Website Competitor Analysis

The key to success online these days is always being one step ahead of the competition. While this has always been true for many business sectors, learning how to keep track of your competitors is essential in such an oversaturated market as today.

Being able to analyze and keep track of what your competitors are doing allows you to stay one step ahead and be aware of the moves you need to make with your business.

You want to ensure that you are not falling behind in your sector but also that you continue to provide something better than everyone around you to draw customers in.

This is where website competitor analysis comes in, and there are many tools you can incorporate into your work to complete this task.

Competitor analysis is more than simply taking a quick look at your competitor’s websites and seeing what kind of content they are publishing these days.

The whole purpose of competitor analysis is to gather data and up-to-date information regarding your sector so you can keep on top of industry trends, forecast future content strategy, and adapt to shifts in the market.

This will not be possible if your idea of competitor analysis is to take a quick look at several other websites in your sphere, as you need more to work with.

In this guide, we are sharing everything you need to know about competitor website analysis and the tools you can use to inform ongoing marketing campaigns for greater success.

What Is Competitor Website Analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of collecting and reviewing data from your competitive landscape, which can then be used to inform your ongoing work.

Competitor website analysis is focused on the online content strategy of rivals in your sector and allows you to work with internet platforms.

As the majority of business is done online these days, it makes sense to focus your competitor analysis online and on competitors’ websites.

Effective competitive analysis is more than simply keeping watch of your competitor’s content, as it should provide a range of data that can then inform your own content strategy.

Competitive analysis is a form of market research, and the data you collect through these analysis tools will then go on to inform your marketing strategy.

Based on the kind of competitor analysis tools you use, it is possible to gather data points such as industry stats, competitor performance, sector trends, and organic traffic sources.

Competitive research is usually done to give businesses insights into the products and prices of their rivals.

While this, too, may be considered in competitor website analysis, the main focus here is on marketing and how your competitors are navigating the online market for success.

Effective analysis of your competitor’s websites can offer actionable insights that can then be used to inform your marketing strategy.

It can be used to access both direct competitors and indirect competitors, offering a wider insight into the industry as a whole.

Seeing the competitive advantage that other sites may have in terms of their marketing efforts can be very useful when improving your own work.

The data collected during the analysis of your competitive landscape, which covers competitor websites, marketing channels, and even social media platforms, can then be used to provide an edge over the competition and ensure your company continues to stand out to your target audience.

In these days of saturated marketplaces, particularly online, being able to obtain an advantage over your competitors is invaluable, and with the right competitor analysis tools, this may be easier than you think.

Top Benefits Of Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is not a new concept, and it has been used by businesses for decades to ensure they are staying at the top of their game.

While there are now new competitor analysis tools and techniques specifically tailored to the modern market, the overall concept of analyzing your competitive landscape is not new.

However, these days companies may want to focus more on their competitor’s content, social media strategy, and search rankings as opposed to their upcoming products because these are the major factors for success.

It should come as no surprise that being online and having a social media presence is advantageous for any kind of business.

Being online can make it easier for you to reach your target market, as most people look online these days for goods and services.

However, because being online can be so useful for businesses, there is also a lot of competition you have to deal with. This can make it difficult for you to get noticed and ensure your business is succeeding.

With competitor analysis, you can keep track of the current market and what your competitors are doing, as well as continually come up with new ways to market to your target audience.

There are a lot of benefits that come from effective competitor analysis, and these can improve your own company, such as:

• Providing market research for your specific niche can then inform future marketing decisions
• Allows you to keep track of both direct and indirect competitors so you can stay ahead of the game
• Determine the best SEO practices to incorporate into your marketing strategy to reach your target audience
• Access your competitor’s campaigns to see what works and what you should avoid for the best results
• Helps you see where your own business may be falling short, as well as highlighting any gaps in the market that you can take advantage of

With this kind of targeted competitor research, you should be able to collect reliable data that can then inform your ongoing marketing efforts for a greater success rate.

Website analysis focuses specifically on online content, social media, and similar platforms, which is where the majority of your marketing will be done these days.

You can use this data to determine what your customers are looking for, how you can improve your own website, and ways you can remain on top of the competition by getting a wider image of the industry as a whole.

After all, your competitors are not using new techniques to attract audiences and continue making money but are rather relying on the same kind of things that you are aware of.

But as you will learn through competitive analysis, it is the way they use these tools and techniques that may be bringing greater success, and this can then be used to inform your future decisions.

How To Perform Competitive Analysis Of Websites

There is a great range of competitor analysis tools that you can use to keep track of your competitive landscape and gather the data you require.

However, there are some steps that you need to do independently first to ensure you are getting the most out of these tools.

When it comes to analyzing your competitors, there are specific steps you should take to remain focused and gather the data you require.

As time goes on, you may perfect the way you perform competitive analysis, but as a beginners’ guide, you can start with the following steps:

Identify Competitors

You will not be able to perform an effective competitive analysis without having a focus which is why the first step is identifying your competitors.

This will vary in every sector and with every niche due to how vast the marketplace is these days, but you should be able to identify at least several specific competitors based on your prior research.

To get a complete list, you not only want to focus on the brand competitors you know of in your industry but also consider your website rivals who are battling for the same attention online.

These rivals can be found by performing a keyword search on Google or other search engines and seeing what other websites appear.

When performing a standard search, do not ignore any PPC ads that may appear. PPC campaigns may take a market share of your desired audience by appearing at the top of search results, and even though these are paid search ads, they should not be ignored.

As they still generate traffic, you will also want to see what these competitors offer.

If you are looking for information regarding an indirect competitor or want to have more competitors to analyze, you can also use the competitor analysis tools mentioned before, such as SemRush, SimilarWeb, and Social Blade.

There are many other tools available for you to use to find more competitors and their data. Once you have identified your competitors, it is time for you to gather some basic data. This can be found on the aforementioned tools but also through your own research.

It will do you no good to simply know who your competitors are, as you require more information to work with. In this initial stage of research, basic information such as your competitor’s URL, as well as any other referring domains such as social media channels, can be incredibly useful.

Access Their Positioning Online

Now that you have gathered at least basic data on your direct competitors and their websites, it is time to start accessing some data.

The first thing you should start with when it comes to accessing their websites is positioning, which refers to the way they present themselves on their own platforms.

Positioning covers a lot of bases and can give you some good data right off the bat, like how the company presents itself to its customers and, through this, what kind of position they have in the industry.

There are specific elements of the website that you will want to focus on with your competitive analysis, such as:

• The company tagline or mission statement
• The information on their ‘About Us’ page and the kind of team that is represented
• The overall language and theme used on the website to represent the image they want their audience to perceive

This assessment should begin with the main company website but can also be done on any social media platform the company has.

It is a way of creating an image of your competitors using their own words and seeing the kind of stance they take within your shared market.

Identify Their Target Audience

As you are looking at your competitors, it makes sense for you to assume that they are appealing to the same market as your company. However, this may not always be the case, or there may be more to the story that you can get through competitive analysis.

It may not always be obvious by looking at your competitor’s content who their target market or segment is, which could be considered a failure on their behalf.

This may mean you have more work to do in identifying their desired audience and may need to look beyond the content on the competitor’s site.

As well as accessing the web pages of their website, you may also want to look at their social sites and see who is following your competitors. It is a good idea to access the language used on the landing pages of the website or across social media, keeping notice of specific keywords that can identify their target market.

The purpose of this part of competitor analysis is to see more so how your competitors interact with their customers and what is used to appeal to this specific segment, as opposed to who they target in the first place.

Analyse Site Performance and User Experience

Once you have entered a particular site, you can start gathering this kind of data instantly because you are essentially undercover as a potential customer of your competitor.

To gather data that you can use to inform your own marketing campaigns, you can view your competitor’s website through the eyes of a potential customer.

This may help to keep you focused when accessing specific elements of their site and content by determining whether it appeals to customers.

As a business owner or marketer, you will have a good understanding of what customers want when they reach out to a brand. When someone enters your website, they are establishing this content, and your image has to be right to appeal to them.

Looking at their website this way, you can begin to gather data on your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. There are some questions you may want to consider during this part of your research, such as:

• How fast does the website load?
• How does the website look? Is it easy to navigate?
• Is the website accessible and easy to modify based on your needs?
• Are the images in focus and optimized for browser size?
• Can you access all elements of the website?

You will want to check the website both through standard desktop browsers as well as using mobile apps to get as much data as possible.

This is the time to pay attention to any broken links, as well as the overall formatting of the web page, to determine whether it looks good and how this can inform your own company website.

These will all impact the SEO of your competitor’s website and therefore inform the changes you may need to perform to perform better in search results.

While keywords and other aspects are important for search engine ranking, the operation of a website and the overall user experience also play a huge part and should not be ignored.

When accessing the website, you may also want to pay attention to the language used within each blog post and the keyword density that is used to achieve good marketing.

You can use this data to start developing your own keyword list regarding the kind of language you should use on your own website to target specific audiences.

This will be an ongoing process in your competitive analysis, so make sure to pay attention to your competitor’s keywords on all platforms.

When accessing this kind of data, you can create your own scoring system, which allows you to keep track of each competitor’s site, or you can use a competitor analysis tool. There are even some tools that operate as a browser extension that will access this data live for you as you check out the website.

Check Out The Sales Funnel

As you are accessing the website through the eyes of a potential customer, it only makes sense for you to take things further and move your competitive analysis through the sales funnel.

All websites will have a sales funnel which is where customers are directed to buy goods or services. The whole purpose of your website or social media presence is to get people into the sales funnel, so accessing how your competitors do this on their own turf can be incredibly useful.

You first want to identify the various ways that your competitors are sharing their sales funnel, such as email marketing campaigns and even retargeting efforts that may be present on their websites.

Pay attention to the search terms you used to find this website on your chosen search engine, as this may also play a part in these funnel tactics.

Again, you can use a competitor analysis tool to analyze the various sales tactics used on the website, but you can also find it yourself with a careful eye.

Consider things such as call-to-action prompts, pop-ups, and digital assets used on the website, which can all be incorporated into the sales funnel.

Of course, by looking at these on the surface level, you will not be able to determine how successful they are at obtaining customers, which is why you may want to consider using analysis tools for greater insight into their market share.

Access Their Content

Creating content is a large part of marketing these days, and it can be incredibly useful when trying to reach more customers.

Content is required on a website to not only offer value to those accessing this platform but also to have something to market with.

While we have already mentioned some of the things you should access when looking at your competitor’s content, this can be analyzed deeper in a separate portion of your research.

For example, while you should be paying attention to competitor keywords across the whole website when accessing their content strategy, this should become more focused.

While it is unlikely that you are going to be using the exact keywords you find during this research, paying attention to the similar themes that appear and the kind of language that is used across content can be useful for your own marketing strategies.

You also want to focus your research on the specifics of their content, such as the kind of topics covered and the overall structure of content.

Researchers may also want to consider the kind of content that their competitors use, whether this is videos, podcasts, or blog posts, as this will provide insights into what your audience enjoys.

Much like analyzing the performance of the website as a whole, you also want to pay attention to issues such as broken links when looking into the content. This not only impacts the user experience but may also reduce the value of the content provided and affect the next area of focus, which is SEO.

When accessing the content on their website, you also want to take a look at the techniques used for content marketing on other channels. This can provide deeper insight into what the most effective kinds of content are, as well as offer more information on the success of the competitor in terms of customer connections.

Analyse SEO Tools

As we have mentioned, SEO is one of the major areas you want to analyze when looking into your competitive landscape.

While content marketing and social media marketing can be useful, a large percentage of market share is still met through search engines. Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website and content so it performs better in search results and reaches more people from this alone.

To determine what kind of SEO tools your competitors are using and how effective these are, you will need to do a Google search.

An organic search using the keyword data you have collected so far, as well as the specific names of your competitors, can give a good insight into how effective this strategy is for them.

With your Google search, you can see what kind of SEO techniques are being used by competitors to get noticed – if there are any at all. This can then be used to determine gaps in the market your brand can take advantage of to get noticed this way.

Analyzing the SEO techniques used by your competitors is easier to do with analysis tools such as SemRush and Ahrefs, as well as many others, because these can give greater insights.

These tools not only give insights into on-page SEO but also off-page SEO and other tools that you may not be able to see when accessing the website as a standard user.

These insights can then be used to inform your own SEO strategy and determine the kind of techniques you need to incorporate online to get noticed through organic searches.

Taking Stock Of Your Findings

Once you have completed your competitive analysis, you will now want to record your findings so they can be used by your content creation, social media, and marketing teams.

A good place to start is by simply listing the pros and cons of each competitor’s website, giving you a general oversight into what works and what you should avoid.

You can also categorize your findings based on the specific area, such as content or SEO, but ensure you also keep note of what competitors are using specific techniques so you can continue to access their work in the future.

Essentially, you want to be able to create an overall view of your direct market and the techniques used by competitors so you can make changes to your website as well as continue your analysis in the future.

Many of the analysis tools you can use for your research will comprehensively present findings at the end of the process, but if you are working alone, this can be done in a spreadsheet or data pack.

How To Use Your Competitive Analysis

Now you have a complete understanding of your competitors and the way they run their websites; it is time to take advantage of the information.

The whole purpose of this kind of analysis is to give yourself an advantage over the competition and make sure you continue to succeed in your field.

As the business owner or website operator, you will already have an understanding of what areas require additional attention, and your competitive insights can aid with these.

There will be some areas of your analysis that provide obvious and instant solutions, but others may be areas of growth you need to consider more. For example, some of the weaknesses you have noticed on competitor’s websites can become areas of strength for your brand if you know how to manipulate them.

On the other hand, the SEO techniques that you analyzed, which delivered great results for your competitors, should be used on your website and within your content to improve your reach.

The way that you use your competitor analysis data can vary based on your goals for the business and what areas of concern you have, but there is no denying they are incredibly useful.

Summary

Competitor website analysis can be an incredibly useful process for businesses these days, as it gives them great insight into the wider market.

By accessing the work of your competitors, you can collect data that can then be used to improve your own marketing strategies and ensure you are being successful within your niche.

Competitors can offer a lot of information about your specific industry, as well as give data points that can inform your future decisions.

There are some great analysis tools out there that can make this process easier and provide greater insights if this is required. A lot of the research can also be done independently to gather standard insights and data.

Once you have gathered enough data from your competitive landscape, you can begin to implement your findings and improve the performance of your own business online.