.

Step 5: Analyse Competitor’s Backlink Profiles

Backlinks are a critical factor in SEO success, acting as votes of confidence from other sites and influencing search engine rankings.

By analysing your competitors’ backlink profiles, you can gain valuable insights into their link-building strategies and uncover opportunities to strengthen your own.

Examine the link-building techniques competitors may be using, such as digital PR, guest blogging, broken link building, HARO participation, or industry outreach. Understanding these tactics can inspire your approach to acquiring high-quality backlinks.

Measure the number and quality of referring domains and backlinks your competitors have by evaluating metrics like Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) using tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz. While a higher score for DR or UR can indicate a strong backlink profile, it doesn’t always guarantee link quality, so human review is still essential to assess the true value and relevance of the links. Prioritise backlinks from authoritative, relevant websites that boost both credibility and SEO.

Evaluate where competitors acquire their backlinks, such as industry publications or high-authority domains. The source significantly impacts link value, with trusted, authoritative sites carrying more weight than low-quality ones. To learn more about building high-quality links, click here.

Assess the anchor text distribution used in competitor backlinks. Look for a natural mix of branded terms, relevant keywords, and variations. Avoid excessive keyword-rich anchor text, as this can trigger link penalties.

Step 5: Review Competitors’ Content Strategy

Understanding your competitors’ content strategy is key to developing high-performing content that attracts users and improves SEO. Here’s what to analyse:

1. Content Types, Formats, U/X, and CTAs

Understand the types of content your competitors produce, such as blog posts, long-form content, videos, infographics, webinars, or case studies, and analyse the distribution of these formats. Consider which formats resonate most with your target audience and how you can enhance your content variety to better engage them. Additionally, observe where your competitors appear in the SERPs – are they featured in snippets, using FAQ schema, or showing up in image or video carousels?

Next, assess the U/X of their content. Do they effectively use images, infographics, or videos to make the content more digestible and improve the overall user experience? Look for opportunities to enhance your content by incorporating better imagery and design.

Lastly, review the CTAs – Is the call to action persuasive enough to drive conversions, or could you craft stronger, more compelling CTAs that guide users toward desired actions? Additionally, assess how competitors use internal links to other parts of their site or related posts to keep users engaged and improve site navigation.

2. Content Topics and Target Audience

Review the topics covered by your competitors’ content. Do they focus on trending topics, niche subjects, or evergreen themes? Pay attention to the balance between evergreen content (like buying guides and FAQs) and news-type articles that capture timely trends.

Try to understand their target audience by analysing the tone, depth, and relevance of the content. Are they catering to specific demographics or addressing a broad audience? Look for gaps in their coverage and think about how you can tailor your content to target new opportunities.

3. Content Quality, Frequency, and Engagement

Evaluate the overall quality of your competitors’ content. Is it well-researched, detailed, and informative? Does it demonstrate authority and expertise? Also, assess their publishing frequency – are they consistent with regular content updates, or do they follow a sporadic schedule? Observe if they are incorporating ambassadors or influencers into their content. Leveraging trusted voices can boost credibility and EEAT, so take note of how effectively competitors are using influencers to amplify their message.

Check for engagement metrics like social shares, comments, and backlinks to measure how well their content resonates with their audience.

4. Content Freshness and Updates

Review how frequently competitors update their existing content. Regularly refreshing and revising content is key to maintaining SEO performance and keeping it relevant to users. Assess whether they repurpose older content to align with new trends or if they mainly focus on publishing new content.

5. Identifying Content Gaps

Finally, explore content gaps in your competitors’ strategy. Are there topics they’ve missed, or is there an opportunity for you to cover a subject in greater detail? Evaluate how you can provide more in-depth insights or a unique angle on topics they already cover, allowing your content to stand out.

Conclusion

A comprehensive SEO competitor analysis is essential for gaining insights into your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats (SWOT). By following the steps in this guide, I hope you now know how to develop an SEO strategy that drives long-term success. I recommend conducting this analysis at least twice a year, using the SWOT framework to identify areas where you can capitalise on opportunities and improve upon your competitors’ weaknesses. Remember, competitors aren’t perfect – use their strategies as inspiration, not something to replicate.