Competitive Research
Competitive research in SEO means, in a nutshell, stealing your competitors’ rankings and traffic.
Well, not exactly stealing.
But it does involve reverse-engineering what's working for your competitors, and using that information to your advantage!
Competitive research typically follows a few common lines of inquiry: identifying competitors, keyword research, content gap analysis, and backlink exploration . If you're not sure where to start when it comes to establishing your competitors, check out the True Competitor feature in Moz Pro, and start building your competitive strategy.
In addition, we've listed some companion resources on competitive research and analysis for SEO.
How to Do a Competitor Analysis for SEO : A terrific introduction to SEO competitive analysis with a free template to copy for your own campaigns.
The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide : An effective competitive research process starts with keywords, and this guide outlines a step-by-step process you can implement today to identify keyword opportunities.
Link Gap Analysis for SEO : Identify opportunities to increase your authority based on your competitors’ backlink strategy.
SEO Competitive Analysis Certification : Learn how to confidently build an SEO competitive analysis plan and get certified with this 6-part series. This certification combines on-demand video lessons with tasks and quizzes to affirm your understanding.
How to Use Your Competition's "Top Pages" Data to Bolster Your SEO Efforts
By comparing top pages data from multiple sources against one another, you can get some really cool, powerful advanced SEO opportunities in your content and keyword targeting. Rand explains how in this Whiteboard Friday.
Is Quora Skirting the Edge of ‘Spammy’ When it Comes to SEO?
While Google says all spam is treated equally, taking a deep, hard look at Quora made this author wonder if that's really the case.
Be Your Site's Hero: An Audit Manifesto – Next Level
SEO comes with a lot of "whys" that can be difficult to answer. Jo Cameron is here to remove some of the mystery and level up your site audit skills with the help of ace tips, Bonnie Tyler, and a hefty toolkit in the newest installment of our Next Level educational series!
Here's How to Supercharge Your Competitive Research Using a URL Profiler and Fusion Tables
Competitive analyses usually mean sifting through a ton of data. Craig Bradshaw's here to share an 8-step process that combines free data collection tools, fusion tables, and network graphs to take care of the heavy lifting when doing competitive research.
The Brand Halo Effect: Does Brand Awareness Impact Organic Search Rankings?
How much weight does brand carry in the SERPs? It might be more than you think.Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
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Keyword Research Master Guide
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Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis
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Where & How do Top Startups Get Their Links?
Do the top startups build links? If they're getting traction, SEO is super important to their livelihood and future fundraising and revenue. So how are the top startups getting links, and how do their link counts change over time?
How to Optimize for Competitors' Branded Keywords
It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor, from determining their worthiness to properly targeting your funnel to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.
Recovering the Data Google Has Hidden Away
It's no secret that Google keeps a lot of secrets. From keyword data to link data to traffic data (and surely more), there's a lot that we could benefit from — if they'd only share it! Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, Rand takes us through various ways to access that all-important data in this week's Whiteboard Friday.
How to Build a Real-Time Listening Post for a Time-Sensitive Vertical
Using social listening to spy on the competition is an underrated tactic for marketers looking to gain the upper hand in competitive verticals.
Beyond the SEO Plateau: After Optimizing Your Website, What's Next?
It's a near-universal experience for consultants and in-house SEOs who've worked on numerous organic search campaigns. The first 3-6 months (longer if the site is very large or complex) of any SEO effort is almost always exclusively dedicated to fixing mistakes, improving existing issues, tweaking and tuning the suboptimal, and generally closing the gap between what exists now and current best...