{"id":119239,"date":"2020-12-15T19:14:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T11:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=19239"},"modified":"2022-06-01T16:24:15","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T08:24:15","slug":"competitor-keyword-analysis-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/competitor-keyword-analysis-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Competitor Keyword Analysis Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Competitors are a big part of the SEO industry. It\u2019s a zero-sum game where one wins, another loses. This is why SEOs and webmasters need to keep up with the times and adapt to any situation. Aside from resources, we can find from authoritative sources, one of the best locations for us to find effective strategies and content that works is from the competitors that are ahead of us. So, how do we analyze our competitor\u2019s keywords and use them to our advantage?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Determining your search competitors<\/span><\/h2>\n

The first step to analyzing your competitor\u2019s keywords is to determine which competitors\u00a0matter<\/strong>. The reason why you can\u2019t use your real-world competitors since some of them does not have great search visibility.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A good rule of thumb to determine your search competitors is to check the websites ranking for your target keywords on the first page, even if they\u2019re not your real-world competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important for you to remember that there will be instances where you will encounter websites that encompass multiple niches. So, don\u2019t panic when you\u2019re seeing brands\/names that you don\u2019t know ranking for your coveted keywords.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding search competitors is easy enough since you just need to search for your target keywords<\/a> in Google or you can even use tools such as\u00a0Mangools\u2019 KWFinder<\/a>\u00a0that shows the top 10 results for keywords you search for. Lastly, take note of competitors that rank for other search real estate such as featured snippets, knowledge graphs, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Gathering competitor keywords<\/span><\/h2>\n

Once you\u2019ve listed down your competitors, it\u2019s now time to gather the keywords they\u2019re ranking for. This is easy enough to do since there are a lot of tools in the market that can do this in a matter of seconds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After gathering your competitor\u2019s keywords, you should organize them into two categories:<\/span><\/p>\n

Current keyword rankings<\/span><\/h3>\n

These are the keywords that your website is already ranking for alongside your competitors. More often than not, you\u2019ll only focus on the competitors that are ahead of you in rankings, but it\u2019s also important for you to take note of other competitors that rank lower than you since they can still overtake you in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Compiling your competitor\u2019s current keywords and their rankings will also help you put things in perspective. You\u2019ll be able to see which of your keywords intersect with theirs and be able to prioritize the keywords that matter the most.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New keyword opportunities<\/span><\/h3>\n

Aside from putting things into perspective and knowing which keywords to prioritize, compiling your competitor\u2019s keywords also allows you to spot new keyword opportunities that you\u2019re currently not pursuing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Your efforts shouldn\u2019t stop with overtaking your opponents in ranking for keywords you both share, you should also aim to widen the reach of your website in search. Instead of manually looking for keywords in tools and SERPs, it\u2019s easier for you to find relevant and beneficial keywords through analyzing your competitor\u2019s current keywords. This allows you to save time and energy while gaining extremely helpful results.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How to use the analysis to your advantage<\/span><\/h2>\n

So, after compiling the list of keywords and organizing them, what should be the next step? Analyzing your competitor\u2019s keywords isn\u2019t the end, you should also analyze anything and everything that makes their pages better than yours. That includes:<\/span><\/p>\n

Content difference<\/span><\/h3>\n

The first thing you should check is how their page\u2019s content differs from yours. It\u2019s easy to augment content<\/a> and make it better than it was before. But it\u2019s difficult to gauge how a competitor\u2019s content performs better than yours even if you take pride in producing content that\u2019s high-quality, informative, and comprehensive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The best of us can be overcome by pride, especially if we put in so much effort and energy to produce the best content we could create then seeing it underperform or seeing your competitors still rank better even if you know your content is better.<\/span><\/p>\n

A good rule of thumb in gauging your competitor\u2019s content is determining what they included in their content that you don\u2019t have.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a similar experience with one of our clients when we created a landing page with high-quality, informative content but it wasn\u2019t ranking as high as we wanted it to. So, we checked our competitor\u2019s pages that were ranking better than us, and even though we had a\u00a0longer<\/strong>\u00a0and more\u00a0comprehensive<\/strong>\u00a0content, we lacked foundational information for our topic which was providing the definition of the term (keyword) we were talking about and its advantages. Even though we had better content, we actually lacked what the users wanted and needed to see. When we augmented our content, we immediately overtook our competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s just a matter of lacking some things which could be easily mitigated, but other times, it\u2019s a matter of lacking quality, information, and comprehensiveness, which is more difficult to solve.<\/span><\/p>\n

Onsite difference<\/span><\/h3>\n

Aside from the content, the next thing you should check is the competitor\u2019s onsite efforts. We\u2019ve already written a guide to onsite optimization<\/a>, but here are the factors you should be checking:<\/span><\/p>\n