Thread by @GiordMarco96

We all know the usual competitor analysis done with #SEO tools.

Today I want to talk about other ideas that can give you a competitive advantage or a different angle when doing analyses.

A thread on how to approach competitors 🧵

Your analysis should depend on the business model and the type of website. For an Ecommerce you would care about the product selection and how they're going to present them.

For an online magazine/blog you would consider different factors, mostly related to topic breadth/depth.

Metrics like DA/DR are kinda useless, as you cannot quantify the value with an integer value alone. For this reason, you should have a better look at the backlink profile.

This is not really my field but I would never present DA/DR!

Content velocity is important for News SEO, you need to keep up with your competitors, especially in ultra competitive niches.

Online magazine should be careful about having the correct ratio of news/evergreen content/social content or for other channels.

Some business understanding is necessary to put SEO into the proper context. Why aim for more traffic when your goal is to increase revenue?

In some markets you care about a small niche, not about unwanted customers!

A good strategy is to understand what your competitors are missing in terms of content and do that.

This is actually very common in non-English-speaking countries and you can easily come up with some good ideas.

Find new formats that can add value to your customers.

If you're into more advanced tools or Semantic SEO you can check what your competitors are using in terms of entities.

Now you have a clue about what you can include on your website (and for structure as well).

Site structure is indeed super important, it's crucial for Ecommerce.

Either way, you need to analyze how your rivals are structuring the navigation.

SEO is not the solution to all, you still need a good product or value proposition. That is why combining different disciplines can be highly beneficial.

Speaking of topics, you can analyze the content of a competitor by using several algorithms. Actually, you can also check the queries they're ranking for and cluster them to have an approximate idea.

This will be the topic for another thread!

Third-party tools are great when it comes to finding keywords but they have many downfalls. One of them si the incompleteness of data, another is providing misleading metrics.

My suggestion is to get a high-level overview of a website and then find where you can steal spots.

You can scrape prices with #Python/Screaming Frog/any other scraper to check if your competitors are making discounts or adjusting pricing policies.

Super suggested in some markets where the pricing is aggressive and you have to stay updated.

Another possibility is to scrape everyday your competitors and see what they are posting. You can build a "newsletter" containing all their latest URLs to see what happened.

#Python gives you a lot of flexibility without spending a penny.

It should be clear by now, don't focus on one keyword, it's useless. Focus on pages if you really have to be granular!

You can split their content by search intent and understand where are the money pages.

Competitor analysis involves freeriding as well. Why spend time for keyword research if you already have some working examples?

Be careful tho, don't base your value proposition on what others do.

As a consequence, you can find some very good niches (blue oceans) that your competitors are not covering and you can.

Diversification is key.

Some competitors are pretty tough and there is no denial. Is there some way to close the information gap with Semantic SEO?

Can you use good backlinks to speed it up?

There are plenty of tools for competitor analysis, an infinite choice. My suggestion is to create your own tools for small projects or rely on the mainstream ones.

Advanced use cases require different solutions ofc. It depends on your background and confidence too.

How are your competitors in terms of Technical SEO? Be sure to check this out, it can make a difference in some industries.

Personally speaking, I have little experience with these scenarios where it makes a huge difference but they do exist.

Consider other channels! YouTube is one of them, adapt to your competitors and give them their own medicine.

Sometimes you can leave them be and focus on other untapped channels. This is dependent on your budget and willingness to risk.

My best strategy so far involves Semantic SEO. Try to cover more steps in the customer journey and to be more "present".

I love aggressive strategies but they require way more effort.

Needless to say, if you cover multiple niches within a website expect to have different competitors for each of them.

Some may be your overall rivals, other for a subfolder/subdomain. It's pretty common for online magazines or distribution.

Some "smart" tactics may involve to change your Title in order to be noticed before your competitor.

Consider the case where you are ranking 2 and the SERP looks normal. If you have no way of ranking higher try to be more original at least!

To sum up, consider the business model, what type of content your competitors are publishing and the industry.

Adjust accordingly and find untapped opportunities. Check if they're leaving some room for your takeover.