SEO competitors shown by chess pieces and a search bar

Why Your SEO Competitors Are Not Always Your Business Competitors

As small businesses, we’re very aware of our business competitors. We tend to keep an eye on them, want to beat them and set ourselves apart from them. But these companies aren’t necessarily your SEO competitors. 

I know that adding another type of competitor to the mix can seem a bit much and another thing to worry about, but from an SEO perspective, they offer valuable information to drive your own SEO further and get ahead of the competition.

SEO competitors shown by chess pieces and a search bar

What Are SEO Competitors and How Do You Find them?

Your search competitors are simply the websites of companies offering similar or the same products and services as you do, that appear higher on search engines than you. That’s it really, there’s no special trick, just those who are outranking you and much more likely to steal traffic from your website.

How you find SEO competitors 

This is also fairly simple. The best approach is to decide on a “golden keyword” that summarises your site in one simple search term that your audience is likely to use. For example, the golden keyword for my site would be “marketing-first SEO”. 

Use private browsing mode to then search your golden keyword. Private browsing creates a cleaner environment to search, without factors such as your search history affecting the results. Check out the top three organic results. If they indeed offer similar products or services than you, then you have a list of your top three SEO competitors. 

You might find that on occasion your search competitors are actually your business competitors. That’s fine and it just confirms you are looking in the right place. However, you may find that your business competitors could actually be ranking lower than you or not even being found for the searches you want to be found for. In this case, it wouldn’t really make much sense to base your SEO strategy on them to get ahead.

Finding keywords shown by a magnifying glass against a purple and teal background

SEO Competitors Analysis to Further Your SEO Strategy

Now you’ve found your search competition, it’s time to start digging around to try and uncover their SEO strategy with an SEO competitors analysis. 

Keyword Research for Content Updates

First start by finding their top ranking keywords. You’re not necessarily looking to suddenly switch to using them all in your content, but rather see if you can spot any patterns. Do they rank for groups of similar keywords around particular topics? What are they mainly being seen for and what pages do you think these relate to?

Secondly, carry out a keyword gap analysis which helps you identify the keywords they rank for but you don’t yet. Again spot any patterns or topic areas you’re missing out on. Are there any opportunities for you to update or add to your website content?

You can find the data you need with tools such as Ubersuggest, or SEMrush etc.

Content Strategy Comparison

When poking around their site, ask yourself some simple questions to get a picture of their content strategy:

  • What is the main message they are trying to get across?
  • How do they show expertise and prove their are good?
  • What are there main call to action buttons?

You can find all this included in the SEO Strategy Toolkit available to download and use right away. 

Overall, I understand it’s a bit of a mind shift, but by focusing on your SEO competitors instead of your business competitors is a very smart move and you can bet most people aren’t doing this. This is the approach I always take with my clients as part of Phase One: RESEARCH with my simple three-step SEO strategy process. 

You could always take the guesswork out of everything and trust me to find the right strategy for your small business. Take a look at the process and book yourself a discovery call to get going today. 

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