What is an SEO competitor analysis? In simple language, it is the research work one does to check on what is working for others and picks up from there. This way, you don’t have to rack your brains thinking of what content to write, keywords to use, or links to build. It is like benchmarking or doing a market check to see what is working in your industry, especially your competition.
Here is a short guide to start with:

1. Everything may seem exciting at first. But before launching any campaign, you have to take time to know your competition. Know your enemy. Identify them and learn from them, so you don’t have to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. Instead, build a bigger wheel.

   How do you do that?

   • Take advantage of tools like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs to see which keywords your competitors are using. These tools show your competitors' top keywords, their backlinks, top content, organic keywords, best-ranked pages, among other things.
     
     • Keywords are critical to your website being searchable. It affects your ranking on search pages. The more profitable keywords you use, the better your ranking will be. Remember, the first page is the only page you want to be because at least 71% of the people do not go past the first page on google search. You do not want to miss that organic traffic.
   
   
   • Search for your competitions’ top-performing content.
     
     • Keywords can be used to generate content. Use your competitors’ keywords with high search volume, moderate keyword difficulty score and relevant to your business.
     • Keyword difficulty score is also known as ranking difficulty. It is a measure of how difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword on SERP.
     • A good keyword difficulty score is between 30% to 50%. These keywords are good targets to use because they have high search volumes but low competition.
     • Create better content around those high search volume keywords.
   
   
   
   • Check your competitors’ backlinks.
     
     • Backlinks are websites linking to your website or page. If your page gains several backlinks, you have a good chance of ranking higher in organic search engines. These backlinks are basically telling search engines your page contains quality contents that are useful and credible.
     
     
     • Check how many backlinks your competitions have and what websites are highlighting them. Getting quality backlinks should be your target. Quality over quantity is your goal. Getting a backlink from an authoritative website (website with high domain authority) is the best.


2. While you can learn all these things and more about getting organic traffic, ranking high in search engines and all, you will eliminate all the tedious steps when you consult companies who provide SEO competitor analysis services. You learn from these companies while you try to study on your own. Getting professional help will shorten your launch time.

Author Bio: Ester Adams is a farmer of words in the field of creativity. She is an experienced independent content writer with a demonstrated history of working in the writing and editing industry. She is a multi-niche content chef who loves cooking new things.