What is competitor research?
Competitor research is the process of analyzing and studying the strategies and performance of your competitors in the online space. It involves investigating the websites, content, keywords, backlinks, and overall SEO tactics of competing businesses or websites in your industry or niche.
Competitor research helps you:
- Benchmark your website’s performance by comparing it to other websites
- Discover valuable keyword opportunities for your own content by studying the keywords your competitors are targeting
- Get insight into the topics, formats, and quality that resonate with your target audience.
- Identify content gaps and opportunities to create more compelling and informative content.
What should I look for when researching a competitor?
Here are some questions to investigate as you do your research:
How does their SEO performance compare to yours?
Is their modeled traffic trending up or down? Are their rankings generally improving? Upward trends indicate they are investing in SEO.
What keywords are they targeting?
By identifying the keywords your competitors are focusing on, you can gain insights into their SEO strategy, understand their target audience, and discover potential keyword opportunities for your own business.
What is their content strategy? Where are they focusing their optimization efforts?
Look for keywords where their rankings are improving.
- What types of content are they investing in? Look at the non-branded keywords where their performance is improving. These are keywords they are targeting in order to reach new audiences.
- What result types do they appear for? Growing ownership indicates they are investing in this type of content.
Are there content gaps and competitive wins?
Do they have content that you don’t? Do you have content that they don’t?
Are there untapped opportunities for keywords where neither of you rank in top results?
Uncovering these opportunities can help you gain a competitive advantage and attract a specific market segment.
What are their top-performing pages?
Examining your competitors' content can provide valuable insights into the topics they cover, the formats and structures they use, and the depth of their information.
This is a best practice box. The borders that appear in the editor and this explainer will not appear in the published article. Use the BP Body section below for best practices and use cases you'd like to call out.
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Compare SEO Performance Trends
- They examine a competitor’s modeled traffic and rankings, noticing a steady upward trend.
- This signals that the competitor is actively investing in SEO, prompting deeper investigation into their strategies.
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Identify Target Keywords
- Using keyword gap analysis, they discover that the competitor ranks for high-intent terms like "best endpoint protection software" and "cloud security compliance checklist," but their own site does not.
- They prioritize these keywords and create new content, including in-depth white papers and comparison pages, to compete.
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Analyze Content Strategy and Optimization Focus
- They look at the competitor’s content structure and find a strong presence in Answer Boxes and People Also Ask results.
- To compete, they optimize their own content by adding structured FAQ sections, bullet points, and schema markup.
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Identify Content Gaps and Untapped Opportunities
- The analysis reveals that while the competitor covers compliance frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001, they lack resources on emerging security trends like AI-driven cyber threats.
- The strategist works with their content team to produce timely, authoritative articles on these topics before the competitor catches up.
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Examine Top-Performing Pages and Result Types
- They review the competitor’s highest-ranking pages and note a strong focus on interactive tools, such as a “Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Quiz.”
- To differentiate, they propose launching a similar tool with added value, like a downloadable risk report with personalized recommendations.
By systematically following these best practices, the SEO strategist not only closes gaps but also identifies unique opportunities to position their company as a cybersecurity thought leader, leading to increased organic visibility and lead generation.
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How do I research a competitor in Conductor?
Use Explorer to research a competitor's performance and strategy.