Analyzing the Competition
You’ve generated a list of “buyer keywords” that your audience uses to search with, but do you know how competitive that keyword is? Your next step is to determine how difficult it will be to actually rank your keywords on Google’s first page.
Some terms will present too much of a barrier for you to spend your time on when there are easier terms to rank for. This section will help you find keywords with good search volume and little to no competition.
Browser Tools
Luckily, there are two free browser plugins that will make this task fast and simple: SEO Quake and MozBar.
Go to SEOQuake and click on the big orange button. SEOQuake supports Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari browsers. Follow the prompts to install and activate.
Using the same browser you installed SEOQuake on, go to Moz and do the installation. MozBar supports either Firefox or Chrome. Follow the onscreen prompts, install and activate.
After successful installations, you will see additional data when performing Google searches. Now, it’s time to size up the competition.
1 – Check PageRank and Page Authority
Do you remember that Google doesn’t rank sites… it ranks pages?
Yes, a website’s domain authority (and brand) plays an important role in ranking, but the #1 factor is the authority of that specific page.
The two best measurements of a page’s authority are PageRank and the Moz Page Authority.
To check PageRank, use the SEPQuake data locate in the “PR” field. The higher the number, the more PageRank this page has.
Using PageRank will have some controversy because Google rarely updates this metric, but historically PageRank has been a key component of the search algorithm. Also, because PR isn’t updated often, newer pages may not show any PageRank in the toolbar – even if they have a lot of authority.
To check Page Authority, use the MozBar and locate the “PA” field. The higher the number, the more Page Authority this page has.
The Moz Page Authority is a nice complement to PageRank and Moz updates this metric monthly so the data is fresh.
PageRank and Page Authority Goal
You should expect to see some high PR/PA results on the first page for most medium or high volume keywords but you want to be on the lookout for low PR/PA competition. Those are the types of pages that you can easily knock off with your optimized page. Locating SERP’s with a lot of low level PR/PA ranking should be a green light to proceed with that keyword.
2 – Check Referring Domains
Referring Domains is another way of saying backlinks and backlinking is at the core of Google’s search algorithm. Despite Google’s recent updates, the quantity of backlinks is still considered one of the top three ranking signals by industry professionals.
To check Referring Domains, use SEOQuake and locate the “LD” field (Linking Domains). The higher the number, the more backlinks this page has.
There are several tools that are more accurate at checking backlinks (and we’ll get to those in the Link Authority section below); the SEOQuake tool is perfect for now.
3 – Check Domain Authority and Brand Presence
It’s easy to see that Google loves ranking pages from major authority sites like Wikipedia, Amazon and CNN.com – just look at the search results.
While pages from these sites do rank with Page Authority, quite a few get a huge bump from the fact that they’re on an authoritative domain. That means that you also need to evaluate the websites you want to compete against (not just the pages).
To check Domain Authority, use MozBar and locate the “DA” field. The higher the number, the more authority this website has.
Page Authority is important, but you also want to consider Domain Authority. Websites with a high PA and DA are tough to outrank. In general, you want to target competition with both low PA and DA – those are keywords that you can easily rank for.
Brand Results
Brand signals (signs that show the search engines that a website is part of a large popular brand) are becoming more integrated into Google’s algorithm.
This means you need to consider a brand’s “size” when making decisions about which keywords to focus your attention on.
The most popular websites, like Amazon, CNET, Yelp and Reddit are given an edge over smaller brand results with similar pages and domain authority.
4 – Check Link Authority
Sometimes PA and DA metrics can be misleading… Before you invest time and money trying to rank for a keyword, you should try and determine how the current top 10 got there and one of the best ways to do this is to review their backlink profile (AKA Link Authority).
For this research, you’ll need a paid tool set. There are several companies that offer backlink data and the industry leaders are:
Each of these tools has pros and cons, but all of them will do a decent job of analyzing backlink profiles. Because each tool uses a different method to scrape data, their results will vary (greatly) so many SEO will use a combination of these services to find all of the backlinks.
Once you look at a websites Link Profile, you can usually tell within a few seconds “how” they got to the top 10.
Websites that have used black hat SEO techniques usually have the following pattern:
- Low quality web directories
- Article directories
- Blog networks
- Blog comments
- A high percentage of links from foreign countries
Also look at their anchor text profile. These sites will usually have an over optimized anchor text pattern (displaying a narrow range of anchor text variance) – another signal that the page ranking will not last in the SERPs.
When reviewing a Link Profile, you want to see what types of websites are linking to this page/site. Check to see if the competitor has any of the following in their link profile:
- Major news sites, like The Huffington Post, CNN or ESPN
- Editorial links from authoritative sites in your industry
- Hard to get directory links (like DMOZ)
If you see a lot of the top 10 competitors with backlinks from hard to get sources, this keyword maybe too competitive for you.
Don’t overly stress about backlink profiles. The point here is to be aware of what your competition is doing and how they got to the top.
5 – On-Page SEO
From our previous discussion, you know that on-page SEO efforts can make or break a website’s ability to rank – that’s why you want to check your top 10 competition.
- Check the page’s title tags. Have they used the “exact” keyword? Does the keyword appear closer to the beginning 0r the end of the title tag?
- Next, check the page URL. Have they used they keyword there?
- Check the article. Have they used the “exact” keyword? Does the keyword appear closer to the beginning 0r the end of the article? Have they used it multiple times? Did they use LSI keywords?
- Search through the page source code. Have they used they keyword inside of a H1 or H2 tag? What about the image alt tags? Do you see the keyword there?
If you see the keyword is included in an H1/H2 tag, the URL and as part of an image’s alt text, consider this page well optimized.
If the keyword is missing from these elements, consider the page poorly optimized. You should be able to outrank this page with on-page optimization. matching (or better) content and a similar backlink profile – even if the site has decent authority.
6 – Content Quality
After all of the research steps mentioned, let’s not forget one of the most important aspects of ranking… Content!
The quality of your content will have a huge impact on your ability to rank in the top 10. If you want to rank for a competitive keyword, be prepared to beat (or at minimum) match the content quality of your competitor. This might seem difficult to assess, but you will quickly understand what’s required just by checking out your competition.
- Was the content written by an expert (like a doctor or other authority figure)?
- Does the article cite trustworthy research sources making it more credible and worthy of sharing?
- Does the article use relevant images and/or graphics to make the content easier to understand?
- Does the website look modern with easy to read fonts and an appealing layout/design or does it look like something from the beginning of the internet? Poor website design can hurt credibility and visitor engagement just as easily as poor content.
Conclusion
All of the information in this Analyzing the Competition section is to give you better insights about your competition. All of these steps can be completed manually (except for the Link Profile research), but the software suites mentioned (Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic) will help you speed through the process.
The point of this research is to allow yourself the ability to make an informed decision. Better you spend a little time doing this research than finding out later that the keyword you’ve chosen is too competitive.