Are you wondering what strategies your competitors use to grow their traffic How do they do competitor SEO analysis ?
Performing an SEO analysis of your SEO competitors can reveal a world of information. Instead of guessing which keywords to target or which links to generate, you can learn what your competitors are doing and increase your site’s SEO.
In this article, we will show you how to conduct a WordPress SEO competitor analysis.
Why should you conduct an SEO analysis of competitors ?
Getting a search engines strategy in WordPress to properly be difficult, especially if you do not know the type of content to be created, the search terms that must be focused on, and the rear bonds that must be created .
This is where you can look at what your competitors are doing .
By performing the competitor’s analysis, you can learn what is suitable for others and how they can attract organic visitors to their website .
Based on the success of these strategies, you can increase the number of organic visits to your site on WordPress and your competitors outperform different major words .
There are multiple ways to perform the competitor’s analysis. You can use the additional WordPress component such as All In One Seo (AIOSEO) to perform a competitive analysis of senior economic officials within the WordPress dashboard or use a search engines tool .
First Method : Conduct an SEO analysis of your competitors using AIOSEO
The easiest way to do SEO competitor analysis in WordPress is to use the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is the best SEO tool for WordPress trusted by over 3 million businesses.
AIOSEO makes it so easy to optimize your site for search engines without the need to hire an expert or any technical knowledge .
The plugin offers an SEO analysis tool that you can use to determine what your competitors are doing to grow organic traffic .
For this tutorial, we’ll be using the free version of AIOSEO because it includes an SEO analysis tool . There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that provides more features like sitemap tools, redirect manager, schema markup, robots.txt editor, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the AIOSEO plugin on your website . For more details, please follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .
Upon activation, the plugin will automatically launch its setup wizard. You can go ahead and click the Let’s Get Started button to continue .
Next, you can head to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress dashboard, and then go to the Competitor Site Analysis tab .
Next, you can enter your competitor’s site URL and click the “Analyze” button .
AIOSEO :
will show you the overall score for your competitors’ website along with a preview of the descriptive title and meta description that appears in the search results .
You can also view the keywords your competitor is targeting on their site. This information is useful, as you can get clues about different search terms to focus on your website and improve your rankings .
Then, AIOSEO will analyze your competitor’s website based on various criteria. It will highlight critical issues along with things that are working well on their website .
You can start with the SEO Basics section and view their SEO title and meta description along with their persona length .
The plugin also shows keywords used in meta tags, H1 and H2 tags, whether your competitor is using alt attributes for images, and the total number of internal and external links present on the page .
Now, using data from the primary SEO section, you can compare it to your website and find areas to improve your rankings and organic traffic .
For example, you can see that your competitor is missing an image alt attribute. Image alt text helps search engines understand and rank the image in image search results .
You can take advantage of this opportunity and use alternative themes to improve the images on your site. This way, you can attract more visitors to your site by getting higher rankings in image search results .
In addition :
AIOSEO will also show if your competitor is using a robotx.txt file to improve crawling and indexing of their site or using schema markup to display additional information in search results .
By comparing your website on these criteria, you can see which areas to focus on and outperform your competitors .
Next, go ahead and view the Performance section of the AIOSEO SEO Analysis Tool. In this section, the plugin will analyze your competitors and show what they are doing to speed up their website or e-commerce store .
The speed of your website is critical to SEO success. That’s because Google now uses page load time as a ranking factor. If you can make your site load faster than your competitors, you can gain a huge advantage in terms of search engine rankings .
Finally, you can view the “Security” section of AIOSEO .
Under this section, the plugin checks if the competitor has disabled directory listings on the server. By disabling directory listings on the server, you can protect your sensitive information from falling into the hands of malicious hackers .
Besides, AIOSEO will also analyze your competitors and search for malware that Google may identify. If Google detects that your site contains malware or malware, it will lower your search engine rankings .
Scound Method : Do a competitor SEO analysis using Semrush
Another way you can do a competitor SEO analysis is to use an SEO tool like Semrush .
It is one of the most popular SEO checker and website analyzer tools on the market and is used by professional SEO experts, bloggers, marketers, online store owners, and companies of all sizes .
Semrush offers a powerful competitor analysis tool that helps you uncover the keywords they are using, their backlinks, top content, and much more .
You can start by going to the Industry Overview section of Competitive Research in the menu on your left. Then, simply enter your competitor’s URL and click the “Search” button .
Semrush
will now give you an overview of your competitors’ website. You can view its authority score, organic search traffic for the current month, paid search traffic, backlinks, and display ads .
It will also show you which country contributes the largest traffic share, along with a monthly breakdown of organic traffic .
Besides, you can also view other reports in the domain overview section, such as number of SERP features,
top organic keywords, organic position distribution, primary competitors, paid keywords, and much more .
The best part about using Semrush is that it allows you to view each of these reports in more detail, so you can get an insight into your competitors’ SEO strategies .
You can use the Industry Overview report to see your competitor’s performance at a glance. Using the information in these reports, you can set goals for your website and identify areas for improvement .
For more detailed analysis, you can go to the “Traffic Analytics” section from the menu on your left. In this section, Semrush gives you a detailed breakdown of your competitors’ traffic sources .
To get started, view your total visits, unique visitors, average visit duration, and bounce rate.
If you scroll down, you can identify the most important sources of traffic and see which one attracts a lot of visitors .
For example :
if a competitor is getting many users from social media and you aren’t,
you can look for ways to increase traffic from social platforms .
Then, you can head to the Organic Search section from the menu on your left .
Within this section, you can discover your competitors’ top keywords, position changes .
And more like top pages, search engine results page (SERP), like featured snippets, and more .
To get started, you can view the top organic keywords to see what search terms your users are using to find your competitor’s website .
Semrush displays the position of the search term , the search target
whether the keyword is informational or transactional, total volume, and more
Now, this is very useful information for boosting your WordPress SEO .
It helps find new keywords to target on your website, identify opportunities to capture SERP features,
and come up with new content ideas .
For example :
you can see the top pages that drive the most organic traffic for your competitors. Once identified, you can then cover similar topics on your own site .
Then, you can head to the Keyword Gap section of the menu to your left and get more insights into the search terms your competitors are using .
Semrush allows you to enter up to 5 domains into the Keyword Gap tool. You start by entering your website, those of your competitors, selecting the organic keywords option, and then clicking on the compare button .
Then, Semrush will display a list of keywords that you and your competitors have in common. The key here is to look at the “missing” keywords report .
These are search terms that are missing from your website but are being used by your competitor. It provides an excellent opportunity to find new keywords to use on your website and grow your organic traffic .
Apart from keywords, you can also identify backlinks using Semrush . Backlinks or referring domains are an important factor in Google ranking, and they provide a vote of confidence to your site .
Since backlinks positively affect your site’s SEO, it is important to know where your competitors are getting their backlinks from. Then with the data you can also try to get backlinks to your site .
To get started, you can go to the “Backlink Gap” section, enter up to 5 competitor websites, and then click the “Find Prospects” button .
Semrush
will display a list of referral domains that link to your competitors. Next, you can select a competitor from the “Prospects for domain” dropdown .
Then, you can filter referral domains by best, weak, strong, common, and unique. To detect backlinks that only point to your competitor and not you, go ahead and select the “Best” option .
This way, you will find new opportunities to get more backlinks to your site and boost your keyword rankings .
Another way you can use Semrush to capture backlinks from your competitors is by looking for missing links .
Simply go to the “Backlink Analytics” section from the menu on your left. Then enter your competitor’s website URL and click the “Analyze” button .
After that, you can go to the “Backlinks” tab and select “Lost” from the available filters. Semrush will display all of your competitors’ backlinks that no longer exist .
This provides a great opportunity for you to get more backlinks. You can view your own blog post or landing page to replace the missing backlink to a referral site .
We hope that this article helped you learn how to conduct SEO competitor analysis in WordPress . You may also want to check out our guide How to Transfer WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS .