The SEO competitor analysis is much easier when you use the right tools for it. Many SEO professionals use Ahrefs, an online SEO tool. Ahrefs is considered to be one of the most reliable SEO tools to help you understand why your competitors are ranking high.
SEO Competitor Analysis using Ahrefs
Ahrefs software focuses on SEO and content analysis. It can be used for analyzing competitors’ keywords (PPC and organic), traffic stats, and backlinks.
Identifying competitors
The first step you need to make is to identify the main competitors. You can do it with Ahrefs Keyword Explorer if you type a keyword that you think your potential clients will use when searching for your services. If you click “Rank for”, you can identify keywords with the highest volume. Now, you use this keyword in Google search to see what sites are ranking. You can consider the top 3 sites from the organic search and the companies that are running ads campaigns on this keyword.
Gathering data for analysis
Your task is to gather data about your competitors and fill in the spreadsheet that you can use for analysis. You should collect data about SEO metrics such as domain authority, link growth, how much traffic your competitors are getting and what keywords are driving that traffic.
1. Authority
To determine the overall authority of each site, you can use the Ahrefs Domain Comparison tool. You will get a lot of interesting stats but you should mostly pay attention to the Domain Rating and Ref Domain (the number of referring domains). Sites with higher metrics are likely to rank well in Google search.
2. Link growth
Next, you should analyze your competitors’ link growth and collect data about how many referring domains they get per month. Use Ahrefs Site Explorer to run the “New Referring Domains” report and set a period of the past few months. To understand if the link growth is consistent, you can check the “Referring Domains” graph that you can find on the Overview page of the Site Explorer. Understanding the rate at which your competitors grow the number of their backlinks can help you determine your goals because you should acquire new backlinks faster than your competitors. Ahrefs Site Explorer can also provide you with data about the links to the competitor’s site from a certain domain and see how much organic search traffic the referring pages get.
3. Organic Traffic
You can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to analyze one competitor at a time to check organic traffic volume and determine the keywords that are driving search traffic. You can do it if you run the “Organic Keywords” report for every domain. You will see lots of keywords that are sure to be relevant to the industry and can help you get started.
4. Keywords
When determining which keywords you would like to use for your SEO, you should pay attention to the keyword difficulty score. You may be tempted to use keywords with a high score but it will be difficult to rank on them without building lots of links. Using Keywords Explorer, you can get an estimate of the number of backlinks needed to rank for a certain keyword. To begin with, it will be easier to target a keyword with a low difficulty score. It’s critically important not just get insights from SEO competitor analysis but also to start taking actions using the data that you have gathered and develop your SEO strategy.
