Competitive Analysis for SEO - SEMNE

HOW TO BEAT YOUR COMPETITORS: THE RACE FOR SEARCH TRAFFIC

CASIE GILLETTE DIRECTOR OF ONLINE MARKETING

10 YEARS

SEO

casiegillette.com

[email protected]

@casieg

@komarketing

#SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

•  WTF – search result screenshot


It’s always a bummer to do a search and find that your site is nowhere to be found! What can you do? Why? You wonder. This is what I like to call competitive denial and there are three stages.

Compe4tor Denial



COMPETITIVE DENIAL: WTF

W#SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

HY? The first stage of competitive denial is the why. Why are they showing up and I’m not? Why are they doing better than me? Symptoms of this stage include curiosity, intrigue, and wonder.

T #SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

HEY AREN’T BETTER THAN ME!

The next stage usually consists of phrases like “They aren’t better than me” and “This is bulls##t.” A little less calm than the Why stage and tends to include anger, confusion & sadness.

F #SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

INE - EXCITABILITY

Lastly, we have the “Fine” stage. You come to accept it is what it is and you are ready to move on and fight the good fight.



STEP 1: SEARCH RESULTS



RESOURCE RESULTS

COMPANY RESULTS

Before we get to the competitors themselves, we must understand the search results. We need to understand the what vs. the who. What is showing up? What type of content?



BLOG POST

WHITE PAPER

SERVICE PAGE

What content is ranking? Blog posts? Internal company pages? What is that you need to be targeting to get your site to show up here?

I #SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

NTENT All of this comes down to understanding the intent of the user. Or at least what Google thinks the intent is.


WARNING THERE’S ABOUT TO BE SOME TRUTHINESS




WE MUST UNDERSTAND THE WHAT



SEM RUSH

There are some great tools that can help us with the WHAT. When you put a keyword phrase into SEMRush, it will give you related terms, phrase match terms, and the full set of results and URLs.


SERP STAT

SERPstat will give you the suggested search terms but also questions. With the hummingbird algorithm and Google’s dedication to answering the user query, it’s important to know what your audience is actually looking for when they search a keyword.


AD WORDS

One of my favorite tricks – place the search result URL into the AdWords keyword planner tool. Hat tip: @aimclear



YOUR SITE HERE

The bottom line is, if you want your site here, you need to understand what type of result the search engines actually want to put there.


SEM RUSH

The second part of this is understanding the content actually ranking. With SEMRush, we can put the URL in and get all sorts of amazing data. We can see traffic, links, related keywords, and much more.


RAVEN

RavenTools also has a great feature, Research Central, that gives you some meaty information on a specific URL. It pulls link data, keyword data, design data, and more.


RAVEN Backlink data includes both Moz and Majestic information.


MOZ Of course Open Site Explorer also can provide link data on a specific URL.


RAVEN

One of the most interesting features of Raven’s tool is the Semantic Analyzer which looks at what the page is about. This information is invaluable because we can look at all the sites rankings to understand the semantics involved.


BUZZ SUMO

Perhaps the URL doesn’t have many back links. What about shares? BuzzSumo gives us the number of shares for a particular URL by network.


BUZZ SUMO

We can begin to understand the value of those shares by looking at who is sharing the content. Are these people influential? Do they have a decent reach?



WE WANT TO IDENTIFY TRENDS IN THE WHAT


STEP 2: COMPETITORS

THIS IS THE BELMONT.


The Belmont is the longest race of the Triple Crown. You aren’t going to perform a competitive analysis and suddenly be killing it. It takes time, patience, and understanding of the competition. It also means ensuring your horse is the best.

All the components

•  It’s not that easy though. •  Chart of all Online marke4ng components


ONLINE MARKETING ISN’T JUST SEO.

I love this map from Gartner that looks at the online marketing landscape. Messy? Yup. Online marketing is more than just SEO and all of these factors play a role in how your site performs.


We have to look beyond the simple piece of content. Beyond just links or title tags. We have to look at the big picture.


We want to look at all the data associated to not only the URL, but the site.


We want to look at social engagement and the effort involved.


We want to look at newsletters or events and anything that else that is playing a role in a companies online presence.



BRAND LINKS

CONTENT

SOCIAL PR

We must understand how these factors help a site and we want to know if our competitors are using one, many, or all of them.


PLEASE EMAIL [email protected] FOR THIS WORKSHEET


PPC

SEO

SOCIAL

YOU

RETARGETING

PPC

SEO

SOCIAL

PR

TESTING

COMP 1

PPC

SEO

SOCIAL

PR

COMP 2

PPC

SEO

EVENT

A/B

COMP 3

SOCIAL

What makes this data gathering important is we can then take a side-by-side look at our competition. We need to know the whole playing field to understand where we need to be spending our time and money.

C#SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

ODE One of the first places I like to look for this information is in a site’s source code.


The code can provide an inside look at the various marketing efforts occurring on site.



Along with SEO tags or PPC tags, we can look for A/B testing tags, Remarketing tags, Live chat code and more.


TRACKED CONTENT

Want to check up on your competitor without constantly have to visit their site? Tracked Content will do it for you.


CHANGE DETECTION An oldie but a goodie – Change Detection will email you when the content on a page changes.

C#SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

ONTENT Along with the code, we also want to understand the type of content competitors are creating.


WHICH HORSE SHOULD YOU PUT YOUR MONEY ON?



SCREAMING FROG

One of the best ways to figure out what type of content is on a site is to scan it. Screaming Frog will crawl all the URLs of a site, giving you insights into competitive content.

ARTICLES • BLOG POSTS • RESOURCES


Look for things like articles, blog posts, resource sections and more. Note: Change your user agent to Google. Some sites block SF and we want to most accurate picture.

OSE


Back to our tools – these can help us determine how specific pieces of content perform. OSE can show you the top linked pages on a site.

SEM RUSH


SEMRush will also show us the top indexed pages along with backlinks for each of those pages.

RANK TRACKER


Moz also has rank tracker, that will let you see if a site is ranking for a particular keyword. You can save that search and keep an eye on it.

BUZZ SUMO


Lastly, BuzzSumo can show us the top shared content on a domain. What is that your audience really likes? What is it they share with their friends? You can even set date ranges.


With all of the information, you can start putting together the pieces of the puzzle and figure out where you really should be spending your budget.

L #SEMNE • @CASIEG • @KOMARKETING

INKS One of our favorite subjects – where the heck are your competitors getting their links from?



BRAND LINKS

CONTENT

SOCIAL PR

We know that links are still a pretty big factor in how a site performs. But we don’t want to just know how many links. We want to know what type of links are helping the site.


OSE If you haven’t noticed, many of our tools do a lot of things. Moz’s OSE lets us see who is linking, from where, using what anchor text and more.


MAJESTIC Majestic has a ton of great information. It will show you new links, old links, link profiles, when a link was created, and when a link is no longer active.


MEDIA

BLOGS

PARTNERS

YOU PRESS RELEASES

MEDIA

BLOGS

SPAM

COMMENTS

COMP 1

SPAM

COMP 2

MEDIA

BLOGS

COMP 3

PARTNERS

PRESS RELEASES

BLOGS

COMMENTS

SPAM

By looking at the overall picture, we can begin to understand why a site who maybe doesn’t have a ton of links does better. We can also start to see how they are obtaining links.


WE WANT TO IDENTIFY TRENDS IN THE LINK PROFILE


MEDIA TARGETS AUTHORS

& EDITORS

INFLUENCERS

GUEST OPS PARTNERS We want to leave that link audit with a portfolio of potential media targets and partnership opportunities. We want to know who the editors and authors are that we should be talking to.


Ok…now we’ve seen their source code, we’ve looked at their content, we’ve looked at their links…it’s time to get creepy!

•  SEO PLUGINS •  A/B TESTING CODE •  SCHEMA MARKUP •  OPEN GRAPH TAGS •  ADWORDS •  ANALYTICS


BUZZ SUMO

Remember how BuzzSumo will show you shares? It will also show you who shared the content (on Twitter).



BUZZ SUMO You can break individual accounts down by companies, bloggers, journalists,

regular people, and influencers.

RIPPLES


Google+ ripples are also an excellent way to find specific people who are sharing content. AJ Kohn Ripples. Did you know you can email people when you post an update?



One of Facebook’s “newer” features, allows you to watch other pages. Keep in mind, those pages are notified that you are watching them.


FOLLOWER WONK

Company employees can give you some inside tips on what’s happening Followerwonk allows you to search Twitter bios by keyword. Searching a company can give you an easy list of employees to follow. Create private lists so you don’t look like stalker.


TOPSY Topsy Influencers can give you both employees and even non-employee influencers for a brand.


And of course there is LinkedIn. Along with general queries, you can use advanced search queries to find specific positions within a company.



BRAND LINKS

CONTENT

SOCIAL PR


NO MORE WTF!


YOU JUST WON.

THANK YOU!

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[email protected]

@casieg

@komarketing

casiegillette.com

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Competitive Analysis for SEO - SEMNE