Turning Up the Heat
Having an SEO ready website and great content strategy from keyword research is a good start. In a competitive space, it is best to look at what your competition is doing. Here we want to look at your online competition, which might vary from your business competitors. After all, the goal is to gain as much online visibility to drive specific prospects to your website and organization.
For SEO campaigns competitive analysis can involve looking at your competition’s website(s) to see what keywords they are using that are successful. This is great for adding to your current keyword list for new content. Also, it’s great to see what online strategies they are using and replicate that success.
Excellent competitive analysis will not only have successful keywords other competitors are using but will point out where they are using them. (i.e. site links, images, reviews, featured snippets, video, local SEO, etc.). This gives your content strategy additional ammunition to compete in many areas.
If you’re involved in a paid-per-click (PPC) campaign it would be valuable to have a snapshot of all of the ads your competition currently running to get some ideas on how to write winning ad copy or improve existing ads.
Your SEO agency should be able to provide a comprehensive competitive analysis in each area of digital marketing efforts.
Social Media Side Note
Although search engines do not rank social media content due to each social media platform having their own ecosystem on content relevancy, they do take into consideration certain factors into establishing a website’s trust. This trust is one of many factors search engines use when ranking a website.
If your organization is involved in social media campaign you might want to check to see if they are using competitive analysis as part of their social media growth. If not you might want to consider using a digital strategist or agency that can provide both SEO and social media marketing under one umbrella. This is will improve execution, increase traffic to your website from various digital platforms, and reduce the overhead required during the campaign.
Target the Correct Audience
Extensive competitive analysis can also discover valuable demographic information about their visitors. Targeted information such as gender, age, and interests can be found. This gives us powerful insights into who their audience is and how to improve targeting your audience.
Taking Your SEO Campaign to the Next Level
Armed with keyword analysis, content strategy, and comprehensive competitor analysis; you are ready to start getting the visibility your website deserves. In the next article, we will discuss link building and how it relates to an effective SEO strategy.
