As an experienced webmaster, I know that a thorough SEO competitor analysis is crucial for growing your website‘s organic traffic and rankings. By studying what your top competitors are doing, you unlock a blueprint for your own SEO success.
In this comprehensive guide, we will walk through how to conduct an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress using two powerful methods:
- Using the All in One SEO Plugin
- Using Semrush (or other premium SEO tools)
I‘ll share data-backed best practices to help you extract actionable insights from your competitor research. With over 15 years under my belt in the webmaster field, I‘m excited to pass along these proven tips!
Contents
Why You Need Competitor Analysis in Your SEO Toolbelt
Before we get into the step-by-step instructions, let‘s kick things off by looking at some key stats that demonstrate why competitor analysis needs to be a regular part of your SEO regimen:
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81% of marketers say tracking competitors helps increase their lead generation. [Hubspot]
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72% of marketers view competitor analysis research as very useful. [SmartInsights]
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Competitor analysis is the #1 most trusted source of marketing intelligence. [Forrester]
It‘s clear that spying on what your competitors are up to provides a treasure trove of intel to help you win more traffic. Here are some of the key benefits competitor analysis provides:
Identify Successful Keywords and Content
Your competitors have likely invested significant time and resources into SEO. By studying the keywords and content ranking well for them, you can build on their success for your own site.
Discover Powerful Link Building Tactics
A huge ranking factor is backlinks. Competitor analysis uncovers new link building tactics and opportunities you can leverage.
Capitalize on Their Technical SEO Missteps
When you find technical SEO issues competitors overlooked, you can swoop in to optimize and grab the lead.
Benchmark Your Performance
Seeing the metrics for competitor sites gives you realistic goals and benchmarks to shoot for.
Inspiration for Improvements
Spying areas competitors excel provides ideas for improving your own on-page SEO, content strategy, site speed, and beyond.
Let‘s now dive into two proven methods for extracting this intel through competitor analysis.
Method #1: All in One SEO Plugin
One of my favorite "quick win" methods for analyzing competitors directly within WordPress is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin.
With over 3 million active installations, AIOSEO is trusted by WordPress pros across the globe for optimizing sites.
Get Up and Running with AIOSEO
First, you‘ll need to install and activate AIOSEO on your WordPress site. Once activated, the SEO Analysis tool will be added to your dashboard.
A setup wizard will launch to guide you through recommended settings. Or check out my AIOSEO configuration guide for details on each one.
Analyze Your Competitors
Next, go to AIOSEO > SEO Analysis and switch to the "Analyze Competitor Site" tab.
Enter your competitor‘s URL and click "Analyze".
AIOSEO will crawl the page and provide an overall performance score out of 100. You‘ll see their title tag, meta description, and keywords they are targeting.
Scroll down to view more in-depth analysis across four categories:
- Basic SEO: Title length, meta description, headings, image alt text, etc.
- Advanced SEO: Page speed, canonical tags, robots.txt, rich snippets, etc.
- Performance: Page size, load time, caching, CDN usage.
- Security: HTTPS, malware monitoring, directory browsing protection.
AIOSEO will highlight issues found on the competitor‘s site and areas where they meet best practices.
You can then inspect your own site to see if you can capitalize on any of their missed optimizations for easy wins.
Limitations to Consider
The AIOSEO analysis is great for a quick look at how a competitor page stacks up. However there are some limitations to be aware of:
- Only analyzes one URL at a time, not the entire site.
- Provides only a surface level look at technical/on-page SEO.
- Does not reveal insights about their linking strategy.
- No breakdown of organic keywords and traffic sources.
For a more in-depth competitor analysis, you‘ll want to use a robust SEO platform like Semrush.
Method #2: In-Depth Competitor Research with Semrush
Semrush is my go-to SEO tool used by over 7 million marketing professionals worldwide.
It makes competitor analysis easy by aggregating a deep well of intel to uncover growth opportunities.
Get Started with Semrush
First, you‘ll need to create a Semrush account. They offer a free version but for full access to competitor tools you‘ll need a paid plan.
Packages start around $99/month for individuals up to $399/month for larger teams. I find this well worth the investment for the powerful data you unlock.
Once setup, here are some of my favorite competitor reports to leverage:
Domain Overview
This top-level overview shows your competitor‘s organic traffic, geographic sources, backlinks, keywords ranking for, and more.
Having these high-level metrics allows you to set realistic goals for your own SEO growth based on competitors.
Organic Research
Digging deeper, Semrush provides granular details on your competitor‘s keywords, rankings, and traffic sources.
Filter by low difficulty keywords to find opportunities to target where you can outrank competitors.
Monitor their rankings for flux you can capitalize on.
Backlink Analysis
One of the most useful reports is Backlink Analysis, showing where competitors acquire links.
Sort by lost links – these present opportunities to request those links be pointed at your content instead.
Traffic Analytics
Traffic Analytics breaks down your competitor‘s traffic sources whether that be organic, paid, referral, social, or other channels.
Identify areas competitors are winning you can tap into.
Translating Insights Into SEO Wins
The key is translating insights into tangible SEO gains. Here are actionable next steps:
- Target low competition keywords they rank well for.
- Strengthen on-page factors where they fall short.
- Acquire backlinks from domains linking to competitors.
- Monitor for shifts you can capitalize on.
- Produce and promote content inspired by their top pages.
- Fix technical issues undermining your own site.
Rinse and repeat quarterly to keep tabs on the competition. Use these tools and tactics to pull ahead!
Conclusion
Regularly monitoring your competitors provides invaluable intelligence to guide your SEO and content strategies.
Leveraging tools like AIOSEO and Semrush makes it easy to extract actionable insights into what‘s working for your competition.
Now you have two proven methods to start spying on competitors and accelerating your own SEO results!
What competitor analysis tactics have worked well for you? Let me know in the comments!
