In this lesson, you'll learn how competitor analysis can help you gain insight into what’s important while doing keyword research. Watch the full course for free:
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Learn how to do keyword research with SEMrush tools with our in-depth course:
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Researching competitors is incredibly helpful when you're working with a new client in a vertical you're not familiar with. You know you'll have to do lots of research to learn about that vertical – why not piggyback on the efforts of those who have gone before you?
Competitor research is also a key tactic when you're working with a local business in a new area. You might be familiar with the vertical, but if you don't know the local area, competitor research helps get you up to speed on what works best in that location.
They've already gone through the keyword research process, they've already built content, they've already been building backlinks, and they've already been tweaking the optimization of various pages of their site to boost performance.
Obviously, you don't want to simply copy their work – but digging into what they've done and what they're currently doing can provide incredible insight into the keyword phrases that are most valuable.
This is one of my favorite ways to use SEMrush, pop in their URL, and see which keywords they're ranking for. Really dig into the list – look at the keyword difficulty scores, potential traffic – anything you can use to assess the value of the keywords they're showing up for.
Remember – they've been working on their visibility for a while now, so if they've put effort into particular phrases, it's a good sign that those phrases will bring in traffic.
How's the quality of their content? Are they writing for more expert readers, or at a lower reading level? Is it long-form content or short blurbs? How many words are there per page? Are they including several images, just one, or no images at all? Do they have a video on the page?
Read through the pages and analyze the content. Figure out what's working for them and why it's working.
Don't forget to check the raw code of the page – it's helpful to see if they've got schema markup, what sort of headings they're using, and how they've structured the page.
Finally, go through the site again and look at the important optimization elements. How are they optimizing their title tags and their H1 headings? Check out the alt text on their images and see what they're doing there. View the source code and check out the meta description – it doesn't matter for ranking, but the way they describe the page can provide insight into what they think their customers will engage with.
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