Marketing

What Is a Competitor Website Content Analysis?

Staying ahead of your competitors ensures you reach more people. While coming up with your content ideas is essential to a good marketing strategy, you might need some help getting creative. That’s where analyzing your competitors’ content comes into play.

Keep reading to learn how to complete a competitor content analysis and its benefits. If you’re ready to enhance your marketing strategy, contact WebFX to get started. 

What is competitor content analysis?

Competitor content analysis is a strategy for looking at your competitors’ techniques. Content analysis has specific steps to see which of their content is performing best and determine what advantages you have over them. With competitor content analysis, you can find gaps in their approach. 

Are they lacking good coverage of an industry topic? Can you find keywords or issues they haven’t written about yet? Those are the areas you’ll want to focus on after performing an analysis. 

How to do competitor content analysis

Follow the steps below to hit all the marks during your analysis.

1. Determine your competitors

While this step might seem obvious, you should know which competitors to analyze. Break the competition into two categories:

• Direct: Any company that offers the same products or services as your business.

• Indirect: Any company that offers different products or services that could satisfy your target customers’ needs and pain points.

Consider local competitors if you work more in that sector than nationally. Who are you competing with throughout your town or city? Compile a list of every possible competitor for your business.

2. Start analyzing your competitor’s content positioning

Your competition’s positioning includes its goals, target audience, and the steps they take to present its core message. 

Look at their homepage title and content. How do your competitors present themselves? What products or services do they offer, and how do they talk about them?

3. Look at search engine optimization (SEO) metrics

Seeing how your competitors perform in distinct SEO areas can help you find places to improve. SEO analysis can also uncover how much online traffic you can expect for your niche or industry. 

You can use an SEO analytics tool to find organic search traffic numbers, domain authority scores, time on site, top keywords, backlinks, etc.

Once you see how your competitors rank, you can note which areas they succeed in — such as video marketing or blog posts — and how you can improve or fill in gaps where they fall behind.

4. Analyze your competitors’ content

Content is the key to any website analysis. Start by looking at the different categories they write or post videos about. If your competitors have blog categories or tags, look at the ones with the most content. 

Once you understand what they’re talking about, you can analyze the quality of individual posts. Ask yourself about the level of detail, structure, and readability. Are there spelling mistakes or low-quality images?

You should also look at the content’s length. Are the posts long, short, or somewhere in the middle? Which type of content do they have more of — blog posts, videos, podcasts, ebooks, etc.? 

Finally, look at their call-to-actions (CTAs) — if they have them. Determine which ones they use, such as pop-ups, banners, or sign-up forms.

5. Make your adjustments

Once your initial analysis is complete, you can turn the results into actionable goals. Make a summary of everything you have learned about your competitors. Brainstorm topics or themes to write about and how to incorporate visual content. 

Take your competitors’ tactics and try them out — challenge yourself to improve upon them. Highlight what they are doing well and how you can do it better. 

What are the benefits of analyzing your competitor’s content?

Analyzing your competitors’ content provides numerous benefits for your company’s strategies. With competitor content analysis, you learn:

• How to gain organic traffic: Your competitor analysis provides insights into how they attract viewers, allowing you to employ similar tactics.

• What gaps exist in your strategy and industry: Competitor insights allow you to see where you are missing out. It can also show industry knowledge gaps, which you can use as topic inspiration.

• Which content performs well in your industry: Your analysis highlights what topic areas or types of content do well in your specific niche. You can take this information and apply it to your strategies.

So, start researching your competitors (and reaping the benefits)!

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