Whether you’re selling e-books, electronics, or consultations, chances are you’re working in a crowded space. analyze your competition As much as you love your own business idea, the truth is that no business is truly unique these days—which can make it hard to carve out a niche for yourself online.
If you want to grow in today’s market, you’ll have to outperform the competition. As you might expect, this requires you to actually know who your competition is and what they’re doing! Competitor analysis is crucial whether you’re a new entrepreneur or your business has been around for years. If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional to analyze your competition for you, it’s worth noting that you can do it yourself! Here are the key steps to a competitor analysis.
- How do you analyze a competitor?
- How do I capture insights about my competitors?
- What are the tools and techniques of competitive analysis?
1. Identify Your Competitors
To get started, you’ll need to know who your competitors are. Chances are, you already can name a few off the top of your head, but you’ll want to do some industry research to identify the top brands and companies. Try to come up with a list of your top ten competitors, including where you rank in the search results in comparison.
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2. Analyze Their Website
Analyze your competitors’ online presence by checking out their website. You’ll want to look at metrics you can compare to your own, like their monthly visitors, pageviews, time on site, and engagement rate.
In addition, check out their overall SEO structure. How do they structure their titles, tags, and URLs? You should also check to see which keywords are driving the most traffic to your competitors’ site. Which organic keywords are performing well? Does your competitor have paid ads for specific keywords?
3. Check Their Content and Backlinks
Find out what kind of content your competitors produce, including their preferred formats, publication frequency, topics covered, and content performance. Look for opportunities to improve your own content strategies based on what your competitor is doing well.
You’ll also want to check out their backlink portfolio. How does the quantity and quality of their backlinks compare to yours?
4. Look Into Their Customer Reviews
What are customers saying about your competition? Check for reviews both on the competitor’s website as well as on third-party review sites like Facebook, Google, and Yelp. This can help you understand where your competitor is outperforming you, where you have opportunities for growth, and how to fill in any gaps in customer service.
5. Analyze Their Social Media
Social media integration can tell you a lot about a competitor’s marketing strategy, so head over to any branded social accounts. How different are their style, voice, and graphics from your own? What is their posting frequency, and how is their audience engagement?
6. Identify Your Areas of Strength and Improvement
Once you’ve gathered all of the info above, it’s time to sit down and compare your research to your own business strategies. Knowing how your competitors tick can help you understand how well you’re holding up—and what you still need to optimize. The only way forward is to use your insights to adapt your marketing strategies, pushing yourself to fill in any gaps for better results.
With plenty of free tools and resources available to help you analyze your competition, all you’ll need to do is put in a little time and effort into the job. It’s true that competitor research can be complex, but it’s well worth the hassle if it helps you understand how to better position yourself online. At The Darl, we’re always happy to work with you to analyze the competition, helping you understand the strategic shifts and proactive moves that can make a difference. Check out our other posts to learn more about our tactics, or contact us to learn more!
