Understanding Competitor Keyword Research
Veteran bloggers will know that SEO is tricky business.
To be up in the rankings, there are many things to consider and keep up with.
Most website proprietors must assess multiple trials and mistakes when developing an effective SEO plan. Particular attention should be paid to choosing the correct keywords to aim for.
That’s where traditional keyword research methods come into play.
What is traditional keyword research?
Figuring out which keywords have a low level of competition but get a lot of web traffic is the most important thing.
The procedure starts with a generic word or “essential keyword” combined with a keyword analysis instrument such as Ubersuggest.
By typing in the primary word of your choice into Ubersuggest, you can uncover an extended list of related keyword permutations to use for your targeting. Crucial measurements such as the complexity of keywords, the average amount of visits per month, and the Price Per Click are also supplied to identify worthwhile terms.
If you intend on undertaking keyword investigation starting from the beginning, make sure to search for extensive phrase keyword variants. Examine the page that demonstrates the essential steps to perform keyword analysis and other possible alternatives to Ubersuggest.
Many bloggers implement conventional keyword investigation to power their content promotion, as well as search engine optimization endeavors.
Though they can be useful, the concepts you can identify through keywords are only assumptions at the most.
We must accept the reality that, even though you have identified keywords with significant rates of visitors and reasonable competition, it is not certain that outcomes will be successful. You cannot guarantee that the keywords you are using will bring in visitors and leads unless you put them to the test.
A competitive keyword analysis tool addresses the issue by revealing the secrets of successful websites.
What is competitor keyword research?
Rather than tackling competitor keyword research from the beginning, it is not necessary to start from scratch.
Construct a plan of action that leverages keywords that have already been verified by your competition.
Not only is it a huge time-saver, electing to find competitors’ keywords also has the following benefits:
- Discover content gaps — Keywords used by competitors can also point to untapped content ideas that you haven’t capitalized on yet. These are gaps between you and your competitor’s SEO strategies that must be closed if you want to outperform them.
- Find PPC keywords you can bank on — If a top competitor is investing in a keyword for paid traffic, chances are it helps them generate profitable leads. You can then ramp up content creation for these keywords and bid on them as well.
- Save money on link building — Building links to elevate your search engine rankings consumes a huge chunk of a blogger’s time and budget. Competitor keyword research maximizes returns by finding the right keywords to target.
- Remodel your content strategy — Identifying the perfect keyword ideas is just a part of SEO competitor analysis. You can also spy on their content to borrow strategies that can increase search engine rankings.
- Unveil secondary keyword opportunities — Aside from high-traffic, focus keywords, your competitor may also have dozens, if not hundreds, of secondary keywords that bring traffic. Adopting these keywords into your SEO strategy will create more ways for visitors to find your site.
You are undoubtedly keen to undertake a study of your competitors’ keywords.
Don’t worry — we’ll get to it soon. We need to bring up one additional matter prior to moving on.
How to Find Competitors the Right Way
Now that you’ve worked out the suitable keyword difficulty for your website, the only thing you need to do is identify the main rival.
In summary, a major rival is a company that provides equivalent items or services.
They are aiming to capture the attention of the same crowd. Many times, they are seeking to rank for the same key words as you are.
How to find primary competitors
Do you still have your SEMrush trial account active?
You can quickly recognize who your main rivals are with this.
Scroll down to the “Main Organic Competitors” section on your domain overview report.
Your main opponents in your specific field of interest will be presented to you on a silver tray.
As an illustration, here is what this section appears to be like when it comes to MailChimp.
To see a greater selection of rivals, click on ‘View full report.’ This will take you to the “Organic Competitors” webpage which has further details such as shared search terms, web traffic, and how tough the competition is.
Take note that there are several other options out there that are able to give you practically the same information as SEMrush does. No single answer is satisfactory for SEO, so investigate my comparison to locate a service that meets your requirements.
Serpstat provides a way to identify and examine your organic search competitors right on its main page.
If you don’t have access to a marketing analytics tool that can give you a list of competitors, what can you do?
If you want to locate rivals, a quick Google search should be enough. Make certain to incorporate a relevant keyword – you will promptly pinpoint leading adversaries.
A disadvantage to this approach is that you will not take advantage of the helpful statistics that platforms such as SEMrush present.
How to find secondary competitors
In contrast to primary opponents which provide similar items and services, secondary opponents do not possess any of that.
Instead, they publish content aimed towards your target audience. This implies they also go after the same or correlated keywords.
One of MailChimp’s organic search phrases is “e-mail advertising automation”.
You ought to also identify some of the significant competitors in the search engine results. This involves other high-level electronic mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
Apart from these, there are also consequences sourced from places that do not supply email marketing tools. Neil Patel’s guide to automating email marketing garners a higher ranking than what MailChimp’s content offers.
Regardless if a competitor is primary or secondary, one thing is for certain:
Uncovering the terms and phrases your target audience is using and making sure they are included in your game plan is vital.
It is expected that you will be able to think of several major and minor rivals.
List them down into a spreadsheet for now. In order to decide which audience to focus on, you should employ analytics software to track metrics such as traffic and shared keyword phrases.
If you have a personal finance blog, the keyword “how to save money” should be one of your main focuses.
Your main adversaries will be other small-scale websites that offer the same goods and services. As a blogger focused on personal finance, one may be able to offer coaching services, an online program, or any other type of informational product.
Chances are you don’t promote credit cards or banking services – this puts sites like Regions.com and NerdWallet.com in the situation of being your indirect rivals.
7 Ways to Identify Your Competitors for Better SEO Keyword Research
1. Understanding Relevancy and Defining Competition
The global arena of digital rivalry is populated by a variety of participants. There are numerous similarities between virtual and physical environments; for instance, the quest for sustenance is a common factor shared by numerous creatures in the natural world. No matter if they come from the same genus and species, they are still adversaries.
Natural laws can be used to explain events in the digital realm. The rivals of yours that are vying for the same attention are regarded as your rivals. Knowing the relation to your particular topic that the competition has is essential for the keyword research that you are undertaking.
Your relevant competitors include:
- Direct competitors: Those that sell the same products and services to the same target audience as you.
- Indirect competitors: Those that may sell the same product, but to a different audience or market. Or those that sell a different product or service, but the relevance of their product is so close, you are competing for a similar audience.
- Semantic competitors: These competitors may not even sell a product, they may just offer juicy and edgy, newsworthy, or essential information to earn visibility from the same audience you are targeting.
2. Leaning Into Indirect Competitors
Businesses and marketers need to be better at recognizing the companies and brands that compete for their customers’ attention, even if that competition doesn’t directly overlap with their own specific industry or product. Figuring out your indirect and semantic competitors requires creative thought and a knowledge of relatedness.
Using the example mentioned before, an obvious indirect competitor for a piece of photo editing software for desktop would be an app that offers a similar service for cell phones.
Your rivals may not always be right on your tail, but they could be competing with you for the attention of your target demographic.
A camera company offering items essential for photographers could be considered a rival of yours, ahead of the need for your software.
3. Learning From Semantic Competitors
It is essential to follow major industry magazines and competition with similar goals to stay informed of current trends in your particular field.
You can benefit greatly by visiting the places that your viewers use to remain informed about the most recent fads.
Examining these contesting semantics can provide an understanding of the ascendance and descent of search phrases and how searcher questions can differ with the passage of time.
Gaining an understanding of emerging or up and coming competitors can be aided by analyzing semantic rivals.
If you come across a paper that discusses a goods or service that challenges your own, it is necessary to scrutinize it as a new adversary. Keep your eyes peeled for these competitor insight freebies.
4. Manual Searches and Analyzing the Top of the Food Chain
Research your rivals at the head of the industry by performing a manual search.
It is simple to search an essential phrase on Google and then examine the meaningful part of the result page and the search engine result page closely to identify who appears first. Go further into how they come up with and disseminate content with aims in mind.
Furthermore, pay attention to the ads that show up at the top of the search engine result page.
This shows that companies or website owners are paying for certain keywords so their sites come up higher in the search engine results.
5. Getting Social
Get social and go right to the source. Explore which social media networks your target market spends time on, become part of those websites, and then employ social media as a tool to determine who your competitive rivals are.
You can avoid taking a proactive role and just watch your patrons and your desired group of people.
Look at who they follow and ask yourself why. Take a look at what topics your competitors are discussing and explore the keywords they use in their content. Think about if your selection of keywords provides an equivalent or comparable benefit compared to theirs.
For those who possess courage, they can make use of their own social accounts to find out from their admirers and target crowd what other sources they go to for details or similar competitor items.
6. Track the Local Pack
If you want to increase your ranking in local searches, tracking your positions, results, and the relevant keywords in the local search engine package is essential to assembling a specialized keyword portfolio.
The cluster of search results that shows up at the top of the results page when a “near me” request is made is referred to as the local pack.
Google takes into account several elements when considering which local content to display in the snack box.
Obtaining a spot in the local rankings will require more than just modifying, tracking, and adjusting your GMB account — it will also depend on how pertinent you are, how close you are to the search, and how prominent you are.
7. Following Links and Mentions
Another approach that can be taken to recognize competitors is to search for connections and references. You should examine different review sites and affiliate-oriented blogs to determine who is successfully participating in advantageous online talks, either through paid or organic methods.
Finding reliable sources that have a significant following and that offer cites and mentions in their work is even preferable.
This approach can enable you to locate contenders that are not only prominent and distinguished but also new businesses that have done something clever or unique that merits a mention before long.
When you track down websites with your competitors’ links, click on the competitor link and do a keyword analysis.
Examine the way they have optimised their page and observe how they have structured the content not only to answer the user’s question, but in a manner attractive enough, to warrant it to be linked.
