How to increase your website traffic with competitor analysis

Today, the search engine competition is intense as never before, and it's not enough just to have a good website to overrun the competitors. You need to be the best one in your niche.

But how to achieve this goal? Notice how competitors do it and exceed them. In this article, I will give some advice to analyze competitors' websites effectively, from A to Z.

Why do you need to analyze competitors?

By analyzing competitors, you can find out their promotion strategies. Why do you need this? Let's have a look at a few examples.

Suppose your competitor is a small online accessories store that receives more traffic. After a detailed analysis, you conclude that a site receives an inflow of customers through social networks and contextual advertising, but the usability of his website is quite low, so customers don't come back to this resource.

Another situation: a competitor receives a lot of traffic, his site is user-friendly, but he doesn't occupy top positions due to low-quality SEO optimization.

Third case: a competitor's site is similar to yours, but its position is much higher. We held the analysis and supposed that the reasons are well-optimized promotion in social networks and contextual advertising.

After the analysis, you can collect all the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, compare them with your strategy, understand what you are doing wrong, and how to achieve more satisfactory results.

However, there are some nuances to be taken into account. You can get acquainted with the strategy of competitors and adapt according to the situation, which is going in your niche, but there are no exact guarantees that this strategy will work for you. Especially if you are waiting on a quick result. All these adjustments are implemented by trial and error, so be prepared for anything.

How to identify direct competitors?

Before starting the analysis, it's important to identify direct competitors. You can know competitors in your business, but they are not your permanent challenger in search engines.

For example, a huge multi-store textile store will not be a direct competitor to a small online tulle store. Concern about the situation in your niche and identify a benchmark.

How to get customers' feedback?

Try to examine your business with the eyes of the user, not an entrepreneur. When interviewing your customers or looking at reviews of competitors, you will understand what your potential user like.

What questions to ask?

1. Why did they choose this product?
2. What other companies did they consider?
3. What do they like about the product? Pros and cons.
4. What would they want to improve?
5. Which competitors already have the functions users need?
6. What do they think about your and competitors' website?
7. How does the support service work?

How to find competitors manually?

First, you have to find a set of keywords used for website promotion, a keyword pool to explore for your direct competitors manually. With this list, you can check websites that are ranked higher at the top of SERP.

Searching for each query in a search engine, check who is using the same keywords for promotion in organic search. Note, that search engines often personalize the search and generate a SERP based on your past queries. Therefore, use the "Incognito" mode: for Google Chrome or Opera, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + N, in Mozilla use Ctrl + Shift + P.

Check the queries in each search engine and create a table with websites ranked within the analyzed keywords. You will get an overall picture of your niche and identify your closest competitors.

After reviewing the results for all keywords, you will collect a database of the leading competitors and release a plan for further actions.

However, manual search for competitors has several disadvantages:

• time-consuming;

• inaccurate picture by niche;

• the risk of missing out on a crucial competitor or essential query;

• hard to keep the data up to date.

To start competitors analysis, enter your domain in the search bar on the main page → select a database you need → click "Search." The service will display a summary report by the domain name. Next, scroll to the "Competitors graph."

The Serpstat chart will show the closest competitors of your domain based on the intersection of semantics. Your analyzed web resource will always be in the upper right corner of the graph. Direct competitors are those websites located closer to it at the intersection of the axes.

For a complete list of relevant competitors, go to the "Competitors" report.

Serpstat also allows you to see competitors for a particular category or website page.

To get this data, enter the URL of the page starting with the https: // (or http) in the search bar and select the type of search "Exact URL" or "URL Prefix."

How to collect general information on competitors' websites?

How to identify business features

Before giving a general description of a competitor's site, it's necessary to answer the essential question: "Why can a potential customer choose this company?". To do this, you need to analyze the key business features and to pay attention to:

• range of products offered by a competitor;

• prices for these products;

• interaction with the audience: promotions, discounts, bonuses, promotional codes, payment and delivery conditions;

• reviews that users leave;

• customer support: an online consultant or chatbot that helps users make choices or place an order;

• participation in events aimed at increasing brand cognition, etc.

As a result of this analysis, you can identify which business aspects of your competitor are better from the client's point of view and introduce new ideas into the organization of your own business.

How to check the age of a website and domain?

A website age is unobvious but an important factor in promotion. New projects rarely get to the top of SERP and are often absent in the search engine index in general.

Why do you need to check the age of the website and domain?

Search engines automatically search, crawl, and index new websites. It would be reasonable for all visitors to your website if its structure is clear and logical. Your web resource must be seen for a search robot to index it. But even the fulfillment of all Google's conditions and the correct robots.txt doesn't guarantee that it will be immediately noticed and recorded into the database.

The first year is the most difficult for a website. At this time, the level of trust of search engines starts to take shape. It may be different depending on the search engines and location.

The trust of a resource is affected by the website's age and the quality of the backlink profile, traffic, helpfulness, and relevance of the queries.

You can check the trust level with Serpstat. First, enter a domain in the search bar on the main page and click "Search." Then, go to the "Backlink analysis" section and check the "Backlink overview"

Information about lost and received links will help adapt the SEO strategy and increase effectiveness. The metric SDR shows the website trust level based on the quantity and quality of backlinks diversity.

What is the difference between website age and domain age?

You shouldn't confuse these two concepts, as websites can change the domain at any step. A domain age is determined by the registration date, and a site age is defined from the first indexation of the domain. Therefore, it's more challenging to identify the website age, since new websites are often created within old domains.

Check the site and domain age of your main competitors.If your project is relatively new, it will be more difficult for you to compete with "experienced" websites. In this case, you should consider this in your SEO strategy and put more stress on other ranking factors.

How to check a website’s age? There are several ways to determine the age of a site:

• examine the footer of the main page. Some websites specify the year of creation, especially the old resources with a long history.
• find the date of the first publication. It can be done using the Google search operator "site:" or manually surfing the site. However, this method is unreliable because many site owners delete old publications. They can also be lost when changing a domain.
• find out the date of creation directly from the website administrators.
• use automated online resources.

How to check the domain age

You can check the domain registration date using the Whois service. Enter the domain in the search bar of the service and click "Search."

The Whois will show all the information about the website: date and place of registration, registrar's name, and contact details.

You can also use our plugin Serpstat Website SEO Checker for on-page analyzing.

How to identify a website's indexing?

Indexing is the process of viewing a website with a Google or any other search engine crawler. The robot checks all page components and putting (if this site met the requirements) into its index (database).

Why do you need to check the degree of website indexing?

The vast majority of users get to your website through search engines. If the website pages are not indexed, the user will not find them. The more pages the website joined in the search engine index, the higher its potential traffic. That is why checking website indexation is essential when analyzing competitors' websites.

How to check a website indexing?

The number of indexed pages can be checked using the "site:" search command in Google. Type the operator and domain address in the search bar, and press "Search" to start analyzing.

If the number of pages indexed on your website is much less than competitors' one, find out what the issue is. For example, your website may have an illogical structure or deep nesting of pages, which prevents the search engine from reaching them. Pay attention to the structural configuration of other sites, and include helpful "chips" in your strategy.

How to analyze the traffic source?

You can use Serpstat reports to find out the traffic on a competitor's website. To do this, enter the address of a competitor's website in the search bar of the service and click "Search." Learning from the mistakes of others and adopting the winning techniques of leaders has long been a sign of a competent company. And traffic analysis plays a vital role in this case.

Visiting is the main parameter for assessing the popularity of a resource. Therefore, entrepreneurs are trying by any means to get information about traffic on the competitor's website and its sources.

Why do you need to check the traffic on competitors' websites?

Developing a competent promotion strategy, you need the traffic estimating tools to focus on results that can be achieved with promotion.

In addition to analyzing the potential, checking the traffic of your competitor will help to:

• determine whether to buy a particular domain;
• select websites for guest posts;
• find out the conversion of competing sites;
• find their strengths and weaknesses;
• choose an example to strive in content and usability.

How to determine competitors' traffic?

You can use Serpstat to find out the traffic on a competitor's website. To do this, enter the address of a competitor's website in the search bar and click "Search."

You will see the indicator "Estimated search traffic" — approximate amount of traffic on the website per month. It is an estimated metric that correlates with real domain traffic. Serpstat calculates the total traffic based on the CTR (Click Through Rate), the number of domain keywords, and the domain position for these keywords. We take into consideration SERP positions and keyword volumes.

More detailed information about traffic on the website can be obtained using SimilarWeb. Enter the website address in the search bar on the main page and press Enter.

The service will give you complete information about traffic on the website in numbers and graphs. The report includes the following indicators:

1. Total visits — the number of visitors to the website.
2. The average visit duration shows how much time the average user spends on the website.
3. Pages per visit show the average number of URLs a user views on a website during one session.
4. The bounce rate is the number of visitors from the total number of visitors who went to the site and immediately left it.

SimilarWeb also allows you to compare site traffic. Click on the plus sign next to "Compare" and enter the competitor's address.

Below, you can see the countries analyzed website receives traffic from.

This data will be helpful if you want to enter foreign markets and your competitor has already done so. Analyze the traffic distribution from other countries and your competitors' promotion strategies abroad.

Next, find out the main channels of competitor traffic to understand where visitors come from. Finally, if your strategy doesn't include any profitable traffic sources, go for it!

The following diagram shows what percentage of traffic a competitor receives from organic and paid search.

Here you will find the top 5 keywords for which a competitor is ranked in the organic search and used in advertising campaigns.

Next, you will see how much traffic comes to the website from social networks and the percentage of visits to a particular resource.

If you need to check social network activity at a specific URL, you can use buzzsumo.com.

If your competitor receives a good increase in users from social networks, and you don't use them, then it's time to start using social networks as well. Take an example from other websites:

• what content they post;
• how often;
• what their subscribers like more.

Perhaps the path of these websites to such a result was a long one, and you need to use their experience and do better!

How to compare website visibility metrics

Website visibility is an indicator that determines the number of appearances for keywords at the top of SERP.

In layman's terms, visibility is how well the website is "visible" in the search. The higher this indicator, the more visited the website will be.

Why do you need to analyze the visibility of competitors' websites?

When working with visibility, it's important to compare your metrics with other websites on the same topic. Such an analysis will help evaluate the effectiveness of SEO optimization carried out on the website and compare the optimization level.

How to determine website visibility?

Check the visibility of your website and competitors using Serpstat. To do this, enter the domain name in the search bar of the service and click "Search." Serpstat will redirect you to the Summary Report.

After scrolling the report down, you will see a graph of the dynamics of site visibility over the past year and its minimum and maximum value.

How to analyze the semantics of competitors

By analyzing the semantics of competitors, you can find additional ways to bring traffic to your website. For example, you may find missing keywords useful for your project. Also, the analysis of semantics can help prepare a content plan for creating new pages, updating old ones, or adjusting website linking.

SEO analysis. How to analyze semantics and find missing keywords?

To begin, it is worth comparing the semantics of successful competitors and your website. This method will help you understand how competitive your site is. It would help if you also found keywords that you might miss.

All sites are promoted under a specific list of keywords that reflect their subject. According to them, search engines rank the website, and potential customers find a resource on the web. Therefore, searching for missed keywords will help enrich the website's pages with applicable semantics that work for competitors and bring them traffic.

Both of these operations can be performed simultaneously with Serpstat in minutes. First, enter the domain address in the search bar, select a database→ go to the "Website Analysis" section → and select the "Domain Analysis / SEO-Analysis / Domain vs. Domain" tab.

Enter the addresses of competitors' sites in the corresponding fields, or select them from the list offered by Serpstat. Click Compare.

By analyzing the semantics of competitors, you can find additional ways to bring traffic to your site. For example, you may find missing keywords useful for your project. Also, the analysis of semantics can help prepare a content plan for creating new pages, updating old ones, or adjusting website interlinking.

How to explore the keyword pool of competitors?

Once you have analyzed the semantics of competitors and found missing keywords, you need to understand how the keywords are distributed on the website pages.

If a competitor is ranked in a search engine higher than your website, you may have incorrectly assigned keywords to the site pages.

You can check the distribution of keywords among the website pages using the unique "Tree view" Serpstat report.

Enter the website address in the search bar → go to the section "Website analysis / Domain analysis / SEO-analysis" → select "Tree view".

There are website pages from the top of analyzed search engine, and the keywords ranked with.

How to analyze the competitors' website structure?

The logical and user-friendly structure of the website and the implementation of a comprehensive list of pages with the correct internal linking is half the success of the website!

Compare competitors' sites from the top search results with yours to understand how to optimize the website correctly, increase its usability, and generally make it competitive.

For example, you are an online store owner trying to measure the text size to add to the product cards. The analysis of pages of successful competitors will help in this case. Have a look at top competitive texts and detect what can attract users on these pages:

• check what was implemented to make the website more user-friendly;

• what filters are used, its structure;

• what anchors are on the product listing pages;

• what descriptions are there on the pages;

• is there a blog, and how is it designed;

• is the website loading speed high enough;

• which pages have become top-ranked and by what queries.

Such analysis will help you understand which direction to move. But it's essential to do everything wisely to not turn your website into an unsuccessful copy of a competitor's website.

How to check the website loading speed?

You can use the PageSpeed Insights service to check the website loading speed. Enter the page address in the search bar of the service and click "Analyze." PageSpeed Insights will show you also troubleshooting tips.

You can also use Sitespeed.me:

Checking the website loading speed is also possible in the Serpstat Site audit module. This option is available for projects the audit was carried out:

How to find top competitor's sites and compare the content?

Serpstat will also show you the most traffic-generating pages of competitors. Enter the competitor's address in the search bar of the service and click "Search" → go to the section "Domain analysis" → click on the tab "SEO Research" → open the "Top Pages" report.

By the way, you can try Serpstat for free. The platform will show all pages of the website in a hierarchical order. Here you can find all the keywords each page is ranked by clicking on their number in the "Organic keywords" column.

Creating engaging content is the key to the success of your website. High-quality content of your website filled with helpful information increases the level of trust in the brand, forms a loyal community, and attracts potential customers.

Content intelligence is one of the most effective techniques in content marketing. But, first, it's essential to understand the competitors' content strategy and their tricks to attract an audience. An analysis of their top posts and comparing the content of competitors' websites with your own will help here.

We divide the website into page types:

• home page;
• website categories;
• product pages;
• a blog;
• other sample pages that can be found using Serpstat (see the previous paragraph).

Then we gradually analyze the content.

1. Check the home page and pages of categories:

• number of characters;
• meta tags title and description;
• the contents of the H1, H2, H3 headers;
• number of images, size, its Alt, and Title attributes;
• usage of lists;
• readability of the content and its usefulness;
• keywords and its occurrence;
• spamming techniques and stuffing used in the text.

By the way, these characteristics can be checked using the Serpstat plugin for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

2. For product pages, you should check the following:

• availability of the product description and its information content;

• number of words and characters;

• usage of spamming methods;

• availability of the list with characteristics of the products;

• accessibility of video reviews;

• the handiness of comments, ratings, and other valuable data.

3. For blog:

• meta tags title and description;
• frequency of publications;
• what is the total amount of materials at the moment;
• what is the average size of articles;
• the contents of the H1, H2, H3 headers;
• number of images, its size, Alt and Title attributes;
• usage of lists;
• what topics and themes are the most popular;
• what is the general essence of the content: news, user-friendly and informative content, etc.

Such a detailed analysis will help draw up your content strategy, eliminating the drawbacks and mistakes made by competitors and possessing their advantages.

How to analyze metadata?

The analysis of the main meta tags — Title, Description, H1, should be done, firstly, by separating the website's pages by types, as in the previous example:

• home page;

• website categories;

• product pages;

• a blog;

• other pages were discovered using Serpstat.

Then, you have to check:

• Are the pages stuffed with keywords?

• Are synonyms included?

• How were meta tags created: using generation templates or manually?

• What is the structure of filling metadata?

• Is there information about unique trading offers or inspiration for action in the meta tags?

You can check the site's meta-information using the Serpstat tool "Site audit" → "Custom overview". The platform will analyze the pages and show the metadata of the website's pages.

You can compare your website's technical optimization level with a competitor and comprehend your strengths and weaknesses.

Read the user manual for guidance to your first project in the audit.

Also, the information on the contents of the main meta tags and robots.txt of a particular page can be checked using the Serpstat plugin, which is available for Google Chrome, Opera and Mozilla Firefox.

PPC analysis

If you want to assemble contextual advertising, you need to conduct a PPC analysis of competitors.

How to conduct PPC analysis by domain or keyword?

Unfortunately, there is no exact answer to the question. PPC experts have different opinions on this. Some experts believe that competitor analysis is just a waste of time. Others think that analyzing and understanding related websites' advertising strategies is necessary for building your own. But there is no point in denying that it's worth researching successful websites. It will help customize advertising campaigns effectively, take advantage of niche leaders, and eliminate their disadvantages.

You can't carry out an accurate analysis of competitors in the contextual ad without using special tools. So we are going to show a few steps using Serpstat.

1. To conduct PPC analysis by domain.

Serpstat analyzes a domain's ad campaign semantics and shows relevant competitors. Enter the domain address in the search bar and select the search system → go to the "Domain analysis" section → "PPC analysis" tab → click on the "Competitors" report.

2.PPC analysis by keywords.

It will be helpful if contextual advertising is not yet configured. The report will show the closest competitors for each keyword.

Enter a keyword in the search bar and select a database(region)→ Serpstat will redirect you to the "Keyword research" section → go to the "PPC analysis" tab → click on the "Competitors" report.

Both reports show relevant competitors in contextual advertising.

How to research keywords for a PPC campaign?

You can collect ad options by keywords to comprehend which promotions made PPC specialists.

Enter a keyword in the search bar and select a database → go to the "Keyword analysis / PPC analysis" → click on the "Keywords" report.

Export the report and add keywords to the table. Collect variations of the keywords and check which unique SERP features appear in the search results.

Such an analysis will help you understand your niche's general situation and see how competitors' websites serve themselves and how they influence the audience. But, of course, headings and texts of ads play the primary role. So let's look at them in more detail:

• What kind of ads do competitors make?

• What is their unique selling offer (USP)?

• What about their pricing strategy?

• How often do they hold promotions and bonuses?

To observe competitors' ads in Serpstat, go to the "PPC analysis / Ads examples" report and analyze the appearance of advertisements by keyword.

Also, when analyzing competitors in PPC, it's essential to find effective keywords for which you didn't start advertising yet.

In the "Website analysis / Domain analysis" section, go to the "PPC analysis" tab → select the "Domain vs. Domain" tool. Using it, you can conduct a parallel comparison of two or three domains.

Some competitors are proposed by the platform, enter manually in the appropriate fields, and click "Apply".

The Euler diagram shows the amount of semantics in the PPC for each domain, their unique and related semantics.

The number of unique and common domain keywords is displayed on the right of the chart. All numbers are clickable: Serpstat will redirect you to the corresponding report after clicking.

How to check landing pages?

We came up with the endpoint named the "Landing page". The page where all enticing ads and colorful creatives bring potential customers. If the landing page is unattractive, the money spent on advertising will be wasted.

You have to understand what is the most successful matters that attract users:

• How does your competitor present a product or service?
• What kind of design do they use?
• Which offers were made?
• What guarantees are provided?

You can view landing pages manually. To do this, click on competitors' ads and check their landing pages.

Disadvantages:

• time-consuming,

• incompleteness and inaccuracy of information.

Therefore, it is most effective to conduct analysis using special services. For example, in Serpstat, you can check landing pages for ads by domain and keyword.

What should you pay attention to when analyzing landing pages:

• Design;

• Product (service) presented;

• Communication with the customer.

To check landing pages by domain, go to "Website analysis" → "Domain analysis" → "PPC research" → "Ads landing pages".

Research on competitors' backlink strategies

Backlinks leading to a website from external sources are one of the most crucial ranking factors.

Backlink diversity positively affects a website's position in the search results, as the search engine catches that other resources link to it. However, "more" is not always "better." Search engines recognize irrelevant links if a website uses "black" SEO methods like buying/selling/exchanging links. As a result, a website will get an algorithmic penalty and seriously lose its position. Therefore, it is essential to observe the quality of backlinks and control links' appearance on your website and among competitors.

Within competitive backlinks research, we have to:

• analyze backlinks and anchors of top competitors;
• evaluate effective link building strategies;
• check the quality of backlinks;
• control the growth of backlink profile.

Analyzing competitors is an excellent way to obtain data to build your backlink profile.

The leading indicators that you need to pay attention to are:

• the number and quality of referring domains and pages;
• regional distribution of donors;
• anchors.

All this data can be obtained using Serpstat in a few clicks. Thanks to our own Backlinks index, you can get more relevant data.

How to determine quality of backlink profile?

Enter a domain address in the Serpstat search bar and go to the "Backlink analysis" section. Then, in the Overview report, we will get a general description of the backlink profile: number of internal and external domains, backlinks, malicious domains, the number of Follow and Nofollow links, links from .gov and .edu domain zones, link types and domain authority metric.

Go to the Referring domains or Backlinks' reports for more information on referring domains.

You will find the "TLD map" at the end of the Overview report. Regional distribution of donors will help you to understand which region backlinks are coming from and which domain names are the most common.

How to check a competitor's anchor list?

Text of anchor links includes a query that redirecting to the definite page.

Text of non-anchor links is either a URL of a page or a text without keywords ("read here," "in this article," etc.).

Why do you need to analyze the anchor list of competitors?

An anchor list must be true-to-life for effective promotion. Incorrect anchor and non-anchor links, keywords stuffing in your list can cause the necessity to recover from a penalty. Your website significantly lose traffic. Therefore, you must analyze successful competitors to comprehend which anchor list your website needs.

Anchor analysis can be done using the Serpstat Backlink analysis tool. For example, click on the "Anchors" tab and get the following report:

When compiling the anchor list, the main factor you should consider is not to spam link texts with keywords.

Backlink analysis includes checking the quality of linking donors, anchor list, backlink growth dynamics, etc. Regularly check backlinks to keep your website adjusted to search engine updates.

Instead of a conclusion

For a complete analysis of competitors, it is necessary to take five basic steps:

• identify direct competitors in search results;
• gather general information on competitors' websites: business features, site's and domain's age, number of pages in the index, sources of traffic, and website visibility;
• SEO analysis of competitor semantics;
• conduct a PPC analysis of competitor semantics;
• to analyze the competitor's link profile: general characteristics of the link diversity, regional distribution of link donors, and the competitor's anchor list;

After analyzing, eliminating errors on the website, and adding new functions, you need to observe the results and check optimization effectiveness. To do this, you need to track the position of your website and your competitors'.

Most SEO professionals select dozens of keywords by which they are eager to get to the top, and then monitor the site's position in the search engines for these queries. However, this approach is not entirely trustworthy. When using this method, specific keywords will be missed, and you will not track the objective dynamics of growth and growth.

Automate the tracking positions, making it faster and more effective using the Serpstat tool — Rank tracker. You can add keywords to your project if you want to group them using tags and track the positions of both your website and competitors.

Analyze the ways to outrun competitors with us;)

Originally published here.