As a business with a number of competitors, it is important to do a competitive analysis to make sure that you can outrank them in the SERP. To be certain, you need to measure some SEO metrics and compare them to yours. Do you even have the potential to outrank them? Find the answer with Sequence Stats.
Besides the ability to serve daily ranking data, Sequence Stats also supports you in doing competitive analysis through the Domain Watchlist module. It enables you to monitor your competitors' performance and see how their SEO is doing.
Through this article, we will show you how to exceed your competitor using the competitive landscape you can get from Sequence Stats. Please read thoroughly to understand the full idea of applying this strategy.
What Is Competitive Landscape?
Competitive analysis or competitive landscape analysis is a way of identifying your competitors and defining your brand position compared to them. In this activity, you will perform detailed research into your competitors regarding their marketing, performance, business strategy, and other vital points.
This type of analysis will give you valuable information to counter-rank them based on accurate data. The competitive landscape analysis is good for all business levels that want to outperform their competitor in the SERP.
How to Do Competitive Landscape Analysis
This activity needs in-depth critical analysis to get the best results. By that, you will have enough data to build the next SEO strategy to outrank them in the SERP. To get what we are saying, here are some checklists you need to follow in doing competitive analysis.
Identify Your Competitor
First of all, identify your competitors. Competitors can be the direct company who offers the same product or services as yours, or the indirect competitor that intersects with your business. It is nice to categorize your competitors into some groups.
For example, you have direct competitors grouped into a primary competitor, indirect competitors grouped into a secondary competitor, and SERP competitors grouped into a tertiary competitor, and so on. From those groups, you can identify the competition easily.
Make sure you list 10 top competitors in the market that are similar to your business. It will be much more beneficial if you know the market share of your top competitors. This data can tell your brand competition in real life.
Analyze Their Performance
The next step is to analyze your competitors’ performance. Whether it is about their average organic ranking or absolute ranking they manage to sit. You should at least have this data in the early stage of competitive analysis because it will then define your position compared to them.
To get this data, you will need an SEO tool to tell you the number. Gathering average organic ranking, paid ranking, brand position, and market share will be a big burden if you do it manually. That is why get yourself the right tool to help you gain this valuable data and measure business competitiveness.
Analyze Their Marketing Strategy
Now you know how they perform in the SERP, then you need to analyze the marketing strategy that led them to their position right now. It is important to know what your competitors are up to and applies their strategy if it suits your business.
To do that, checking their website is an effective way to know their marketing effort. From the website, you will know their offers and pricing. That information can be used to evaluate your brand at the end of the activity.
Here are some notes to take while you observe competitors' websites:
Do they regularly post blogs?
How do they use visual content to engage with the visitors?
Do they have FAQs?
Do they have case studies?
What is the campaign they are running?
Those questions will help you get the information you need in observing competitors’ websites. You can add more question lists such as the pricing, the product features, and even promotion.
Learn your Competitors' Strengths and Weaknesses
If you have evaluated each component of the competitors, it is time to do SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) analysis. It means that you will identify your competitor's strengths and weaknesses so that you can see the opportunity you have.
Here are the questions you can use to gather the data:
What are your competitor's internal strengths? (Product, social media, content, campaign)
What is the weakest component in your competitors' business?
What advantages do you have over their weakness?
What is the thing they could do better?
In what matters would you consider that competitor a threat to your business?
Is there any opportunities to outrank your competitors?
By answering those questions, you will be able to compare your business strengths and weaknesses. Then, you will uncover the improvement strategy for your business and website.
Evaluate Your Position
After gathering all the valuable information above, you will evaluate your current position in the market. You can draw your brand position through SEO automation tools like Sequence Stats.
With your current position, identify the gap in the market that could help your business get a step ahead.
Frequently Asked Questions in Competitive Landscape Analysis
To be clear, here are some frequently asked questions about competitive analysis addressed by some business owners:
When should a competitive analysis be done? At any stage of business. Whether you want to start a new strategy or before you have one, doing a competitive landscape is important
How many competitors to keep an eye on? It depends on your needs. If you can name them easily, it would be wise to analyze each one of them.
What metrics should you monitor? It also depends on the aim of your analysis. If you wish to outrank them in SERP, then the metrics you should monitor are the average ranking, market share, and brand position.
What should you expect from doing competitive analysis? The information on the market gap, uncover market competition, develop a stronger strategy, find the opportunity for your business, and many other benefits.
Doing Competitive Analysis on Sequence Stats Domain Watchlist
Lucky you, Sequence Stats as an all-in-one SEO tool allows you to do competitive analysis by adding your competitors’ domains to your Watchlist. We have launched the Domain Watchlist module to support your strategy to outrank your competitors.
This module is completed with a search bar where you can search your competitor's domain to add. Not only that, but if you have no idea who your competitors are, the system will recommend some domains related to your business in the same market.
Figure 1: The Sequence Stats Domain Watchlist Module (Sidebar)
This module is also able to uncover the data about market share, average organic ranking, absolute (organic and paid) rank, and brand position. You can get data by only adding the domain to your list. Can you imagine how simple your SEO work will be?
Figure 2: Domain Watchlist Full-page in Sequence Stats that shows the valuable information for competitive landscape analysis.
Within the Domain Watchlist Full-page, you can choose to display their Top Pages or Top Keywords to know which page or keywords they target and their performance. This feature is super easy to operate. You can delete the domain you no longer monitor and keep your list fresh all the time.
Figure 3: Top Page and Top Keywords option within Domain Watchlist full-page
All in all, competitive landscape analysis are not only a once for all analysis, you will need to do it repetitively to get the best results. That is why you cannot gather the data manually if you want time efficiency. For example, to get the market share information you need to calculate the total SoV of your domain and the market. Imagine if you have more than five domains to monitor, you will spend your lifetime calculating it.
With Sequence Stats, you are not only tracking your valuable keywords but you also can build good team collaboration and do competitive analysis with just a few clicks. You will get reliable data to support your SEO project and step ahead of your competitors. Explore more about Sequence Stats now!