Do you want to know how your competitors are increasing their organic traffic?
Conducting a competitor analysis for SEO can reveal a wealth of information. Instead of guessing which keywords to target or which links to build, you can look at what your competitors are doing and improve the SEO of your own site.
We’ll show you how to conduct an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress in this article.
Why Should You Conduct a Competitor Analysis in SEO?
Creating the right type of content, focusing on the right search terms, and building the right backlinks for your WordPress SEO strategy can be difficult.
Looking at what your competitors are doing can help you in this situation.
You can see what works for others and how they can attract organic visitors to their website by conducting a competitor analysis.
You can increase your WordPress site’s organic traffic and outrank your competitors for different keywords by building on the success of these strategies.
A competitor analysis can be done in a variety of ways. To do an SEO competitor analysis inside your WordPress dashboard, you can use a WordPress plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) or an SEO tool.
Method 1: Use AIOSEO to conduct an SEO competitor analysis.
The All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin is the simplest way to conduct an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress. It is the best SEO tool for WordPress, with over 3 million businesses relying on it.
AIOSEO makes it simple to optimize your website for search engines without the need for professional or technical knowledge.
You can use the plugin’s SEO Analysis tool to see what your competitors are doing to increase their organic traffic.
We’ll be using the AIOSEO free version for this tutorial because it includes the SEO Analysis tool. A premium version of AIOSEO is available, which includes additional features such as sitemap tools, redirection manager, schema markup, robots.txt editor, and more.
The AIOSEO plugin will need to be installed and activated on your website first. Please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more information.
The plugin’s setup wizard will automatically launch after it has been activated. You can continue by clicking the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button.
Then, from your WordPress dashboard, go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis and select the ‘Analyze Competitor Site’ tab.
Then, enter the URL of your competitor’s website and hit the ‘Analyze’ button.
AIOSEO will show you your competitor’s overall score as well as a preview of the meta title and meta description that will appear in the search results.
You can also look at the keywords that your competitor is using on their website. This data is useful because it provides clues about different search terms that you can use to focus on your own website and improve your rankings.
Following that, AIOSEO will evaluate your competitor’s website based on a variety of factors. It will highlight critical issues as well as aspects of their website that are working well.
You can begin by viewing the SEO title and meta description, as well as their character length, in the ‘Basic SEO’ section.
The plugin also displays the keywords used in the meta tags, H1 and H2 tags, image alt attributes used by your competitor, and the total number of internal and external links found on the page.
You can now compare the data from the Basic SEO section to your website and identify areas where you can improve your rankings and organic traffic.
You can see, for example, that your competitor’s image alt attributes are missing. Image alt text aids search engines in comprehending and ranking images in image search results.
You can take advantage of this opportunity by optimizing your images with alt attributes. By securing top rankings in image search results, you can attract more visitors to your site.
Scroll down to the ‘Advanced SEO’ section after that.
You can see if a competitor uses a canonical link tag if a page has any noindex headers or meta tags and if the www and non-www versions of the URL redirect to the same site in this section.
Aside from that, AIOSEO will show you if your competitor uses a robotx.txt file to improve crawling and indexing or schema markup to display additional information in search results.
You can find out which areas to focus on and outrank your competitor by comparing your website on these parameters.
Then, in the AIOSEO SEO Analysis tool, go to the ‘Performance’ section. The plugin will analyze your competitor in this section and show you what they’re doing to speed up their website or eCommerce store.
The speed of your website is crucial for SEO success. This is because Google now considers the time it takes for a page to load as a ranking factor. You can gain a significant advantage in search engine rankings if you can make your site load faster than your competitor’s.
Check out our guide to boosting WordPress speed and performance for more tips on how to speed up your website.
Finally, the AIOSEO has a section called “Security.”
The plugin checks if the competitor has disabled directory listings on the server in this section. You can protect your sensitive information from falling into the hands of malicious hackers by disabling directory listings on a server.
More tips and tricks for securing your website and gaining a competitive advantage can be found in our WordPress security guide.
Aside from that, AIOSEO will examine your competitor’s website and look for malware that Google would flag. If Google detects malware or malicious programs on your site, it will lower your search engine rankings.
Another thing the plugin looks for is whether your competitor is using HTTPS. Sites that use HTTPS have a higher ranking in search engines than sites that use HTTP.
Check out our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website if you’re still using HTTP.
Method 2: Use Semrush to conduct an SEO competitor analysis.
Using an SEO tool like Semrush to conduct SEO competitor analysis is another option.
Professional SEO experts, bloggers, marketers, online store owners, and businesses of all sizes use it as one of the most popular SEO checker and website analyzer tools on the market.
Semrush has a powerful competitor analysis tool that can help you figure out what keywords they’re using, how many backlinks they have, what content they’re producing, and more.
To begin, go to the Competitive Research menu on the left and select the ‘Domain Overview’ section. After that, just type in your competitor’s URL and hit the ‘Search’ button.
Semrush will now present you with a summary of your competitor’s website. You can see its authority score, current month organic search traffic, paid search traffic, backlinks, and display advertising.
It will also show you which country has the largest share of organic traffic, as well as a monthly breakdown of organic traffic.
In addition, the Domain Overview section contains reports on the number of SERP features, top organic keywords, organic position distribution, main organic competitors, top paid keywords, and much more.
The best part about Semrush is that it allows you to examine each of these reports in greater depth, allowing you to learn more about your competitors’ SEO strategies.
You can use the Domain Overview report to get a quick overview of how your competitor is performing. You can set goals for your website and identify areas for improvement using the information from these reports.
Go to the ‘Traffic Analytics’ section of the menu on the left for a more detailed analysis. Semrush provides a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s traffic sources in this section.
View the total number of visits, unique visitors, average visit duration, and bounce rate to get started.
You can see the top traffic sources and which ones attract the most visitors if you scroll down.
If your competitor is getting a lot of traffic from social media but you aren’t, you can look for ways to increase traffic from social media.
After that, use the menu on your left to navigate to the ‘Organic Research’ section.
This section contains information about your competitor’s top keywords, position changes, top pages, and SERP features such as featured snippets, among other things.
To begin, look at the Top Organic Keywords to see what terms people are searching for to find your competitor’s website.
Semrush displays the search term’s position, the keyword’s search intent (whether it’s informational or transactional), total volume, and more.
This is extremely useful information for improving the SEO of your WordPress site. It aids in the discovery of new keywords for your website, the identification of opportunities to capture SERP features and the creation of new content ideas.
For example, you can see your competitor’s most important pages that drive the most organic traffic. You can then cover similar topics on your own site once you’ve identified them.
Then, from the menu on your left, go to the Keyword Gap section to learn more about the search terms used by your competitors.
The Keyword Gap tool on Semrush allows you to enter up to 5 domains. Start by entering your website and the websites of your competitors, then selecting the Organic keywords option and clicking the ‘Compare’ button.
Semrush will then display a list of keywords that you and your competitors have in common. The key is to look at the report on ‘Missing’ keywords.
These are search terms that you don’t have on your site but that your competitor does. It’s a great way to discover new keywords to use on your site and increase your organic traffic.
Semrush can also detect backlinks in addition to keywords. Backlinks, also known as referring domains, are a key Google ranking factor that acts as a vote of confidence for your website.
Because backlinks are beneficial to your site’s SEO, it’s critical to learn where your competitors get their backlinks. Then, using the information, you can attempt to obtain backlinks for your website.
To begin, go to the ‘Backlink Gap’ section and enter up to five competitor websites before clicking the ‘Find prospects’ button.
Semrush will display a list of referring domains that link to your competitors’ websites. Then, from the ‘Prospects for domain’ dropdown menu, choose a competitor.
The referring domains can then be filtered by best, weak, strong, shared, and unique. Select the ‘Best’ option to find backlinks that only point to your competitor and not to you.
This way, you’ll discover new ways to increase the number of backlinks to your site and improve your keyword rankings.
Looking for lost links is another way to use Semrush to capture backlinks from your competitors.
Simply navigate to the ‘Backlink Analytics’ section of the left-hand menu. Then type in the URL of your competitor’s website and hit the ‘Analyze’ button.
Next, select ‘Lost’ from the available filters under the ‘Backlinks’ tab. Semrush will show you all of your competitor’s backlinks that are no longer active.
This is a fantastic way for you to gain more backlinks. To replace the lost backlink to the referring site, pitch your own blog post or landing page.
We hope that this article taught you how to conduct a WordPress SEO competitor analysis.
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