Are you working on your SEO or PPC strategy? Or are you trying to figure out how to bring the right traffic to your website? Then you need to start off with a thorough Google competitor analysis. It’s a great way to see what you’re up against and learn what drives success in your industry.
In this long-form article, we will walk you through our step-by-step guide to a strong and useful competitor analysis. From this, you will learn:
- How to find your competitors on Google platforms
- Where to analyze their marketing efforts
- How to target unclaimed SEO opportunities
- What Google Ads can offer for your business
We take a look at three main platforms Google Maps, Google Search, and Google Ads. By taking a peek at what your competition is doing on these marketing tools, you can start to build a strategy to keep pace or outrank them altogether. Let’s dive into how it’s done!
Real Life vs. Google Competitor Analysis
You may have an idea of who your competitors are, whether through word of mouth or by experience. But it’s imperative to know who your online competitors are, particularly the ones showing up on Google.
The competitors you’ve come to know organically might not be ranking number one for effective keywords. As such, it’s a good idea to start your research with your online competition.
Why understanding online competitors is critical to your success
If you’re not paying attention to your competitors online, you run the risk of falling behind the competition that matters most in your industry. Competitor analysis ensures that you’re keeping up with the best keywords, platforms, and trends to help increase your online traffic. If you don’t, then you could end up miles behind your online competition.
How to find your online competitors
Finding your online competitors comes down to putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Go through the customer journey on Google and note down which online competitors you come across.
Google My Business Competitor Analysis
How to find your Google My Business Competitors
While we typically include a city when searching for local website competitors, we can leave it out when looking for Google My Business competition. You can simply perform a search for a service you offer while located in or nearby your office. If you’re a plumber, the ideal query would be just “plumbers.”
If Google thinks the search calls for local business information, they will show a Google Map along with the top 3 map results (otherwise known as the “map pack”). A good indicator of your local competition will be the companies listed on the map.
If you offer more than one service, just search for the one that best represents your business or that generates the most revenue.
Now that you’ve tracked down your Google Map competitors, you can dive in to see what they are doing with their Google My Business listing. You can use that information to help manage your Google My Business to increase your listing’s search presence.
What categories do they use
The first element to consider is categories. Google has a running list of 300+ categories to choose from. This is why it’s a good idea to perform a few customer mock searches ahead of time to check the Google Map results to see what categories are most appearing.
If you haven’t already, perform a few searches related to your services, and write down all of the categories you come across on a simple sheet. Note down the keyword you’re using and the categories that appear in search results underneath.
Once you’ve reviewed the categories your competitors are using, choose up to three of the most popular ones (as long as they match your services) and use them for your GMB listing.
How often are they posting
Google My Business posts are a great way to communicate directly with your customers. They also help your listing look alive, active, and more engaging, which means more calls and visits to your website. Take a look at your competitors to see what kind of posts they have published for some inspiration. If they are not writing any posts, this is a good opportunity to get ahead and write some of your own.
What Q&As do they have
The Q&A feature encourages prospects to ask about businesses they are interested in. It’s imperative to stay on top of these, so if a customer writes a question, make sure to write an official answer.
GMB listing owners can also write in their own questions (with answers) ahead of time to serve more like an FAQ section. If you’re stuck on what questions and answers to write, check out your competition’s listing for some inspiration. If they are not using this feature, this is another way to get ahead of the crop.
How many reviews do they have
Reviews are another impactful ranking factor for Google. The more highly rated reviews, the better. To get an idea of how many reviews you should aim for, check out competition listings to see how many reviews they have.
Once you have a number in mind, reach out to happy clients and ask them to leave feedback on your Google listing.
It’s important to qualify them first to make sure you’re only getting positive reviews, so you could start with a simple questionnaire asking them to rate your services. If the respondents answer positively, thank them for their time and ask them to leave a review on your listing.
Are they responding to reviews
If you get a review on your listing, make sure you reply to it, thanking the reviewer for their comments. You can even repeat a strength mentioned in the review. For example, “Thanks Janes, we like to pride ourselves on our punctuality and efficiency.”
Even if the review is negative, it’s also still important to leave a reply to fix any issues and offer a wider context to other readers. Again, check your competitors to see how they are replying to reviews to get some ideas.
What citations have they built
Citation building is the act of adding your business details to other websites (typically directories). Adding consistent details across several indexes offers Google confidence to show your information in its search results. Google only wants to show the correct information for its users, so the greater the number of consistent information across the web, the more likely this information is up to date and accurate.
Add your business details to popular directories like GMB, Bing Places, and Yelp. You can also look to your competitors to unveil some industry-related directories that fit your business. To do this, try searching for your competitor’s name and telephone number on Google and see what directories come up. Then go through each index that’s relevant to your business and add your business details to them.
Website Content Competitor Analysis
How to find your website competitors
Go to Google and type in a popular service-related keyword. If you are part of a social security law firm, this could be “social security disability lawyers in new york city.” Try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and use natural language. Try this for a few searches related to your services. Your website competitors will appear below any map results or beneath paid ads.
There may be some directories that appear in the results. While you can ignore these from the auditing process, as they aren’t direct competitors, it’s good practice to make sure you’re signed up and have your business listed.
What are their top pages
Competitor content type
When analyzing your competitor’s pages, it’s important to know what type of content they are creating. Some businesses have products that prospective customers don’t realize they need, so they focus on writing blogs to help potential customers discover their product or service. For example, with Todoist, some of their customers might have come across them first by searching “how to organize your life” before they search for a “todo app”.
If your business and your competitors serve local markets, you might notice them creating service pages tailored to specific cities or regions. By analyzing these pages, you can gain insights into what your competitors aim to achieve with their content and how it aligns with their overall strategy.
Content gap analysis
What is a content gap analysis, and how do we run one? In its simplest form, a content gap analysis aims at identifying what search phrases your competitors are ranking for (and you are not).
This is a valuable tool to identify and close gaps to reclaim worthy traffic that only your competitors are getting. Furthermore, the analysis can empower you to create content that is qualitatively better than theirs. This will ensure that you’re not just parroting the same content your competitors already published. You can create something superior that ultimately allows you to differentiate your brand.
For this analysis, Ahrefs is still our tool of choice. This time, type your domain in the search bar, click the magnifying glass on the right side, and scroll down until you find the “Content gap” menu item on the left.
Here, you’ll need to write in the domains of at least three website competitors identified in previous steps.
At this point, you’re potentially facing a list of several dozen up to a few hundred search phrases that your competitors are ranking for, and you’re not. It’s now time to go through each one of them and determine which ones you feel are worth pursuing based on your business goals.
The content gap analysis should be leveraged as a source of inspiration among the whole competitor analysis process. From here, you can discover services, products, or informational material that your competitors are offering to their visitors and make them better and unique to your business.
Backlink Competitor Analysis
Backlinks, together with content, are considered by Google as one of the primary ranking factors online. Backlinks are nothing more than simple hyperlinks that go from one place to another.
To explain backlinks, here at Pronto, we like to refer to them as votes of trust or endorsements from one website to another. The more votes or endorsements a website gets from other websites, the more the ranking algorithm will think of the receiving end of those votes as a trustworthy source of information for web users.
Compare your Domain Authority / Domain Rating
Metrics to analyze a domain’s authority and backlink profile like Domain Authority (Moz) and Domain Rating (Ahrefs) are good indicators to benchmark your website against competitors.
DA and DR act as a summary of a website’s link building activity and show the gap you need to close to be able to outperform your competitors. Typically the higher a website’s Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR), the more competitive keywords you’re able to rank for.
On Ahrefs, you can use the Site Explorer tool to view a competitor’s Backlink Profile, Referring Domains, Anchor Texts, DoFollow vs. NoFollow Links and New vs. Lost Backlinks.
- Competitors with a higher DA/DR rank for more competitive keywords.
- Competitors with a strong DA/DR have a good volume of Backlinks and Referring Domains.
- The wider the gap in the DA/DR, the more backlinks you would need to catch up.
See how many referring domains they have
- High quality sites that link to your competitors you can also build links from.
- Business profiles on authoritative websites that may be worth being visible on.
- Websites that provide valuable Dofollow backlinks.
- How many new referring domains your competitors build to sustain their Domain Rating.
How to build links from the same websites
On Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool, there is a feature to run a Link Intersect that helps you identify websites (referring domains) linking to your competitors but not to your site.
There are filters that allow you to see:
- Dofollow Links
- Sites with a specific Domain Rating
- Sites with a specific traffic range
- Referring Domains DR
- Traffic
- Dofollow over Nofollow
- Link Intersect is more than 1
Anchor Text Analysis
- Branded Anchors: These include the competitor’s brand name or variations. A high percentage of branded anchors indicates a natural and safe backlink profile.
- Keyword-Rich Anchors: Check if competitors use specific keywords they’re targeting. Repetitive instances of a certain keyword could mean that there is a certain focus on building links with that specific anchor/keyword which signifies where your competitors’ marketing efforts are.
- Keyword Variations: Look for the different variations of keywords used in anchors.
- Anchors with Locations: Some anchors may contain specific locations (ex: law firm + “city”) which can help you identify locations competitors invest in targeting or locations that are currently untapped.
- Look for potentially risky practices like spammy, unnatural and overly repetitive tactics and ensure you do not replicate this with your link building strategy.
Google Search Ads Competitor Analysis
Do your competitors run ads?
Competitor analysis for Google search ads is an essential part of campaign planning and strategy. As advertisers, we have the opportunity to see competitor ads and execution strategies firsthand.
Knowing whether or not your competitors are running ads is just the first measure. The most impactful step is to figure out what their game plan is before determining how to stay ahead at all times.
What do their ads look like?
To figure out what competitor ads look like, you must first think about the search terms used to find your competition online. For example, if your competitor is a personal injury lawyer based in New York, the most logical search term would be “Personal injury lawyer in New York.”
Once you have a search term in mind, you can type the query into Google and examine the results.
It’s best to analyze the top 3 or 4 results because they have the highest search rankings. Once you nail those down, see what type of extensions they use, study their ad copy, and then look at the landing pages on these ads.
Here’s an example of what our analysis would consist of:
- Ad copy – We look at the relevancy of the headlines in comparison to the search term. If the search term is personal injury lawyer in New York and the headline is Product Liability, then we would score this headline in the relevancy scale as low.</span.
- Extensions – Extensions are used to provide more information for customers and make your ads stand out from competitors. There are 10 extensions in total, and the most number of extensions that can appear on an ad is 4. It is also essential to consider that not all extensions are suitable for every industry, so it is up to each individual to use the ones that make the most sense.
The top 4 most common extensions that can be applied to almost all industries are Callouts, Sitelinks, Structured Snippets, and Call Extensions. These extensions are going to help increase your CTR, which influences your quality and CPC. - Landing Pages – Landing pages must provide the solution that the customer was searching for. If a customer is looking for lawyers but landed on a page selling personal training, then logically, the landing page experience will be poor.
Your landing pages must match the search terms to improve your quality score and reduce the overall CPC.
How to spy on your competitors’ ads
The next step is to use Ahrefs to examine the competition deeper. You can use Ahrefs to analyze what keywords your competitors are paying for with any corresponding landing pages.
You can use this list of keywords as inspiration to create your own list of target keywords. This helps to identify opportunities that you may have otherwise overlooked.
Next, you need to examine the ad copy of your competitors in more detail. Doing so helps you identify how many ads they are using and which ad leads to which landing page. This will help you when it comes to writing ad copy that appeals to your target audience.
While there may be ads that Ahrefs misses, it provides enough information to properly evaluate each competitor and make informed decisions for your clients.
Conclusion
A good Google competitor analysis will ultimately offer a clearer picture of the current online market. It sheds light on the tactics that have consistently worked for your competitors and those that haven’t yet been adopted. You will get a new perspective on how to showcase your business and an honest assessment of your own strengths and weaknesses.
Are you ready to start your competitive analysis? Consider our guide above. But if you want a nudge in the right direction, we can get you started.
