Understand your competitors: How to define and what to look for in competitor’s website?
There wouldn’t be any business type that would have been untouched by people. Your business nichea is there in the traditional market and the digital world. When it comes to digital market, your competitors are not limited to your area. You have to compete around all the possible competitors on the internet to stay ahead in the market. Isn’t it always said that, keep an eye on your competitor? But how to understand your competitor and what to look on their website?
While in the traditional market, the local stores in your area are your competition; in the digital world, your competitors will always be the websites ranking for the keywords you are targeting. Search your targeted keywords on the web to know your competition. Starting with the keywords, you want to target, look out for the keywords targeted by your competitors. Searching the targeted keywords will tell you where your website ranks. If your website ranks fifth on the first page, then the above four websites are your competitors, but if your website is not even displayed on the first page then you have to buckle up!
Don’t we always hear that look up for the good qualities in people and adopt them, similarly, incorporate all the strategies applied by your competitors. But what are the strategies to look in them? Don’t we all know that broadly there are On-page and Off-page tactics which helps you with the ranking?
What to look at the On-page strategies?
You and your competitors may share the same goal in the online market, and that is to increase their revenue. Since the on-page of a website affects largely on its ranking, why don’t you analyse those specific elements to include in your website? Analyse the on-page SEO of their websites by using some tools like SEOquake, seoptimer, semrush, screaming frog, Moz tool etc., however there certain limitations of using free tools. But what exactly you should look for?
SEO title- The title of the website on the search engine.
Meta description- The snippet description under the SEO title.
Meta keywords- Long tail or head term keywords in that description.
Anchor tags for internal links- Once done with the analysis of search engine. Check out the website. Look at the words used as anchor tags for internal linking.
The unique features of the text- Whether the content is bold, italic, or underlined, and where.
Content- The quality of the content.
Image alt text- If the image alt text is used and how.
Schema markup- Not every website would have this, but you can still check for it if it is helpful for your website.
Header/footer tags- H1, H2, H3 tags in the content of the website.
What to look at the Off-page strategies?
No matter how important the on-page of a website is, the off-page cannot be lagged behind. As much as how a website looks and how it is maintained, its backlink matters too. While you wouldn’t notice the difference Off page makes on the ranking of a website, it certainly increases the traffic to your website. You cannot be sure about the lead generation or conversion with backlinks, but neither the on-page of a website can make you sure about it. Use a few tools to record your competitors’ used strategies, like search laboratory, ahref, small SEO tools, open site Moz explorer, backlink watch, etc. So what exactly to look for in the Off-page?
Anchor texts- The words used to attach links to your website or web page.
Nofollow/dofollow- Where is the nofollow, or dofollow link is provided.
The balance of homepage links vs deep links- The ratio of links landing to the home page and internal links.
The count of In-content links- How frequently the links have been added.
The positioning of links on the page- Where the links are placed in the content; whether it is positioned in the first paragraph, in the body of the content or the last.
Third party websites- Which third-party website has been used as the guest blogger.
Apart from the on-page and off-page of a website, scan other details of the website. Analyse the products and services they offer, the location of the website and brand, price of the products and delivery of it, and the brand and design of the website. You can also scan the paid ads your competitors run on the web.
Why should you analyse?
Analysing your competitor’s website does not conclude as that you have to look at their features and do the same. Rather, see how they are ranking higher and work accordingly. Work smartly by bringing your innovation and working creatively with it. Analysing and adopting will increase the return on investment with significant growth in traffic. Incorporate the features according to your brand and website to make it unique for the viewer.
