Our SEO Guide with 2 Competitive Analysis Examples That will Attract More Traffic Into Your Website!
Anybody who has done digital marketing for a while knows that every inbound marketing strategy starts with keyword research, If however, this is where your content strategy ends, you are leaving money on the table. While a thorough list of researched keywords can point you down a strategic content path, it won’t always tell you what topics will best resonate with your target audience.
In this SEO Guide I will teach you how I use competitive analysis tools like SemRush and BuzzSumo to determine what competitor content already has a proven track record of engagement and traffic.
The strategy for this post is based on a competitive analysis method often referred to as the Skyscraper Technique. This is a content marketing strategy first developed by Brian Dean of backlinko.com that involves finding competitor content that is already performing well and then creating similar content but at a greater depth of substance than the originating post.
This strategy supposes that by finding what is already working and doing it better than the competition you stand to benefit from a path already carved out ahead of you.
Method #1 – How to Do Content Research with SEMRush
- To start you are going to search out content publishers that put out content related to your niche.
- You are looking for the largest sites possible. Those sites that have been around the longest and have the most domain authority.
Keep in mind, we are not looking for direct competitors in this instance, instead we are looking for content competitors. If you don’t already have some competitor sites in mind you can start with a quick Google search around your industry’s frequently used keywords.
- Once you have identified a few target sites you are going to plug your competitor’s domain name into SEMrush then drill down into SEMrush’s Organic Page Report.
Domain Analysis > Organic Research > Pages
- Then you will want to add a filter by adding the websites blog directory path (Usually /blog) . This isolates the report to only the websites blog pages
[Include] [URL][Containing] > [/blog ]
This competitor analysis report allows you to see a detailed list of top performing content sorted by traffic percentage. (Estimated percentage of traffic this post is bring to that site )
You are then going to repeat this processes for a number of your content competitors, exporting the results each time and combining the results into a master spreadsheet.
- Once this is complete you will then sort that spreadsheet by traffic.
- What you are left with is great prioritized list of blog topics to work into your content strategy.
- With this list in hand you are going to manually visit those post with the highest traffic looking for those post that are outdated or that are low in quality.
- Once you have identified one that is a good target, you are then going to develop a post related to the same topic but make sure that my your post is 10x better than the competitors post. (It should include more copy, more images, more multimedia and pretty much anything else that keeps people engaged longer than the originating post.)
Method #2 – How to Do Content Research with Buzzsumo
To start you are going to get together a list of your existing competitors websites.
If you don’t already know who the competition is then head over to Google and type in a few keywords related to your niche. Gather together a list of the top few ranking websites then enter in another keyword related to your niche and repeat this process until you have a good list of your top ranking competitors.
From here you are going to head over to Buzzsumo and put one of your competitors URLs into the search field. This will spit out a list of their top performing blog post ordered by greatest traffic and social engagement.
Repeat this processes for a few competitors until you have a good sense of what post and topics are attracting the most interest and search volume.
As in the previous example, you are going to write a post similar in scope to that of your top competitor’s high trafficked post but in your case, you are aiming at making your post even better than the competition. This involves making a post that includes more content, multimedia, and images then the competitor’s post.
Now that you have two tried and true methods to determine what content is already performing, it’s time to get those creative juices flowing and start building out some amazing content. With a little pre determined strategy you are bound to develop a blog that gains more traffic and interest into your site.
For more info on how to promote your blog see our post titled “How To Promote Your Blog Post in 2017” on blog promotion.
Not sure how your website stacks up with the completion? Our FREE website grader will help you get a better sense of what action you should take to improve your website visibility.
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