How to Identify and Beat Your Brand’s Top SEO Competitors [in 2022].

1. Create a list of all the buying keywords that your customers will be searching for. TIP: Use long-tail keywords that have buying intent.
2. Do a google search for those keywords and see what the top results are. TIP: The first result in Google has over a 25% click-through rate. The second result has a 15% click-through rate and the third spot has an 11% click-through rate.
3. Analyze the top results:
   1. What keywords are they ranking for?
   2. What content are they using?
   3. Are they answering the search inquiry?
   4. How long is the content?
4. Create a keyword gap analysis report. Tip: This will let you know what alternative keywords you should be targeting that relate to the main keywords you want to rank for.
5. Create better content around the keywords that you want to rank for. Tip: This content needs to be targeting long-tail keywords that have buying intent. It doesn’t make sense to rank for a keyword that only drives visitors that have no intention of purchasing your product or service.

What is a “SEO” competitor and how is it different than a “traditional” competitor?

An SEO competitor is a business or a brand that is ranking higher in the search results for the search terms or keywords you want to rank for.

A traditional competitor is a brand or business that competes directly with you through traditional marketing, like print, retail space, tv, and other types of media.

the best marketing departments always know who their top Competitors are and have a Strategy to beat them.

B2B advertising is changing. It used to be that all you had to do was drive top-of-mind awareness and when your ideal customer was ready to buy they would think of you. This is all changing with google. Your customers are paying less attention to all other ads and waiting until they need your product to start researching it.

Your customers are scared of making a poor buying decision. This has led to everyone doing some research on Google, and right or wrong, they trust Google and the search results. If a brand is ranking high on google, people assume that google trusts the company and it is safe to do business with them.

Picture this scenario. A leader asks staff to do some research to find the perfect product for their needs. 90% of the time this staff will first look online to get an idea of what is out there. If your company is not ranking in the top 10 for that search, you will most likely never get that business.

You need to rank in the top 10 search results for your top brand’s keywords if you are serious about growing your company. You can do a lot of other advertising to drive top-of-mind awareness but if you aren’t showing up in the top 3 results in SERPS you are going to lose a lot of business.

Benefits of knowing who your top sEO competitors are and why competitor analysis is important in sEO.

• You can discover their online strategies.
• You can discover what keywords they believe are important to growing their brand.
• You can uncover their biggest drivers of growth and conversions.
• You can discover what your competitive advantage is after reviewing their website.

what are the three types of competitors?

• Direct competitors: These competitors are competing directly with your primary product or service and are offering a product or service that is identical to yours. They are also competing for the same customer base.
• Indirect Competitors: Competitors are in the same category but sell different types of products. A SAAS company selling a financial services product competes in the SAAS industry but the product they sell competes with other financial service providers.
• Replacement competitors: Competitors that are offering a product or service that is an alternative to yours. Both companies are trying to solve the same pain points but have different solutions.

How to Identify your competitors:

Create a list of all the keywords that your customers will be searching for to find your product online.

There are three types of keywords you need to focus on. We like to sort them based on the part of the sales funnel that we are going to target.

1. General top of funnel keywords. These are going to be very general and focus more on product and brand awareness. If you provide email marketing the keyword would “email marketing” along with some variations.
2. Middle of funnel keywords. This part of the funnel starts to have some buying intent. This is where you should focus on keywords that are related to the research of your product. From our email marketing example it would be words like – “how does email marketing work, does email marketing have good return on investment, what do I need to be aware of when email marketing.”
3. Bottom of funnel keywords. These are keywords that signal buying intent. They are going to purchase a email marketing system but they just need to decide on which one. It could be keywords like. “what is the best email marketing system for my specific business, best types of services for email marketing,”.

Do a google search for those keywords and see what the top results are.

An easy and free tool to use is Google, just type in the keywords you are targeting and make a list of the top results. Keep track of the top results for all the keywords you have selected and see what websites keep coming up in the top results. You can also use any of the Google scrapers like Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, or Ubersuggest. Type in your keywords and analyze the results. Each program will tell you who is ranking the highest for each keyword and what the search traffic is.

Analyze the top results:

• What keywords are they ranking for?
• How often do they have that keyword spread throughout the content?
• How many headings are they using?
• What is the length of the content?
• What type of content is it?
• How many links do they have directed at the page?

Create a keyword gap analysis report:

These are keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you are not. Every keyword drives ranking and everyone counts. You have to incorporate these into your content or you will never rank higher. This will also give you some ideas on keywords that you may have missed. You need to find related keywords that are easy to rank for so you incorporate these into your content strategy.

Create better content around the keywords that you want to rank for:

Finally, this is what it is all about.

Your content needs to do these five things things better than anyone else to get better leads.

1. Answer the customer’s main search inquiry better than anyone else
2. Position your product or service as the best option for them.
3. Position your company as an expert in the field.
4. Give the customer the confidence to work with your company.
5. Provide value to the reader that they can’t get anywhere else.

Number five is the most important and consistently provides the highest number of quality leads for our content.

Content should be created to provide maximum value to the reader. It needs to be in-depth and answer all their questions while positioning you as the brand that can best meet their needs or solve their pain points.

Conclusion:

Some keywords are so competitive that it is virtually impossible to rank for them without a lot of work and content built around specific keywords. Your goal should be to find highly specific long tail keywords that pertain to your business that have low competition. The more of these keywords that you can find and create content around, the easier it will be to start getting higher quality leads.

Follow the steps above and you will consistently start ranking higher and eventually beat out your competition.

Leave a comment and let me know what strategies you have found to be the best to beat your competition.