Let's talk about a subject that is often underestimated by a lot of businesses and marketers.
Competition analysis.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.16" _module_preset="d5cece55-c55a-426e-a262-61be99913f96" text_text_color="#444444" global_colors_info="{}"]''The truth is, staying ahead of the competition helps you stand out and makes you the more desirable product or service.
It's time to go undercover.
Whatever industry you're currently in, you're competing for attention, money, and sales. It's fierce! Whether you want to better traffic to your social media profiles as compared to your competitors, or you want to gain insights into competitor product claims with Conjointly Claims Test, you have to play your cards right.
In the digital space, competition is in the form of traffic, ad positions, followers, likes, and so on. Keeping an eye on your competition is the key to succeeding in all of these areas.
But how?
Why competitor tools are important
The main reason we want to spy on our competitors is to see what they're up to, and if we can learn anything from what they are doing.
Often if we focus on the larger companies who are spending thousands on their marketing, we can actually extract some of that information to shortcut some of the website market processes such as keyword research, content and backlinks.
Manually going through each competitor is long and boring and may not give you 'insider knowledge' that will actually benefit you.
Good news! There are many tools out there that can help us quickly and effectively analyse your competitors in a fraction of the time.
Say goodbye to the guessing game.
We're going to cover the different competitor tools out there for smashing your competition:
Competitor Analysis Tools for Social Media
It's no secret but social media is the number one way for your brand to connect with your audience and build brand loyalty. What better way to boost your social performance than to spy on your competitors.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src="http://scottpearson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/hootsuite.jpg" _builder_version="4.16" custom_margin="50px||||false|false" box_shadow_style="preset3" box_shadow_vertical="22px" box_shadow_blur="76px" box_shadow_color="rgba(0,0,0,0.09)" global_colors_info="{}"][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.16" _module_preset="d5cece55-c55a-426e-a262-61be99913f96" text_text_color="#444444" locked="off" global_colors_info="{}"]1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite has been around as long as I can remember and has always been an effective tool for managing, analysing and allows you to benchmark yourself against the heavy-hitters in your industry. Hootsuite allows you to:- Identify your competitors
- Find out what social platforms they're on
- How they are using the platform
- Benchmark your social results
- Find marketing gaps
2. Sprout Social
Sprout Social dedicate themselves to focusing on the analysis of your own platforms as well as your competitors and benchmark them.
Sprout Social allows you to:
- Get a deeper understanding of your competitor's social strategy
- Cross-channel reports focusing on selected platforms
- Benchmark social results
- Social media management
- Track follows, likes and shares
3. Phlanx
Phlanx has a swiss army knife of tools you can use at your disposal. It's a less sophisticated competitor analysis tracker and many features are still in development, but it gets the job done.
Phlanx allows you to:
- Quickly identify social media engagement
- Allows you to identify collaborators and influencers to push your brand
- Social media campaign management
- Instagram & Youtube audit tools available
Competitor Analysis Tools for SEO
SEO can consist of a lot of trial and testing in order to get your pages ranking well. A great way you can skip the queue is to dig deep into your competitor's keywords, on-page SEO and backlinks to uncover what they're up to. Specific SEO is important, so utilizing a resource like InteractiveFMG.com for car dealerships, as an example, may be able to help with getting customers and producing sales.
There are some powerful SEO tools out there for competitor analysis, I've dropped a few below to help you get started.
If you're unsure as to what these results mean, you can speak to an SEO expert who can assist you.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src="http://scottpearson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/SEMrush.jpg" url="https://www.semrush.com/" url_new_window="on" _builder_version="4.16" custom_margin="50px||||false|false" box_shadow_style="preset3" box_shadow_vertical="22px" box_shadow_blur="76px" box_shadow_color="rgba(0,0,0,0.09)" locked="off" global_colors_info="{}"][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.16" _module_preset="d5cece55-c55a-426e-a262-61be99913f96" text_text_color="#444444" locked="off" global_colors_info="{}"]4. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO tools out there. Its competitive analysis gives it the edge over it's own competition (which means they're using their own tool well!). Understand where your competitor's traffic is coming from and how they're achieving their results.
SEMrush allows you to:
- Competitor keyword research
- Competitor backlink monitor
- Position tracking
- Website audit tools
- Link building tool
5. Ahrefs
Another big player in the SEO competitor analytics realm. Get in-depth SEO analytics of yours and your rivals website delving into on-page SEO, keyword analysis
Ahrefs allows you to:
- Get important backlink information
- Competitor on-page SEO analysis
- Competitor backlink analytics
- Identifies key areas of improvement
- Keyword analysis
- Site Health & Monitoring
- Page rank monitoring
What to do with competitor analysis
You've got all the delicious competitor analysis you can get your hands on.
Now what?
I recommend creating a good old fashioned to-do list and focus on the lower hanging fruit that will deliver your biggest impact without spending endless hours on.
This can be, increase the content on your page, adjusting keywords to be more competitive against others and taking a look at your website / social media health to ensure you've set a good foundation to begin.
Research, change and adapt
The key to growth anywhere is to be consistent and always updating, tweaking and changing your website content - let it settle and then analyse the data to see if your changes had made a difference.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_id="seo" _builder_version="4.16" _module_preset="d5cece55-c55a-426e-a262-61be99913f96" text_text_color="#444444" custom_margin="59px|||||" locked="off" global_colors_info="{}"]These tools are great for getting you the data you need but it's not enough to have them. It still requires hard work and graft to get your website ranking well, so be disheartened when you're not an overnight success.
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