Competitor Analysis (help!)
-
Hey everyone,
I'm working on keyword research, and am at the point of going through my list and doing some competitive analysis to figure out which phrases are viable as far as competition goes.
What methods are you currently using?
As of now, we've been manually searching the phrase in Google, and using the Moz toolbar to check the metrics, backlinks, domain authority etc.
I remember before the Adwords integration with Moz was removed, there was a more efficient way to do this using the keyword difficulty tool.
Any guidance/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the response Mark!
I'll check it out and see if it's still a working solution, definitely looks promising.
-
Other tools to do this also, but they aren't cheap, like SEM Rush, Searchmetrics, etc.
Tom Anthony had written a great blog post here on Moz a while back with a Google doc for doing this, but I'm not sure it's working anymore - you can check here
-
I still use SpyFu (along with Google trends). Not always extremely accurate, but is in helpful in looking at historic data (ad copy, seasonality & etc.)
-
Thanks Vizergy, are you doing all that manually via Google yourself as well then?
-
The only tool I know of that does this for you is BrightEdge. Otherwise doing it manually is probably the best way to go. If there are other tools out there that do this I have no doubt someone here will know of it.
-
That's a good idea for the research phase for sure, but i'm just trying to figure out the most effective/efficient way of breaking down the SERP competition for my selected phrases at this point.
Thanks for the response!
-
Call me crazy but I still find myself using Google Trends to compare different iterations of like phrases. It also gives related search suggestions...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Competitor outranking us despite all SEO metrics in our favour
Hi, We are trying to outrank a competitor of ours on Google for around 100 terms that we are both clearly targetting. Our competitor currently 'wins' in the SERPS around 70% of the time, often ranking in the top 3 positions. The problem is, we are absolutely convinced that all onsite and offsite SEO metrics we are monitoring would suggest that our content should almost always place higher than theirs. Here is what I know: All pages on both websites are rated 'A' by the Moz on-page-grader tool for the phrases we are targetting, with virtually no tech issues to be addressed on either site Our domain authority is 10 points higher than theirs Neither of us have external links to the relevant pages on our sites (although we are working on some for ours) Our Page Authority is considerably higher on average - often by 10 points or more We have considerably more linking route domains, from better sites. Also many more total external links The HTML title and H1 headings of our pages contain the target phrases at the beginning - our competitors are the same. Although they often ONLY include the target phrases in their title, wheras in our title they might only take up 1/3 of the total characters We have images optimised for the target phrases on our pages. As do they. We use the target phrases roughly the same number of times in our copy text, as do they I have totally run out of ideas now for further optimising our site/pages to consistently rank better for these target phrases, although maybe these are a couple of factors that could be having an impact on the rankings: The structure of their website is perhaps optimised more for these target phrases - our site is much bigger, so perhaps our 100 pages are given less relevance on our site than their 100 pages? - but surely our stronger page authority would suggest otherwise? Perhaps Google is using page engagement statistics to determine that their site is 'betteer' than ours in terms of user appeal and engagment? Can anyone think of something that I might have missed? Is there another major ranking factor I have perhaps neglected in my research? I know link building strategies are a good way to approach this in the long run, but we are currently just concerned about why we are not already ranking better when clearly they are not undertaking any link building strategies of their own. Any help or pointers here would be enormously appreciated. Thanks Lou
Moz Pro | | OBG0 -
Losing Rankings & Need Help
Hi Guys, I am not sure if anyone else is suffering from the July 4, 2013 update. I know many of us are awaiting to see what happens once the dust settles. I have a couple of issues/questions/statements below. This is the first time any Google update has every affected me negatively and I'd love some ideas or input. 1. I have ranked quite well for nearly 10 years for all my top keywords. Now, after this update, I am disappearing for my top keywords in the SERPS - definitely getting pushed to page two, etc. Can anyone help me discover the reasons? I have a great SEO expert helping me and I know quite a bit, but this has me baffled. My website is Journey Beyond Travel.com I have read MOZ's ranking factors for 2013 and also the recently published report from SearchMetrics. In the last few days, I've added more quality text to the homepage and shortened my page title on the homepage (although Google has been changing my homepage browser title to put my brand name first in the title - and they haven't for my competitors). Over the past few months, I've really cleaned up my link profile to the best of my ability. I've never really taken part in any negative or black-hat practices. I am trying to get more links that use my 'brand' name rather than exact anchor text. I believe I have a natural profile - any thoughts? 2. One thing I notice is the higher ranking of larger brands now (at least in my field). Just because a domain with higher authority creates one page of content, how can that outrank me? I mean, I've got ten years and 600+ darn good articles of content on my website. How can one domain that is very 'general' (for example, well known in the world of travel and not specialized or niche like mine) outrank me? How can it be that Google allows larger brands to outrank smaller ones just because they have more backlinks and domain authority, but no real content to support these pages? Is content truly king? I am thinking about an article: "Google, Brands, and the Death of Small Business Online." Anyone wish to collaborate here? I am not being hatelful or resentful, but I foresee the day when an 'alternative' search engine emerges, doesn't allow crap ads, allows users more flexibility, and brings search to the next level. Not all of us want the big brands and are searching for alternatives that stand out. I ignore them when I am searching mostly. Any thoughts or elaborations? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | journeybeyondtravel1 -
How Can I see my competitors rankings?
Hi, I can see my ranking details but I can not see my competitors rankings. Seomoz is not updating their ranking and there is some problem in rank tracker as I refresh the ranking, but it says it doesn't update it. Why? Regards, Zeeshan
Moz Pro | | Shehryar0 -
My competitive link analysis hasn't been updated in nearly 2 months, why?
Anyone else having this problem? My last update was 2/28 and I'm not sure why it hasn't updated since then. Went through all of the documentation to no avail.
Moz Pro | | syount0 -
Seomoz on-page analysis, how strict to be
Hello, In a competitive niche, how important is it to be strict with the seomoz on-page analysis? If it gives a page/keyword an A, am I good to go? Or do I need to be more strict in that. We've had some competition move above us and we want to make sure we're on-site optimized well. site: nlpca(dot)com Thanks.
Moz Pro | | BobGW0 -
Why are we not ranking? We have done all we can think of. Can you help?
We have an old domain that we have had for years now. And recently. December, we completely redesigned the site, I mean a complete overhaul, design, architecture, asp to php for example. Resubmitted to google via webmaster with a new site map etc. Our website for reference is www.completeoffice.co.uk. We are trying to rank in UK google, www.google.co.uk, for the term office refurbishment kent (we are on page 2) and office refurbishment (we are on page 17). This is confusing me, because thats 7 pages lower than we were originally, before the site design, its better seo wise, duplicate content is none, title tage meta tags all correct, domain authority has doubled from 12 to 24 in a few months all in an effort to rank better. our homepage and office refurb pages both got an A on the on page SEOmoz tool test. So we dont understand why we are not ranking highly. It seems sites, much uglier and less seo friendly than our with same or lower domain authority are ranking at least 10 pages higher than us. Why is this? Can anyone help or give us a few suggestions. All help greatly appreciated. SEOmozzers.
Moz Pro | | CompleteOffice0 -
Newly acquired links not showing up on link analysis
I have recently gained a few links which I know are definitly up, because I have seen them, however, when I navigate to link analysis on SEOmoz pro, the number of links isnt showing as more than before. How long does it take to update?
Moz Pro | | CompleteOffice0 -
Why doesn't the BBB / Trustlink.org links show up in the Link Analysis?
I am curious why one of my client's main competitors (www.allbayhardwood.com) shows links from the Better Business Bureau and Trustlink.org (associated with BBB) but links from those sources do not show up for his domain (www.sanjosehardwoodfloors.com). He has been a BBB Acredited Business since 12/2010 and on file with them for probably as long as they have had the online version, which seems like plenty of time for the link to have been picked up. BBB has a very nice domain authority and it would be great to see these links show up. (they don't show up in webmaster tools either) Is there something I am missing? Thanks in advance guys and gals! (I know the site has other SEO issues - just getting started on pounding everything out.)
Moz Pro | | SnoBaer0