In any business, competition is something you can never overlook. No matter which way you look at it. Most people think that the main reason for monitoring your competition is to find out how you can beat them. In most cases, this may turn out as the result eventually. However, it should not be at the expense of checking your progress against what you intend to achieve and your plans you have in place. This will help you realize what your competition is doing to be where it is. If they are actually doing better than you, then what they are doing better than you. It also gives you an idea of what you need to change to improve your operations. To get to better understand the details about the analysis, there are several aspects you need to consider.
Find the Key Call-to-Action Being Use
- Consider whether your competition has adopted approaches that are special or unique.
- Identify the kind of key call-to-action on your competitor’s homepage.
- Look for other calls-to-action that are appearing on their site.
How Search Engine Friendly is Your Competitor
In this case, the main things to pay close attention to include;
- Whether your competitors’ sites are accessible on phone.
- Whether they have incorporated social media on their sites.
- How fast your competitors’ sites are.
The Kind of Unique Selling Points (USP) in Use
- Check whether your competitor’s have opted to target different markets with different USPs.
- Identify the main selling point that your competitors’ have chosen to promote which appears to be special to them.
How Does Your Competitor’s Site Perform in the Market
- Check whether they have taken to podcasts and videos.
- Whether they have an active blog.
- Whether they have provided email, contacts, live chat and others as points to aid in conversion.
- Whether they have made provision for whitepapers and various downloads.
Traffic estimates and the ranking of your competitors’ search engines. Knowing this will allow you to find areas that you can improve upon and take advantage.
The Performance of Your Competition on Social Media
- Consider the heights that your competitors have gone to on the main social media sites.
- Check the kind of content from your competitors’ site that has been shared to a great extent.
- Find out the kind of social network that your competitors have opted to use.
Even as you look at your competition, you need to be clear regarding who your competitors are and this covers both external and internal factors. This will ensure that you do not end up chasing after those you perceive to be your competitors, but rather those that are actually true competitors. To guide you in this you will need to consider;
- Those termed to be your competitors by both your prospective clients and regular ones. A rough idea on this will be those that they keep mentioning in the course of your interactions.
- Both your professional and personal knowledge regarding your perceived competition.
- Others that appear on search results for keywords you wish to be searched or similar searches as yours. These results can either be on paid or natural search results.
Useful Tools
Analyzing your competition will also entail the use of certain tools. Some of these tools will include;
Moz-This gives you some key areas that your competition may be targeting. See my write up on Moz.
The majestic SEO – which will help you to verify the link portfolio attached to a particular site and what will be of interest in this case, will be the domains from which such links were sourced and how many of these are available.
Pingdom site speed checker – in addition to an individual analysis of each element on the page, this tool will help you realize how fast a page that appears on a site loads.
Alexa – this tool will furnish you with estimates of the amount of traffic flowing to a particular site and since it is an estimate, it means that this information cannot be relied upon. You may actually prefer to look at details on keywords and how the traffic is ranked as you apply this tool.
Hubspot marketing grader – this one will help you pinpoint various elements used in marketing that ensure the success of a site.
Search Metrics – if your competitor has certain keywords they are ranking for, then this is the tool to help you figure out the specific keywords they are using.
As usual any analysis will require some kind of recording and it would be best if you come up with a spreadsheet for the same. A characteristic one may have the various competitors on top and the factors that you have chosen to take into account running down the left hand side. It is easier to interpret details of the analysis this way as compared to having a narrative/text and that is how you obtain such data.
Each one of these will help you understand your competition and find ways to increase your market share. You then need to use the knowledge that you gain from this analysis to find those gaps in your campaigns and fill them. I have learned this and more at my top recommendation. I have also compiled a list of other things that I have found useful in all of my recommendations.
If you have any comments, questions, or your own personal experiences please share them below.