Evaluate the quality of the content and the keyword optimization techniques used.
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:54 am
Next, drill down to the high-value page you identified in Step 1.
Evaluate factors such as:
Keyword prominence
Using supporting keywords and LSI phrases
Content quality for user experience
Internal links to support pages
Overall depth and uniqueness of content
This will help you evaluate how effectively they optimize and structure their pages for keywords. You can professors edu email database identify strengths to emulate or weaknesses to improve.
Also check if they focus on keyword intent to align content with informational, commercial, or navigational searches.
Let's look at the competitor's high-value page:
Colorado Ski Resorts
Ski Resorts Overview
They do not include the keyword colorado ski resorts, although they do use a couple of supporting keywords, such as winter getaway in Colorado. The competitor has modeled this page as a navigation page, internally linking to all relevant ski resorts, improving the user experience.
In this case, the opportunities would be
Further optimize content around the keyword colorado ski resorts and other long-tail keywords that the competitor is not ranking well for.
Write more detailed content about ski resorts, perhaps in listicle format.
Always use your competitors' content as inspiration, but never copy it.
The best trick: You can use web scraping to stay informed about your competitors' content,
Step 3: Analyze user engagement metrics to measure content performance.
Go beyond optimization to evaluate actual user engagement on competitor pages.
Use an SEO tool to check engagement signals such as backlinks and traffic.
Backlink vs traffic
Poor engagement signals indicate that your high-ranking content isn't satisfying searchers. This is a gap you can fill with more engaging content optimized for those keywords.
Taking this data-driven approach helps you create content that outperforms your competitors by better serving searchers.
Practical strategies to outperform the competition
The goal of competitor analysis is to identify strategic opportunities to outperform your rankings.
Here are 3 key strategies to get an offensive view of keywords against your competitors:
Strategy 1: Optimize for untapped high-volume keywords identified in your competitor analysis.
Find lucrative keywords that your competition is already ranking for, but that you haven't attacked yet. Evaluate whether the comparatively high search volumes make them worth pursuing.
Organic Keywords Overview
For example, a backcountry skiing tour website may determine that competitors are heavily optimizing for keyword variations around Colorado ski resorts that they have surprisingly neglected on their own site. The significant search volume provides a strong incentive to develop content pillars around that topic to take advantage of the demand.
Going after unchallenged competitor keywords allows you to share the search market share.
Evaluate factors such as:
Keyword prominence
Using supporting keywords and LSI phrases
Content quality for user experience
Internal links to support pages
Overall depth and uniqueness of content
This will help you evaluate how effectively they optimize and structure their pages for keywords. You can professors edu email database identify strengths to emulate or weaknesses to improve.
Also check if they focus on keyword intent to align content with informational, commercial, or navigational searches.
Let's look at the competitor's high-value page:
Colorado Ski Resorts
Ski Resorts Overview
They do not include the keyword colorado ski resorts, although they do use a couple of supporting keywords, such as winter getaway in Colorado. The competitor has modeled this page as a navigation page, internally linking to all relevant ski resorts, improving the user experience.
In this case, the opportunities would be
Further optimize content around the keyword colorado ski resorts and other long-tail keywords that the competitor is not ranking well for.
Write more detailed content about ski resorts, perhaps in listicle format.
Always use your competitors' content as inspiration, but never copy it.
The best trick: You can use web scraping to stay informed about your competitors' content,
Step 3: Analyze user engagement metrics to measure content performance.
Go beyond optimization to evaluate actual user engagement on competitor pages.
Use an SEO tool to check engagement signals such as backlinks and traffic.
Backlink vs traffic
Poor engagement signals indicate that your high-ranking content isn't satisfying searchers. This is a gap you can fill with more engaging content optimized for those keywords.
Taking this data-driven approach helps you create content that outperforms your competitors by better serving searchers.
Practical strategies to outperform the competition
The goal of competitor analysis is to identify strategic opportunities to outperform your rankings.
Here are 3 key strategies to get an offensive view of keywords against your competitors:
Strategy 1: Optimize for untapped high-volume keywords identified in your competitor analysis.
Find lucrative keywords that your competition is already ranking for, but that you haven't attacked yet. Evaluate whether the comparatively high search volumes make them worth pursuing.
Organic Keywords Overview
For example, a backcountry skiing tour website may determine that competitors are heavily optimizing for keyword variations around Colorado ski resorts that they have surprisingly neglected on their own site. The significant search volume provides a strong incentive to develop content pillars around that topic to take advantage of the demand.
Going after unchallenged competitor keywords allows you to share the search market share.