SEO Gambling Guide, Part 5: SEO Analysis of Competitors

I have decided to give some advice regarding competitor analysis. In general, however, all is clear here.

Competitor Analysis 

Before creating any sites, I advise you to analyze your competitors. It will help you research GEO deeper and, probably, find some new ideas. 

After collecting the semantics, you should analyze by clusters. Ahrefs will help you with it. 

So, Here are My Recommendations

1. I take a bunch of keywords, type them in Ahrefs, and check out traffic share by pages.

2. I focus on the TOP 10 competitors squeezing a higher traffic percentage from the keywords I analyze.
3. Then, I create a simple table. 

I analyze all this data to find out the average value for content and links. I pay special attention to the age of the domain/page and the number of links. The matter is that you can’t just get the same number of links as your competitor has built for eight years within six months. 

In the “Keyword 1, 2, and 3” columns, I analyze the number of uses of those keywords that interest me the most. Of course, you can laugh at it, but I still check out the number of some important keys 🙂

It is enough to conduct such a simple analysis to at least budget the costs of content and links for a certain period. Moreover, seeing the average competition age of 8-9 years removes the rose-tinted spectacles. Some of you already have children of this age.

I recommend checking out all clusters using this or similar analysis. Then, you should check your pages. Of course, you can add a lot more to the analysis, but it depends on what you believe in 🙂

Oh, I wish you would know how many seemingly simple things SEOs don’t do. When a site has been showing no growth for half a year, you start thinking about some spiritual powers, freemasons, competitors, etc. Then it turns out that the site has Twitter-size content on the pages, or its quality is poor, or it lacks links, and so on.

4. You should also analyze the type of links used by the competitor. Mainly, you should be interested in two very popular and powerful formats in this niche — articles (guest posts, press releases, outreach, etc.) and links from the main pages. This type of link works best. They scale and form the basis of link profiles in 98% of cases.
5. Analyze the anchor profile and the number of generic anchors and steal them without any scruples.
6. Analyze the interlinking and click-through links from the menu, footer, and sidebar. This way, you can sometimes find what converts and generates money in the best way. You can even find inconspicuous low-competitive and long-tail keywords. Check out the anchors in the content. 
7. Analyze the number of links at the beginning of the site/page launch. What is the current trend? What is the average number per month?
8. Find competitors to look up to regarding content, links, site functionality, and general approach. 
9. Check out how the TOP changes, who appears, and who disappears. It is difficult, but you should try to find the reasons for these processes. 
10. Pay attention to CTAs and conversion elements, how exactly brand reviews and tables look like, and what data they contain. 
11. When you find out which brands your opponents work with, you should think about making them different for your site. If you do the same, users may not like it. Why do they need another site with the same brands? However, it doesn’t always work, unfortunately. Sometimes GEO converts only 1-3 brands out of all, or people select them deliberately because the marketing of these brands works effectively.
12. Do not expect to see the “Cashola” or the “Success Formula” buttons. They don’t exist. You should better calculate how much money your competitors spent on being where they are now. 
13. Make conclusions from the analysis and finish it by creating tasks or goals. Do not put off the analysis to the Greek calends like an SEO audit. The analysis itself is like a shovel in the trunk of a car covered in snow. 
14. You need to update the general analysis every quarter or half a year. However, you need to check out GEO trends every day.
15. Teach your team to analyze. Not only team leads but also all your employees should have an idea of how to conduct the analysis. It will save your team leader from excess pain in the neck and reduce the number of stupid mistakes. 

Good luck!