It is currently one of the most popular methods of brand promotion. And in order to achieve 100% success in this matter, experts use the analysis of SEO competitors both at the start and already in the process of promoting the resource.

What is SEO analysis of competitors' sites?

You already now asking questions: Why do you need competitor analysis and how can you use it? In response to this, we can say that this process is one of the most important stages in promotion. A thorough analysis of competitors' sites allows you to understand exactly how and for what requests they promote their resources. Based on the data obtained, it is much easier to prepare a semantic core, develop your own effective promotion strategy and make the project competitive on the market and on the Internet.

How to conduct SEO analysis of competitors?

Based on your field of activity, tasks and the popularity of the business topic, analyzing competitors' sites can be quite difficult. Indeed, for its implementation, it is important to take into account many factors at the same time. The following algorithm of actions will help to simplify the process at the stage of preparation of the semantic core.

Stage 1. Identifying potential SEO competitors

This stage can be called preliminary, but it is no less useful and important, because when building cooperation with a completely new, little-known client in a new industry, the team of specialists, as a rule, knows nothing about it. Lack of information can lead to mistakes when compiling a semantic core for the site and not take into account the specifics of your business. Therefore, it is worthwhile to carefully consider this task and, if necessary, provide a list of your business competitors to the SEO company.

It is necessary to understand that potential competitors for an SEO company are not only individuals and companies that offer similar products and services. This is also any other site that simply competes with the promoted object in the search engine results for identical key queries. It is the entire range of competitors that will be considered by specialists.

Stage 2. Confirmation of the correct choice of SEO competitors

After carefully examining possible competitors, it is time to make sure that you have chosen the right one. What needs to be done for this? View the list and highlight those companies and sites that are currently ranked for the keywords you have selected. Mark what positions they are in now.

In addition, you can also extend the semantic core by analyzing key queries using various services. Add to the list the keywords that became known after studying the sites of competitors, as well as similar phrases for which you are not promoted, but can get your share of traffic to the site. Here, do not forget about the correspondence of the request to your site (i.e. if you do not sell a parquet board, then you do not need such a keyword, despite the fact that your competitor is moving along it).

SEO analysis of competitors for promotion

Professionals use both competitors' sites. It is worth noting that the following are of great importance here:

• the current position of the site in the ranking;
• search traffic volume;
• the relevance of the keyword;
• indexed pages;
• the quality of incoming links to the domain;

When promoting high-frequency and competitive queries, one cannot ignore the sites of competitors, here not only the text and occurrences of keywords on the page are evaluated, but also the format of the information presented, as well as the structure of the sites. Most likely, you will need to develop and improve your site according to the current top (if necessary, add "chips" that your competitors have, such as a "service calculator", "online consultant", etc.).

It is quite difficult to fully understand all stages of the SEO analysis of competitors, and therefore we suggest that you turn to real professionals - to Artox promotion specialists. Media digital Group. The information received at the start will serve as a starting point for further promoting your brand, products and services on the market, and conducting a competitor analysis for SEO at a later stage will allow you to reach the desired top. Thanks to the competence of our team, high professionalism and rich experience in solving similar problems, you can be sure of the result.

With help online services you can immediately remove a set of ratings of all competitors' sites and compare with your

To do this, you need to add your site to the list of competitors, upload the list to the Chectrust service, create a new project, set the parameters that need to be removed (you can remove all available ones), wait for the analysis to be completed, and upload the received data in an Excel format.

What parameters will we get:

• Age
• Spam level
• Number of pages in index
• Number of links
• Trust is a complex parameter of trust on the part of search engines
• Page load time - which is very important
• Even attendance data is possible

* It is important to understand the specifics of the programmatically collected data! The data may not be accurate, you should not blindly rely on them, especially when it comes to the attendance of competitors - this can only be taken into account as Additional information... At the same time, data from different analyzers may differ from each other.

But in any case, an approximate picture of how much your site is losing to competitors in terms of age, number of pages, quality and links will already be available to you.

Analysis of queries (keywords) of competitors

How to find out what queries your competitors are promoting?

We look under which keys their pages are optimized.

Parse pages with the SeoFrog program, for example. We get data on meta tags Title, Description, see what key phrases are in them.

We look at the headings H1-H6 on the pages of the sites.

Install the SEO META in 1 CLICK extension in your browser. While on the landing page, activate the plugin and get data on the phrases that are used in the titles on the page.

To collect all the keywords for which the site ranks in the search engines Yandex and Google, of course, you will have to use paid tools such as Semrush, SerpStat. But you can immediately get a large amount of data for comparative analytics of semantics. These services have it all detailed instructions to unload the required parameters.

The main tasks of this stage of the analysis:

1. Find out the keywords by which to promote your website
2. Find keywords for which there are no sections and pages on your site to promote
3. Optimize the structure of your website sections for new key queries and directions
4. Rate the quality of your meta tags compared to competitors
5. Compare the depth of the semantic core of your site and your competitors.

Analysis of competitors' texts

As part of the article, we can recommend the CheckTrust service, which will help you select the cleanest white donors.

Visual inspection and analysis of competitors' marketing

No service can replace a careful examination and study of sites with your own eyes!

We research competitors, looking for their successful solutions for:

• Navigation (menus, widgets, navigation tips, linking)
• Design of end-to-end blocks (header, footer)
• Typical page design (main page, catalog section, product or service card, shopping cart, order form, contact page, about us, price list, etc.)
• Content (images, texts, documents, videos, graphics, etc.)
• Marketing (USP, promotions, conditions, special offers, etc.)
• Design and decoration.

And of course we compare it with our website. If your competitors have excellent slick sites for usability, content, internal optimization, navigation, etc., etc., and everything is sad and sad for you, then the chances drop significantly.

It is also worth paying more attention to the commercial factors of Yandex. One of the most important factors is the assortment! If you have much fewer goods and services than the top leaders, this will play a negative role when trying to promote.

How to use the obtained data to promote your site

So, you have selected and analyzed competitors on the Internet. What to do with this information?

Semantics and content

• Make a plan for reworking the structure of the sections of the site - which ones need to be added can abolish something
• Prioritize creating new pages and preparing information to fill them
• Make a plan for working out the semantics - which new clusters need to be explored more deeply

Internal optimization

• Think about the existing pages on the site, what can be changed in their optimization (rewrite texts, add new words, change the markup and code)
• Think about how to deal with common factors: design, functionality, commercial factors... It is impossible to promote a site that lags far behind the top ones in terms of its technical equipment and design.

External optimization

• Build a build-up strategy link mass using quality donors that link to top competitors.

Good luck in promoting!

Why do competitor analysis at all?

To understand how things are in a niche, to dive deeper into the subject of the client's business, to find non-obvious points that are important specifically for this subject. Analysis is important for making strategic decisions about the project and understanding the place of the project in the niche.

I want to warn you about the risks right away. We will learn to read a competitor's strategy, but we will never have accurate data on whether it works - we can only speculate and test.

I will focus on the analysis of online stores, since everything is more or less easy to compare there.

1. Setting goals

Every analysis should start with goal setting. It is important not only to write down the indicators, but to understand what they are talking about:

• in what areas you need to "catch up" to competitors. SEO is still an integrated approach, the result depends on many factors;
• what successful points of the competitors' strategy can be adopted;
• what strategies competitors are not using. This question is especially relevant if the analyzed site is a leader in its topic.

For example, the following elements of the strategy can be called unambiguously successful:

• creation of additional types of pages, creation of additional linking;
• creating additional benefits for the user: installments, credit, discount systems, free shipping;
• Carrying out work to build up reviews using email newsletters after the purchase.

By successful I mean strategies that allow the project to grow and do not contradict the requirements of search engines. For example, a spam and highlighting strategy keywords in the texts, perhaps, will give growth at first, but it contradicts the requirements of search engines and does not work in the future.

2. Identification of competing sites

The second important step is to identify direct competitors.

2.1. Analyze the search results for key queries

Examine the results for different groups of requests (high-frequency and medium-frequency) and select the resources that suit you in terms of subject matter and have a similar structure.

Enter the site name and see the competitor report. Pay attention to the column "Common Key Phrases" and "Visibility". The more common keywords you have, the more likely that site is your direct competitor, and the more visibility, the more likely the competitor is using a reasonable strategy.

Among the selected sites, check the region and see that the structure is similar. Ditch aggregators or broadly related sites.

If the site is young, the "Competitors" section of Serpstat cannot be used - there will be almost no statistics or only weak competing sites will be shown, which it makes no sense to target.

2.3. Take information from the client

The client knows his competitors well, so you can ask him for a list with their sites. However, it is worth remembering that this list is not final and the client can compete with these companies online, but not offline.

3. What to analyze and how to draw conclusions?

3.1. Domain Age Determination

Compare the ages of the analyzed domains - use Whois for this. If your project is young, you need to compensate for this by working harder with other ranking factors. Therefore, this must be taken into account in the strategy.

3.2. Comparison of attendance

Attendance information can be taken from SimilarWeb. He lets you see total traffic to the site (data are approximate), the percentage of traffic from search, email, paid traffic and other channels.

What conclusions can be drawn after comparison:

• understand if there is room to grow in the subject;
• Which competitor has the most traffic and from which channel;
• in the future, try to understand why the competitor has so much traffic and connect new channels.

The number of pages in the index can be checked using the "site:" operator.

If the difference between the number of pages on Yandex and Google is too large, then the site has garbage pages or other problems due to which the site is poorly ranked by the search engine.

3.4. Research of the semantic core

First of all, it is worth looking at the semantics of the analyzed site. This can be done using Serpstat:

Pay special attention to those competitors who have the most words in the semantic core. In the future, try to understand why they have so many keywords.

Then you should download the semantics of competitors, according to which the sites of competitors are ranked, but your site does not rank.

• which of the competitors has the most key phrases;
• is there room to grow in the subject;
• what pages can be added or optimized;
• what new types of pages can be added;
• in which product groups competitors bypass the project in terms of assortment.

3.5. Structure analysis

Pay attention to the quality of the structure. Does a competitor bother to create pages for low-frequency requests? Is the structure logically organized?

Does a competitor have some typical pages that you don't have? What queries are covered by these pages?

How is structure extension implemented: tags, landing pages or filters?

After the analysis, you can understand the level of optimization of the site structure, the potential for expanding the structure and the direction in which it can be developed.

3.6. Content comparison

It's important to understand what your competitors are doing with your content strategy.

To do this, we divide the site by types of pages that are useful for promotion:

• home page;
• categories / subcategories;
• product cards;
• blog pages;
• other typical pages, depending on the niche.

3.6.1. Analysis of the content of the main, categories / subcategories includes the following items:

• how many characters are in the text;
• whether the text markup is used - headings H1, H2, H3;
• whether images are used;
• whether bulleted and numbered lists are used;
• whether the content is generally readable;
• whether spam methods and keyword entries are used.

3.6.2. Analysis of the content of product cards may include the following points:

• are there informative product descriptions;
• how many characters are in the description;
• spam content on product cards;
• are all the characteristics given, are there video reviews, reviews and other content useful to the user.

3.6.3. Researching the content of blog pages:

• how often the content is published;
• how many articles there are already;
• how many characters one article contains;
• a blog is written for requests, useful content is simply posted, or company news is only published.

After the analysis, you can draw conclusions about which texts to order in terms of volume, which are good tactics by filling the product card can be adopted. Is it worth blogging and how often to publish your content.

3.7. Analysis of meta-information

The analysis of Title, Description, Keywords, H1 headers is performed by breaking the site into the same types of pages as in the analysis of the content strategy:

• home page analysis;
• analysis of categories / subcategories;
• analysis of product cards;
• analysis of blog pages;
• analysis of other typical pages.

It should be borne in mind:

• whether there is overspam with keywords;
• are synonyms used;
• only generation templates, or manual meta tags are used;
• is there a certain structure for constructing meta-information, what it is;
• whether information about a unique selling proposition is used in meta tags, whether an incentive to action is used in the USP; is the USP clear?

As a result, it is possible to draw conclusions about whether competitors use spam methods, take good practices of building meta-information into the strategy, and understand the level of optimization of meta-information from competitors.

3.8. Comparison of link strategies

We use Ahrefs or Serpstat to get the data we need.

What can be compared:

• the number of referring pages;
• the number of referring domains;

• anchor list (how it looks: natural / unnatural);

After analyzing the results, you can understand if the sites are being promoted naturally, using a mixed approach, or spammy link building methods.

If, after analysis, it is clear that a competitor is using a clever link building strategy (the link profile is diverse, references to the site on third-party resources look natural and are in the topic, the resources are thematic), you can unload the domains that link to the competing site. It is also important to look at which regional domains to build links from, based on the experience of competitors. Then check the link quality metrics, weed out and get a list of domains for link building. It's important to avoid the temptation to recklessly place where competitors are hosted, and avoid repeating spammy linking strategies.

3.9. Linking analysis

The main types of pages are analyzed. It should be determined whether manual linking is used in the texts on category pages, linking from card pages to filter pages, additional linking blocks for cross-selling: “they are buying with this product” or “bundled cheaper”. Other types of linking can also be used, which potentially increase the weight of the promoted pages.

3.10. Https availability

The presence of the https version of the site gives, albeit a small, plus to the ranking in search engines. After analyzing your competitors, you can figure out if you need to move your site to https. If you are still on http, then why not move to https and get an extra bonus in rankings?

3.11. The presence of a mobile version of the site

Availability mobile version has long become not a feature, but a necessity - to reach an additional audience of mobile users. As a result, you will be able to better understand which competitors are covering mobile audience and who is missing out on this opportunity.

3.12. Multi-regional and multilingual

You should see if competitors have other language or regional versions of the site, as well as separate pages for regional requests.

Regional versions of a site or page for geo queries can be the reason for greater coverage of key queries.

3.13. Download speed

It is analyzed for typical pages, for example:

• home page;
• categories / subcategories;
• product cards;
• blog pages;
• other sample pages.

The check is performed for both the mobile version and the desktop version. You can use Google Page Speed ​​Insights or analogs (eg GTMetrix, WebPageTest).

The main indications are recorded:

• percentage of mobile version optimization (N / 100);
• percentage of optimization of the desktop version (N / 100);
• server response time of the mobile version;
• server response time of the desktop version.

If your site's loading speed is very slow compared to competitors, increasing it should be made a priority.

3.14. Analysis of social activity

You should record the activity indicators of subscribers in social networks. The most indicative is the number of likes / shares / comments / reposts of blog articles. On YouTube, you can see the total number of views on a channel.

By the activity of subscribers and their engagement, you can see what social network should be included in the strategy if it is not already included. Especially if this channel is active among competitors.

3.15. Business research

The question should be asked: why does a potential client go to a competitor? Analyze possible options.

Most popular versions:

• the competitor has a lower price;
• the competitor has more assortment;
• the competitor has more goodies: bonuses, cumulative discounts, promotions, free shipping, profitable terms loans and installments, pick-up points;
• from a competitor more reviews(on the site, in Google my business) and they are fresh;
• the competitor has an online consultant who is constantly in touch.

As a result, ideas for the development of the marketing strategy of the project may appear. For example, organizing promotions and other activities to engage users, participating in events as a partner to promote a brand.

On this stage an understanding will come about which products expansion is worth considering. For example, if a client has a narrow niche, the entire assortment of that niche should be present. Otherwise, it will be more profitable for the consumer to order everything on the competitor's website (if all the names are already there), rather than looking for them in different stores.

You can also collect ideas to increase loyalty: for example, if competitors have information about the project team, mission and values, a creative “About Us” page, information about the company's participation in exhibitions, conferences, and so on.

4. How to structure the results of competitor analysis

But every time looking at the table is inconvenient, so I recommend writing conclusions based on the results of the analysis of each direction in a simple Google Docs in the following format:

• [a few words about the situation now];
• [what needs to be done to overtake competitors].

It is worth noting those points where your project is the leader - you need to know your strengths.

conclusions

In the general analysis of sites, you should pay attention to both General characteristics, and on specific areas that are important for promotion. Depending on the type of business, indicators can be removed or added.

Here are the basic ones:

• domain age;
• attendance;
• the number of pages in the index;
• semantic core;
• Site structure;
• content;
• meta information;
• link strategy;
• linking;
• availability of https;
• availability of a mobile version;
• multi-regional and multilingual;
• download speed;
• social activity;
• business features.

At the start of work, such a superficial analysis is a must have for a specialist. It shows well the features of the topic and allows you to understand the current situation.

I would be glad to receive additions from you - what else can be analyzed and what will it give?

Why do competitor analysis at all?

To understand how things are in a niche, to dive deeper into the subject of the client's business, to find non-obvious points that are important specifically for this subject. Analysis is important for making strategic decisions about the project and understanding the place of the project in the niche.

I want to warn you about the risks right away. We will learn to read a competitor's strategy, but we will never have accurate data on whether it works - we can only speculate and test.

I will focus on the analysis of online stores, since everything is more or less easy to compare there.

1. Setting goals

Every analysis should start with goal setting. It is important not only to write down the indicators, but to understand what they are talking about:

• in what areas you need to "catch up" to competitors. SEO is still an integrated approach, the result depends on many factors;
• what successful points of the competitors' strategy can be adopted;
• what strategies competitors are not using. This question is especially relevant if the analyzed site is a leader in its topic.

For example, the following elements of the strategy can be called unambiguously successful:

• creation of additional types of pages, creation of additional linking;
• creating additional benefits for the user: installments, credit, discount systems, free shipping;
• Carrying out work to build up reviews using email newsletters after the purchase.

By successful I mean strategies that allow the project to grow and do not contradict the requirements of search engines. For example, the strategy of spamming and highlighting keywords in texts may give rise to growth in the early stages, but it contradicts the requirements of search engines and does not work in the long term.

2. Identification of competing sites

The second important step is to identify direct competitors.

2.1. Analyze the search results for key queries

Examine the results for different groups of requests (high-frequency and medium-frequency) and select the resources that suit you in terms of subject matter and have a similar structure.

Enter the site name and see the competitor report. Pay attention to the column "Common Key Phrases" and "Visibility". The more common keywords you have, the more likely that site is your direct competitor, and the more visibility, the more likely the competitor is using a reasonable strategy.

Among the selected sites, check the region and see that the structure is similar. Ditch aggregators or broadly related sites.

If the site is young, the "Competitors" section of Serpstat cannot be used - there will be almost no statistics or only weak competing sites will be shown, which it makes no sense to target.

2.3. Take information from the client

The client knows his competitors well, so you can ask him for a list with their sites. However, it is worth remembering that this list is not final and the client can compete with these companies online, but not offline.

3. What to analyze and how to draw conclusions?

3.1. Domain Age Determination

Compare the ages of the analyzed domains - use Whois for this. If your project is young, you need to compensate for this by working harder with other ranking factors. Therefore, this must be taken into account in the strategy.

3.2. Comparison of attendance

Attendance information can be taken from SimilarWeb. It allows you to see the total traffic to the site (data are approximate), the percentage of traffic from search, email, paid traffic and other channels.

What conclusions can be drawn after comparison:

• understand if there is room to grow in the subject;
• Which competitor has the most traffic and from which channel;
• in the future, try to understand why the competitor has so much traffic and connect new channels.

The number of pages in the index can be checked using the "site:" operator.

If the difference between the number of pages on Yandex and Google is too large, then the site has garbage pages or other problems due to which the site is poorly ranked by the search engine.

3.4. Research of the semantic core

First of all, it is worth looking at the semantics of the analyzed site. This can be done using Serpstat:

Pay special attention to those competitors who have the most words in the semantic core. In the future, try to understand why they have so many keywords.

Then you should download the semantics of competitors, according to which the sites of competitors are ranked, but your site does not rank.

• which of the competitors has the most key phrases;
• is there room to grow in the subject;
• what pages can be added or optimized;
• what new types of pages can be added;
• in which product groups competitors bypass the project in terms of assortment.

3.5. Structure analysis

Pay attention to the quality of the structure. Does a competitor bother to create pages for low-frequency requests? Is the structure logically organized?

Does a competitor have some typical pages that you don't have? What queries are covered by these pages?

How is structure extension implemented: tags, landing pages or filters?

After the analysis, you can understand the level of optimization of the site structure, the potential for expanding the structure and the direction in which it can be developed.

3.6. Content comparison

It's important to understand what your competitors are doing with your content strategy.

To do this, we divide the site by types of pages that are useful for promotion:

• home page;
• categories / subcategories;
• product cards;
• blog pages;
• other typical pages, depending on the niche.

3.6.1. Analysis of the content of the main, categories / subcategories includes the following items:

• how many characters are in the text;
• whether the text markup is used - headings H1, H2, H3;
• whether images are used;
• whether bulleted and numbered lists are used;
• whether the content is generally readable;
• whether spam methods and keyword entries are used.

3.6.2. Analysis of the content of product cards may include the following points:

• are there informative product descriptions;
• how many characters are in the description;
• spam content on product cards;
• are all the characteristics given, are there video reviews, reviews and other content useful to the user.

3.6.3. Researching the content of blog pages:

• how often the content is published;
• how many articles there are already;
• how many characters one article contains;
• a blog is written for requests, useful content is simply posted, or company news is only published.

After the analysis, you can draw conclusions about which texts to order in terms of volume, which are good tactics by filling the product card can be adopted. Is it worth blogging and how often to publish your content.

3.7. Analysis of meta-information

The analysis of Title, Description, Keywords, H1 headers is performed by breaking the site into the same types of pages as in the analysis of the content strategy:

• home page analysis;
• analysis of categories / subcategories;
• analysis of product cards;
• analysis of blog pages;
• analysis of other typical pages.

It should be borne in mind:

• whether there is overspam with keywords;
• are synonyms used;
• only generation templates, or manual meta tags are used;
• is there a certain structure for constructing meta-information, what it is;
• whether information about a unique selling proposition is used in meta tags, whether an incentive to action is used in the USP; is the USP clear?

As a result, it is possible to draw conclusions about whether competitors use spam methods, take good practices of building meta-information into the strategy, and understand the level of optimization of meta-information from competitors.

3.8. Comparison of link strategies

We use Ahrefs or Serpstat to get the data we need.

What can be compared:

• the number of referring pages;
• the number of referring domains;

• anchor list (how it looks: natural / unnatural);

After analyzing the results, you can understand if the sites are being promoted naturally, using a mixed approach, or spammy link building methods.

If, after analysis, it is clear that a competitor is using a clever link building strategy (the link profile is diverse, references to the site on third-party resources look natural and are in the topic, the resources are thematic), you can unload the domains that link to the competing site. It is also important to look at which regional domains to build links from, based on the experience of competitors. Then check the link quality metrics, weed out and get a list of domains for link building. It's important to avoid the temptation to recklessly place where competitors are hosted, and avoid repeating spammy linking strategies.

3.9. Linking analysis

The main types of pages are analyzed. It should be determined whether manual linking is used in the texts on category pages, linking from card pages to filter pages, additional linking blocks for cross-selling: “they are buying with this product” or “bundled cheaper”. Other types of linking can also be used, which potentially increase the weight of the promoted pages.

3.10. Https availability

The presence of the https version of the site gives, albeit a small, plus to the ranking in search engines. After analyzing your competitors, you can figure out if you need to move your site to https. If you are still on http, then why not move to https and get an extra bonus in rankings?

3.11. The presence of a mobile version of the site

The presence of a mobile version has long become not a feature, but a necessity - in order to reach an additional audience of mobile users. As a result, you can better understand which competitors are reaching a mobile audience and who are missing out.

3.12. Multi-regional and multilingual

You should see if competitors have other language or regional versions of the site, as well as separate pages for regional requests.

Regional versions of a site or page for geo queries can be the reason for greater coverage of key queries.

3.13. Download speed

It is analyzed for typical pages, for example:

• home page;
• categories / subcategories;
• product cards;
• blog pages;
• other sample pages.

The check is performed for both the mobile version and the desktop version. You can use Google Page Speed ​​Insights or analogs (eg GTMetrix, WebPageTest).

The main indications are recorded:

• percentage of mobile version optimization (N / 100);
• percentage of optimization of the desktop version (N / 100);
• server response time of the mobile version;
• server response time of the desktop version.

If your site's loading speed is very slow compared to competitors, increasing it should be made a priority.

3.14. Analysis of social activity

You should record the activity indicators of subscribers in social networks. The most indicative is the number of likes / shares / comments / reposts of blog articles. On YouTube, you can see the total number of views on a channel.

By the activity of subscribers and their engagement, you can see which social network should be included in the strategy, if it is not already included. Especially if this channel is active among competitors.

3.15. Business research

The question should be asked: why does a potential client go to a competitor? Analyze possible options.

Most popular versions:

• the competitor has a lower price;
• the competitor has more assortment;
• the competitor has more goodies: bonuses, cumulative discounts, promotions, free shipping, favorable terms of loans and installments, pick-up points;
• the competitor has more reviews (on the website, in Google my business) and they are fresh;
• the competitor has an online consultant who is constantly in touch.

As a result, ideas for the development of the marketing strategy of the project may appear. For example, organizing promotions and other activities to engage users, participating in events as a partner to promote a brand.

At this stage, an understanding will come about which products expansion is worth considering. For example, if a client has a narrow niche, the entire assortment of that niche should be present. Otherwise, it will be more profitable for the consumer to order everything on the competitor's website (if all the names are already there), rather than looking for them in different stores.

You can also collect ideas to increase loyalty: for example, if competitors have information about the project team, mission and values, a creative “About Us” page, information about the company's participation in exhibitions, conferences, and so on.

4. How to structure the results of competitor analysis

But every time looking at the table is inconvenient, so I recommend writing conclusions based on the results of the analysis of each direction in a simple Google Docs in the following format:

• [a few words about the situation now];
• [what needs to be done to overtake competitors].

It is worth noting those points where your project is the leader - you need to know your strengths.

conclusions

In a general analysis of sites, you should pay attention to both general characteristics and specific areas that are important for promotion. Depending on the type of business, indicators can be removed or added.

Here are the basic ones:

• domain age;
• attendance;
• the number of pages in the index;
• semantic core;
• Site structure;
• content;
• meta information;
• link strategy;
• linking;
• availability of https;
• availability of a mobile version;
• multi-regional and multilingual;
• download speed;
• social activity;
• business features.

At the start of work, such a superficial analysis is a must have for a specialist. It shows well the features of the topic and allows you to understand the current situation.

I would be glad to receive additions from you - what else can be analyzed and what will it give?

Shares a list of sites that will help you get a report on the position of competitors on the Internet (and not only). Search, compare - and win!

Today, a huge number of sites operate on the Web: companies and specialists, online stores, portals, a variety of services, etc. An important step in the development of the resource is the analysis of competitors. You need to be one step ahead, or at least keep up. For competitor analysis, there are several simple and free ways which we also use to develop Nethouse.

1. Study of search results "Yandex" and Google: Site-Auditor

Positions of competitors' sites in the search results and the dynamics (history) of changes are most conveniently tracked in full free program Site-Auditor. By specifying the address of the resource of interest, you get all the key data on the site from search engines in one click, incl. positions according to the generated list of requests (independently or through Wordstat.yandex.ru).

With its help, you can also conduct an express audit of a competitor's website: find out how many pages are indexed, see what statistics systems are installed, TCI, PR and much more. Also, Site-Auditor can be used to check the SEO promotion of your site and in order to regularly track the dynamics of position changes.

2. Analysis of competitors in the search "Yandex" and Google: Spywords

You can find out how your competitors are promoting their website using such services as Spywords.ru, Advse.ru, Advodka.ru, Adtrends.ru. Their functionality is not very different, so we will consider in detail only one of them - spywords.ru - it provides the most information and has a limited free version.

Using the service, you can find out:

The dynamics of various indicators (number of requests, budget for the context, etc.) over time;

When analyzing, be careful: do not take statistics figures as absolute and exact values, since these data are calculated using a certain algorithm and an error is possible.

3. Traffic comparison: Similarweb

The service will help you compare traffic with competitors and find opportunities that you are not yet using in your business.

Here's what you can learn from the service:

Traffic to the site for the last month and traffic dynamics for the last 6 months;

Behavioral factors on the site: bounce rate, average time on site, viewing depth;

Traffic sources for the last 3 months: the ratio of direct, search engine, etc .;

4. Studying trends: Google.com/trends and Wordstat.yandex.ru

Using the services "Trends" Google and "Yandex" you can see the dynamics and history of requests in each country or around the world.

You can find out if your competitors are growing in popularity. To do this, look at the trends for requests for their names in Russian and English language... If the scale on the graph grows, then, accordingly, the popularity of this brand among Internet users also grows. You can check the trend by the names of competitors both in Russia and around the world.