Keywords are an integral part of anybody’s SEO strategy. They help you stay focused on what you create and ensure that your audience knows that you have the content they’ve been searching for.
Whilst keyword research can help you uncover the keywords you should use when creating your content, it’s also important to understand how your competitors are using these same keywords and the successes they’re achieving with their own strategy.
A way to get this knowledge is through competitor keyword analysis. In this post, we’ll go through what that is, explain how to conduct it and recommend tools that will help you with your content strategy.
What is Competitor Keyword Analysis?
Competitor keyword analysis is the process of uncovering the keywords your competitors are ranking highly for in an attempt to create content that outranks them in search results.
The keywords that you conduct analysis for should be relevant to your business and the content you already create. For example if you run a blog about Sustainable Shoes, you wouldn’t want to run a piece on Sustainable Coats as it’s not related to what you’re already doing.
This sort of analysis also helps you understand how difficult it would be to outrank a competitor who’s already doing better than you.
How To Do Competitor Keyword Analysis
Understanding your audience is one of the most important factors of competitor keyword analysis. Aim to create well-rounded buyer personas that explain your audience members at all levels of the buyer’s journey, from the awareness to the post-decision stage. This will also help you come up with a wide range of keywords that relate to your business and additional opportunities to outrank your competitors.
All in all, this first stage will help you stay focused and ensures that you’re attempting to outperform your competitors for business development, not just outranking to outrank.
Identify Your Top Competitors
Once you understand your audience and the keywords that are relevant to them and your business, identify your main competitors. Knowing who your competition is makes it easier for you to be more targeted with your strategy.
Begin Keyword Research
Onc you’ve identified your top competitors, find the keywords that they rank for and outrank you for. Track competitors monthly search volume, backlinks, domain authority and factor all of this information into your plan.
Conducting competitor keyword analysis is made easier through the use of a tool. Here are some great options
Competitor Keyword Analysis Tools
Google Alerts – Google Alerts is Google’s native keyword tool, which you can use to monitor the web and keep an eye out for content related to your keywords. You can set it up to receive email alerts whenever a keyword you target is mentioned online, and you can even track mentions of your competitors to understand where they get backlinks from.
Social Mention – Social Mention, as the name suggests, monitors social platforms and compiles reports of all the platforms where your keywords are mentioned. Simply type a keyword into the search bar, and you’ll get instant analytics on the number of mentions, users, sentiments of those mentions (positive, negative, or neutral), as well as previews of the mentions that people have made.
Alexa Traffic Rank – Alexa Traffic Rank gives you an understanding of how sites rank in terms of traffic. It also has analytic tools that you can use to evaluate how competitive different keywords are.
Use competitor keyword analysis to guide your future content. If you need help with your marketing strategy, get in touch with an expert here.