Your Favorite Tools for Competitive Analysis?
-
When you review your competitors online presence, what are some of your favorite tools?
I like Open Site Explorer's domain comparison tool. SEMRush is great too but the data is often inaccurate.
-
Totally agree, EGOL.
If you can't beat the competitors content, you don't really deserve to beat them in the rankings. Although it certainly is possible to beat competitors with good links on the short term, it's really hard in the long term.
This being said, if I feel I have (or can create) the content to beat the competitors, I certainly do look at the competitors links to scout for opportunities.
I usually use OSE + the SERP analysis tool (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty). That's enough to get a good overview of all the good links to the competitors. You can go to Majestic for a larger index, but that will probably only add the links that won't matter much to you anyway.
-
This is for an information site....
I go to Google.com and search for the root keyword that I want to rank for. I look at the top ten sites and ask... "Can I defeat their content?". If "yes" then I attack trying to make content that will be far superior to the best that is out there. I don't look at their links or any other metric, if I can beat their content I jump into the fight.
For a retail site I do the same thing but place house ads on the content page that funnel visitors to pages where I can make money.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How can you rank nr 1 for high competitive keyword with low DA and only 1 backlink?
Hi! Was wondering if anyone can explain this a bit clearer...
Competitive Research | | AleksanderOlsen
Image attatched... How is it possible to rank on Google Norway for spot nr.1 (page in English language) and spot nr.2 (page in Norwegian language) , when all you competitors have higher PA, DA and a lot more backlinks and better on-page optimization according to MOZ? Is there something I´m misunderstanding?
Just when I thought SEO started to make sense 😞 7sXH00d0 -
Whats the Best Tool for Bulk SERPS Checking?
To get round the 'not provided' issue I've just generated a list of the 5000+ keywords that people have used to visit my site over the last 7+ years. I want to do a one off SERPS check for all these keywords and export into excel where I'll tie it up with lots of analytics and moz based data I was going to use the queries report on analytics but my data only goes back as far as May this year, so I'll use that if I have to (and probably will anyway for the impressions and CTR) but I'd prefer to cover everything so I can see any opportunities in my very long tail
Competitive Research | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Competitive Link building
Hi Folks According to Site Explorer this link ... www.quotationspage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12032&p=98500 .... has a page Authority of 42 and a domain Authority of 87. Looking at this it seems to be 3 links embedded in a forum comment. What I would love to understand is... how valuable is this link? (Especially with Panda and Penguin?) ... How do i decide if I should also peruse a similar link for my site? Thank you in advance
Competitive Research | | PHD0 -
Competitor research: No data / results displaying on Keyword tools, Aexa
Hi there! I'm trying to research a few competitors using various Keyword tools (SEM Rush, Compete, Keyword Spy -- even Alexa for high level insight). While the bulk of the competitors generate expected results through these tools (a smattering of their top organic and paid search keywords, some traffic estimations through Alexa), ONE of these competitors lists "No results" across all categories and all tools: http://www.bgstar.ca Despite this, we know that they invest heavily in search -- and my SEM Rush toolbar indicates that they have a Google PR of 5 (though I recognize that that should be taken with a grain of salt). So I'm stumped! Has anyone encountered this before? Is there something structural that they might be doing, that's blocking not only Google-based platforms, but Alexa too? Thanks for your help!
Competitive Research | | MACJ0 -
Analysis tool that returns all possible phrases that a web site ranks for
Is there anything out there similar to the semrush.com's competitor research that can tell you a web sites total amount of appearances on Google that includes the phrases for which the domain ranks?
Competitive Research | | thebaldman30 -
Working through the slides on my first seo project, I'm trying to determine the most popular content on competition sites.
From the video, I understand I should be looking for unique opportunities. But is there a baseline for product qualification, ie., a min. PA,LRD, Inbound LInks, social shares, etc. I guess I'm asking what I should be looking for in the data provided on each competing site? What determines THE most popular and unique product?
Competitive Research | | AhmadS0 -
What is a Competitive Domain Analysis In Laimens Terms?
Hello all, I know what a Competitive Domain Analysis is, essentially, as a Developer, aspiring SEO master like Danny Dover, or Rand; LOL, I wish, those dudes a serious geniuses! I was looking for the Trifecta Tool, in SEOmoz, tools, but it seems to be gone??? So it looks like I will be using the "Competitive Domain Analysis", to assist my sales pitch. My Question is how would you explain it to a Client, or my Head Sales guy, for a pitch to a prospective career making client. Many thanks to your thoughts.
Competitive Research | | smstv0 -
Question regarding back link analysis and anchor text
Hello, I am looking at my competitors back link analysis and comparing a range of link based metrics from the top 10 SERPS. I am then putting this data into excel and comparing our back link profiles. When looking at the anchor text distribution i am not sure whether to look at exact match anchor or phrase match anchor. For example, one of the companies I am looking at holds positions 3 and 4 in the SERPS. Looking at their linking profile I can see that only 1.7% of their links use the exact match anchor 'widget'. Looking at their phrase match anchor is an entirely different story, 93.5% of anchor links contain 'widget' somewhere. i.e. 'cheap widgets', 'widget sale', 'buy widgets at www.examplewidget.co.uk' etc. Obviously their exact match and phrase match anchor distribution tell a completely different story. THIS IS TRUE FOR MANY OF THE TOP 10 SERPS. Therefore, should I be looking at phrase match anchors instead of exact? Side note: would people recommend targeting anchors with 'brandname widget' based on predictions of Google giving weighted anchor more weight. Robert.
Competitive Research | | 87ROB0
