Competitive SEO Analysis: How to Outrank Your Competitors

@aleyda
COMPETITIVE SEO ANALYSIS:
HOW TO IDENTIFY
OPPORTUNITIES TO WIN VS. YOUR
SEO COMPETITORS
ALEYDA
SOLIS
#theinbounder Ponencia en inglés - Ponte los

#competitiveseo at #TheInbounder by @aleyda from @orainti
Competitive SEO Analysis
How to identify opportunities to win vs. your competitors

I speak
I do SEO
ORAINTI.COM
I write
I’m Aleyda
I tweet
@ALEYDA FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/
I share

Welcome to the biggest competitive
battles of our times

#competitiveseo at #TheInbounder by @aleyda from @orainti#competitiveseo at #TheInbounder by @aleyda from @orainti

You
Your
competition

My SEO grows, but my competitors are far more established,
grow even more and they’re always above me

My SEO grows, but my competitors are far more established,
grow even more and they’re always above me
You
Your
competition

This happens because your SEO
approach is canned, not strategical
SEO

How to establish a winning SEO strategy that is efficient
and feasible for me (and doesn’t take time I don’t have)?

#competitiveseo at #TheInbounder by @aleyda from @orainti#crossfunctionalseo at #SearchFest by @aleyda from @orainti#competenciaseo en #ClinicSEO del #eShowBCN16 por @aleyda de @orainti
Vamo a calmarno
LET’S CALM DOWN

Let’s start doing strategical SEO by acknowledging
some principles to drive your work…

It’s fundamental to capitalize on your site strengths and
turn your competitors weaknesses against them
Big Players
HIGH AUTHORITY
BIG PROPERTY WITH MORE CONTENT
MORE RESOURCES
HIGHER BRAND & TECH RESTRICTIONS
SLOW TO IMPLEMENT
NON-FLEXIBLE TO MAKE CHANGES
BROADER-NON SPECIFIC AUTHORITY
NON-SPECIFIC CONTENT
VS+
Small Players
FAST TO IMPLEMENT
FLEXIBLE TO MAKE CHANGES
MORE TARGETED OFFER & CONTENT
LOWER BUT SPECIFIC AUTHORITY
LOW AUTHORITY
LESS RESOURCES
SMALL PROPERTY WITH LESS CONTENT
+

This is why knowing your competitor and their status vs. yours
it’s key to answer the questions to identify those opportunities

Start by validating who your real competitors are: Who
are targeting the same terms that you do!
SEMrush
Sistrix

Identify not only the sites targeting the same terms, but those
also going for more relevant queries in the same industry

Are there too many of them? Select those with the positive
search traffic trend to start an analysis and comparison
SimilarWeb

Do they have more indexed pages? Better average positions?
Is it about a long-tail approach or short-head one? Do they
rank for Mobile & images? Do they also do SEM & Social?
sistrix.com

What’s their level of authority vs. yours? If the gap is too high
then at the beginning you will need to focus on queries for
which they’re not ranking with their main areas
Opensiteexplorer
CognitiveSEO

What’s their content standing vs. yours? Prioritize the analysis
and optimization of those areas where not only you but they
have issues… so it’s easier for you to outrank them!
safecont.com

Their Web architecture matches the hierarchy of products &
services? Do they have crawling & indexation issues? Which are
their worst internally linked areas? Capitalize on those!
onpage.org

Get to know your enemy better than yourself they say!

Now that you understand their overall SEO status vs. your own
let’s look closer to see how they’re targeting users vs. your site
to set & prioritize your competitive actions!

Which are the terms being targeted by all vs. those unique for
some sites? Prioritize those with higher search volume!

Check also which are those terms for which they have lost
their visibility & select to analyze those with high volume

And if they have SEM: Which are those best
performing keywords over time that they’re using

Verify which are those only targeted by a few of them with
lower competition and for which they’re ranking above!

Why are they ranking better? Is it authority, content or
technical reasons? Use the Moz SERP analysis to identify
those where you can easily improve & target too

Remember that SEO is not about just higher rankings
though, but maximizing your visibility in SERPs to connect
w/ your audience

Sometimes SERPs features will bring even
more visibility, traffic & conversions
https://moz.com/blog/eye-tracking-2016-how-
searchers-interact-mobile-serps-desktop
Non-local
big players
cannot be
here!

For those terms ranked because of their authority: Search
for similar queries with high-medium volume and SERP
functionalities that you can use to improve your visibility
SEMRush Keyword Difficulty Tool

This should be a critical criteria when prioritizing efforts like
structured markup, Maps registration, AMP, App Indexing…
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/

Verify and take into consideration how your competitors are
already targeting those universal SERP queries and their
relevant content & positions with Sistrix too

It’s also important to remember that SEO
doesn’t work like this either…
SEOContent Branding
ProductDesign
Development Usability

This is a thinking that drives situations like this one
Don’t
change my
CONTENT
You just need
to add a few
KEYWORDS

… or this one
Don’t
change my
CODE
You just
need to add a
few TAGS

SEO works when it’s used as a cross-functional growth driver
that optimizes your multichannel actions & presence
SEO
Product Branding
Usability
Content
Design
Development
Paid
Search
SocialEmail
SEO Afﬁliates
Referrals

Supporting your cross-platform presence across the
customer journey & through the funnel, by answering
your audience questions

For example, by allowing you to help achieve some of the most
strategical content goals that will drive competitive growth!
Providing
input to create
content that will
effectively give
support to your
customers
Giving input to
craft content in the
format that will
better engage with
your community
Maximizing
your content
exposure in any
searchable
platform
Helping
your landing
pages copy to
answer common user
questions when
deciding to
convert

Start by identifying those queries and topics of pages &
categories bringing more visibility to your competitors that
you can target in different ways

Expand the queries to answer the most common user questions
across the customer journey, like when deciding to convert
Targeting
comparisons
with your
competitors

This will give you input to create diverse content like a
product comparison landing page to help the user decide

Or to give support to your customers after buying, including other
formats & external platforms with higher authority that will have it
easier to compete with high popularity competitors

Like in this case!
Snapchat
should have
produced this
content!
YES

And beyond topics: Helping to craft & promote content in
the format & places that will better engage with your
community … and get links!
buzzsumo.com

From the best performing social platforms to promote at,
to the length and topics of best performing content

… as well as best performing content per format from
your own competitors take this all into consideration!

and SEO requires not only a multi-platform
but multi-device approach too…

Especially with mobile that is only getting more and
more critical and if your “big” competition is having a
hard time to catch-up

Not only for search, but from a conversion perspective too
Improving
the Speed
Targeting the
right queries with
the relevant
content
Identifying
configuration
issues

Let’s start by targeting the specific mobile search queries
that you should prioritize to answer over your competitors
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-
optimization/optimizing-mobile-queries-near-you/

Select those players with a higher share of mobile search
visibility already to see how they’re approaching it
sistrix.com

Which are the specific top queries coming from
mobile to your site & top mobile competitors?
semrush.com

… and in your industry in general? Expand them, group
them and verify their mobile share to prioritize
kwfinder.com
moz.com
Google Keyword Finder

You can easily start by identifying cross-platform & cross-
device queries, like app ones, that need to be answered
through your Website too

… and for which you can help cross-
platform conversions to happen!
YES

Look for additional, mobile targeted modifiers too!

Expand them with the queries you can also identify from
your own and your app competitors in the app stores

And then verify their mobile SERPs: How are they
ranking for them? Prioritize your actions accordingly!
App Indexing
AMP in News Carrousel
App Pack

For those that you’re already targeting: Verify your CTR vs.
rankings, to prioritize the optimization of low hanging fruits

And what about Mobile speed? Especially if your
own or competitors are not so good with it!

Obtain your pages with highest mobile visibility
but lower CTR & Position than average

You can also alternatively use OnPage.org Impact to
filter data & see pages along their URLs directly

Identify your pages with highest mobile traffic: which
have a lower engagement & conversion rate?

Export them to verify with URLProfiler which of them are
not mobile friendly & have speed issues

You can now prioritize your fundamental mobile
optimization efforts towards the most critical pages
Mobile Friendliness
Mobile Speed

… and easily identify the assets
causing the performance issues

So you can focus your mobile optimization on what matters
the most to grow not only your visibility… but conversions too

By asking all these questions to drive & prioritize your SEO
actions you’ll be able to establish a winning strategy

Just remember to track & monitor not only but for your own
targeted queries, but your competitors & the overall SERPs for
mobile & desktop to be able to react along the way
seomonitor.com
serpwoo.com

… and you’ll see the results: From industry
newbie to a established competitor!
You

Now is my and your time!

¿PREGUNTAS?
QUESTIONS?
@aleyda
ALEYDA
SOLIS
#theinbounder

Competitive SEO Analysis: How to Outrank Your Competitors

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