DW Tips

Business owners and marketers know that they need every advantage they can get to stay ahead of the competition.  If your competitors' websites are ranking ahead of yours in the search engines, one way to gain an advantage is to perform an SEO analysis of their sites.

Why is this important?  Because it lets you see what your competitors are doing right and helps you identify new opportunities.  It also allows you to spot competitor weaknesses that you can use to your advantage.  You may find new link opportunities, too.

To perform an SEO analysis, follow these steps.

Targeted Keywords

Most important is to find the keywords that your competitor's site is targeting.  Then you can target the same keywords and draw business from your competitor.  You can also discover entirely new keywords to target, ones you might not have thought of yourself.

On-Site Optimization

Next, take a look at your competitor's on-site optimization.  If your competitor's site is ranking better than yours and has an aggressive keyword density strategy, then you need one, too.  

Also take a look at the metadata on your competitor's site.  These are the keywords, phrases and more that help search engines find and rank a page.  Is the site using latent semantic indexing keywords?  Is there a clear call to action? If the site's metadata is helping its rankings, then you need to consider strengthening your metadata.

Content Analysis

The search engines love fresh, original content that users find useful and valuable.  Look at your competitor's content.  Is it unique, not a re-hash of other sites' content?  Make sure your content is one of a kind.

What is the word count on your competitors' well-ranked pages?  Google, in particular, likes long pages, so make yours longer than your competitors' pages.  Does the content contain outbound links?  These build credibility, so add more to your content than your competitors have.

Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, creating both pitfalls and opportunities.  It is, therefore, vital to keep testing your site and improving its optimization strategy.  An SEO competitor analysis is just one important component of this.

If you are in the market for a well-designed, eye-catching website, then please contact us.  Our team of experienced professionals is standing by and looks forward to working with you.