The Complete Guide to Competitor Keyword Analysis

Most Digital Marketers feel overwhelmed when confronted with Search Engine Optimization.
This fear seems validated as even the most seasoned SEO specialist may find that they are running out of breath playing catch up with Google’s fast-paced release of algorithm updates.
Add to that the fact that you are literally competing with other webmasters and digital marketers in your industry, and does make it seem like a very daunting task to undertake.

But let’s take a step back and ask: Is SEO really as complicated as we make it to be or are we actually overreacting?
Is getting ranked on Google’s SERP really an uphill climb? Are your competitors really bloodthirsty cutthroats that you should be wary about?

We will address these questions and more, as today we’ll show you how you can leverage the competitive aspect of your website’s SEO and use it to your advantage.

Well, only if you’ll allow them to be.

You see, the ease of access and connectivity that the internet provides to everyone works in favor of fostering healthy competition for online businesses.
Due to this level of transparency in the online world (most of the time too much transparency), launching smear campaigns against competitors would surely backfire to its source.
With that out of the way, online businesses tend to coexist peacefully and at times even support each other out.

There are two ways your competition can greatly help your online business in the field of SEO:

Having access to the first one is akin to gaining a complete blueprint for the success of your website in terms of SEO and ranking in Google’s SERP.

While having access to the second one will then allow you to capitalize on these opportunities in order to gain your competitors’ customers for your business.
Know however, that the opposite of this idea applies to your website as well. Your competitors who are below you in ranking would also be looking to you for best practices and improvement opportunities.
But at least the playing field is fair in this essence. This is the beauty of having open and healthy competition.

The next important question is: Who are your competitors?

To learn more about your competitors, you first need to know who they are. The first consideration you would need to make though, is to clearly define if they are a business rival or an SEO competitor.

Your Business Rival

In business terms, any company or brand in the same or related industry that offers similar products or services can be considered a business rival.

Having these rival companies or brands may cause the possibility of price reduction for the services and goods being offered due to an increase in supply to gain a larger share of the market.

Your SEO Competitor

The definition of your business rivals may look broad, but they are actually easier to define.
You see, your SEO competitors are not limited to just your business’ rivals. They’re more than that.

In essence, these are websites that rank for the same keywords that you are focusing on. While they can also be business rivals, they may not be gunning for the same customers as you are.

However, by targeting the same focus keywords as you are, they are competing for the same search traffic as your website.
There are times in SEO when websites of a niche that has nothing to do with the niche you’re ranking for appears at the top page.
For example: A news article about certain products suddenly spreading viral, that might usurp your ecommerce site from the top pages.

This is where we would be focusing most of our efforts when we begin looking at the specifics of how your competitors are performing.

Utilizing Paid Ads

Optimizing your web pages for Featured Snippets, or

Optimizing your website for search engines in order to rank organically

Out of these three, the third one is the most sought after since the majority of the search traffic goes into organic results.

For you to win in SEO, or in any game for that matter, you’ll need to be clear about the overall objectives of the game. Not just yours.
For that, we’ll need to look at the Gamemaster: Google

It is fortunate for us that Google’s goal is not that difficult to grasp, comprehend, and adhere to:
“...provide an important service to the world-instantly delivering relevant information on virtually any topic.”

That’s how you’ll win in SEO. Keeping that in mind will make sure that you’re on the right path to fulfilling your objectives.
All that’s left now is for you to do it better than the competition.

Now let’s look at some additional benefits that you will gain once you’re done with analyzing your competitors and of course taking action upon your findings.

No matter how successful your business is online, you will find yourself converting only a small percentage of all your potential customers.

A huge chunk of their numbers haven’t arrived at the point where they’ll be entering their credit cards on your payment portal.
Who knows, maybe they will. Someday. Or maybe they won’t.

This is why it is of critical importance that you have a strong understanding of how your target customers think when buying products or availing services.
Without it, you’ll end up spinning your wheels doing marketing stunts and sales campaigns here and there without actually capturing customer conversions.
And you know what that means, right? Wasted marketing budget.

Customer profiles, also known as personas, are semi-fictional representations of your customers.

They contain demographics of your target audience such as age, gender, geographical location, online platforms frequented, professional status, any metric that’s relevant to defining the consumers of your products.

Aside from that, customer personas provide insights on how your customers buy and what considerations they take when they do. If done properly, it would also provide you with a clear picture of when they actually need the solution that your products or services provide.

Here are key points you need to keep in mind when creating your customer personas:

That last bullet merits an example. Here’s how it works:
You have a majority of Gen Y (Millennials) customers who look for trust signals first before they buy.
At the same time, you also have a minority percentage of Gen Z customers who love writing reviews for products.

Armed with this information, you can then provide targeted incentives to your Gen Z customers so they can give your products or services the reviews that will convince your Gen Y customers to buy.

Cool, huh?

Alright, now we’re ready to analyze your keywords based on each stage of your customers’ buying cycle.

This is the first stage of your buying process. Awareness has two “meanings” for your potential customers:

This is also the stage where brands and companies invest the most effort into marketing and advertisements due to one important fact:

The potential of reaching new customers is only limited to how big or small the market is.
During the awareness stage, it is important to be very visible to your customers. Otherwise, there is a huge chance that you’ll be missing out on the opportunity to make your customers aware about your brand.

And the key to becoming visible and placing your brand in front of your customers in SERP is through:

Informational Keywords

These are keywords that customers utilize to find information that would sufficiently answer their questions or solve their problem.
Customers who utilize search engines use informational keywords to find relevant and background data that would help them make a decision on which products or services they should go with.
Depending on your industry and niche, informational keywords may have very high search volume.

However, the intensity of search intent coming from queries looking for information is inversely proportional in relation to its search traffic.
This is due to the fact that most customers who use these keywords aren’t ready to buy yet. They’re still looking for information.
Those pages above you in SERP are outranking you because they know how to use informational keywords properly.

It is not far-fetched to describe this stage as the most critical part of the buying process. This is where the culmination of all the efforts you exerted on the awareness stage come into play.

At this stage, you will find yourself competing not only with other businesses of the industry you belong to, but also against the intensity of your customers’ need.

For this reason, it is essential to provide as much detailed information as you can that will explain how the products or services you are offering will solve their problem better than the competition as well as the benefits they will reap after solving the problem.
This is also the best time for you as a marketer to target your customers’ pain points. Placing these pain points in front of your customers and addressing them directly will intensify your customers’ need for what you are offering.

For this stage of the buying cycle, your products or much more favorably, your brand will be part of your customers’ search queries.
Along with the keywords that will dictate the direction that they are looking at when making comparisons. =

Hence, the classification of these keywords being named as:

Navigational keywords

These are keywords that your customers utilize when they already have a clear search intent towards a particular brand’s website.
They are also referred to as “GO” keywords since they lead your customers directly to your website’s doorstep.

If your customer or their browser already has your website’s URL ‘memorized’ or better yet, bookmarked, then you are in luck. Since at this point, there’s really no way for your competition to enter the scene.
However, there are instances when your customers would key in phrases or search queries that they know will lead them to you as well rather than keying your website’s URL.
This is where it becomes a bit tricky.

You see, when your users search for your brand you will always find that your website and its pages dominating the first page of Google’s SERP.
That is, if your competitors aren’t using Google ads to target your branded keywords.

I tried searching for Asana as an example. Take a look at the results on my SERP:

How to Identify Customers who are at this Stage

These search queries include a variety of brand-specific terms and navigational phrases which may look like these examples:

This stage is completely offline. That means no matter what you do, you can no longer influence your customer’s decision at this point.

It is at this point that your customers pit competitors against each other in their mind before making a decision. This is where your customers will combine all the information they have acquired during the first two stages to form a compelling reason to make a purchase.

Information like pricing, features, and at times, freebies sway a customer from one option to another. In short: Your customer’s finger is on the trigger, they just don’t know yet who to point their credit card at.

There are instances when customers go back to the consideration phase, but optimally they move on to the next stage: Conversion.

Alright, this stage will see your customer having decided on the product they want to buy. All that’s left now is the purchase.
Identifying customers who are at this stage is easy. As the prospects to make their final purchase decision are visible in their search queries.

We call the keywords they use in their search queries:

Commercial and Transactional Keywords

Your customers are ready “to do” something, to take action. This means your customers’ will fill their search queries with so much buying intent just to get to the pages where they can take action.

How to Identify Customers who are at this Stage

Transactional Keywords may include verbs or sales terms paired with general product names or brands that they are looking to purchase from.

• Buy
• Coupons
• Affordable
• Price
• Shipping
• Investment

Now, even if you’re already at this stage and you have received that confirmation email notifying you of your customers’ purchase, don’t be complacent.

Your job’s not done yet, my friend.
It is essential that you develop and foster an ongoing relationship with your customers. Especially if the products you’re selling and the services you are rendering are ‘renewable’ or will be regularly needed by your customers.

This is the main theme of the fifth and final stage on the buying cycle: Retention and Loyalty

I mentioned earlier that having your customers finish the purchase process doesn’t end after they virtually ‘swipe’ their credit card on your website’s payment portal.

Here are some quick facts: Most businesses today don’t pay enough attention or exert enough effort into customer retention through fostering loyalty.
They usually relax their efforts or sometimes not exert any effort at all in nurturing their customers after they acquire them.

This is a tremendous mistake on their part. In fact, it becomes a major threat and weakness to the sustainability of their business, which their business rivals will not fail to identify and capitalize on.

Based on a research conducted by Econsultancy in 2014:

This misallocation on the part of these businesses stems from the misconception that customer retention and acquisition are two different buckets separate from each other. That is not the case in 2020.

Let’s look at some of the keywords we listed down on the conversion stage:

You’re probably holding a long list of keywords now that you know what keywords to aim for at each stage of your customer’s buying cycle.
Hence it’s worth asking: How many do I focus on? How do I choose which ones I should prioritize?

Let’s answer both of those questions:

The answer to your first question depends on how many pages you will be creating.
This keyword model comes from building landing pages for Paid Ad campaigns in Google Ads which you can utilize as well for your organic efforts.
Let’s say you own an online business that offers technical services for home televisions. You would probably have two major services: Installation and Repair.

Your Installation services would probably have two types: Wall mounting and TV rack installation.
Since repairs needs accurate diagnostics first before you could recommend a course of action, then you’ll probably need one page for that: Repair Diagnostics

By now, you’re looking at four different pages. Each page should have it’s own focus keyword, and each focus keyword should have at least 4 supporting LSI keywords.
So let’s summarize: 4 pages, 4 different focus keyword buckets with 1 focus keyword and 4 LSI keywords each.

Okay, moving on to the second question.

The answer to that question depends on a couple of factors that determine the potential of the keywords on your list.
A keyword research tool like Ubersuggest, SEMRush, or Ahrefs can help you in gaining the following metrics.

Let’s take a quick look at each of them:

Like any good strategy, your first step should always be centered around gathering as much information as you can.
The goal here is to acquire as much relevant data as you can that would be necessary for you to have a clear overview of your competitive landscape.

Sizing up your Competition

How effective your efforts will be will depend on how big of a target you’re aiming at, as well as your own capabilities as a business.
Hence it is important that you create an accurate model for the business rivals you are trying to compete with.

Here are several aspects you should be looking at:

Finding your direct competitors is an easy task. All you gotta do is search in Google using your products or services as queries. They’ll be the ones dominating the SERP rankings.
Now, for the mid to low range targets, you can use online tools like Similarweb or Alexa. Put your website into these tools and look for the section that says “Similar Sites”.
Okay, you’ve put names to faces so to speak. Now we gather data on what makes them successful and how we can emulate their success.

Metrics You Should Be Looking at:

These indicators are key factors to a website’s success in the field of SEO:

Check out Metrics that tell you how your competitors are doing

Aside from the ones mentioned above, there are other key stats that will provide you with a clear picture of how well your competitors are doing in their website’s SEO:

Use Your Knowledge of Your Customer’s Journey to Determine How Well Your Competitors are Doing in each Stage

By now, you already have enough insights to even do a very thorough SWOT analysis of your competitors. Which you have the time by the way, is something we highly recommend.

Using that information, and the same process you did for mapping your keywords on your customer’s journey, you will now be able to gain deeper insights on how you can emulate their strengths or capitalize on their weak points.

Let’s discuss that in-depth in the next section.

Before we can start utilizing your competitors’ keywords for your own benefit, we’ll need to first gather as much as we can.

Once that is done, we can then compare the keywords they are using with the ones you have gathered for your website to identify the gaps that we need to fill.

How to Acquire These Keywords

Using an online SEO Tool that would let you enter domains freely like Ubersuggest, SEMRush, or Alexa, enter your competitor’s website URL and download all the results that show up.

You should be getting a long list of keywords that would include paid, organic, and opportunity keywords along with the metrics that support it such as average search volume, CPC, paid difficulty, and organic search difficulty.

Once you have all these insights, compile them into different tabs on a spreadsheet so they’re easier to view.

Filtering out Keywords

Alright, you now have an organized database filled with your competitor’s keywords, we can now begin analyzing their potential for your benefit.
At this point, we’re looking for low competition keywords so our first goal is to remove keywords that have very high competitiveness.
Use the stats provided by the online SEO tool you used to determine which ones have high search difficulty and which ones do not.
But don’t delete these keywords! You might need them further down the line, so just remove them from the list so they don’t cause confusion.

You can also create a new spreadsheet for you to compile these keywords on.
With this done, you would now have a smaller list of keywords, around 20% of the original ones you had when we started.

Now we look at them one by one.

Now it is worth stating that the stronger your website’s authority is, the more capable you will be in competing for these keywords.

How quickly and easily you can gain backlinks, how much you can allot for increasing the quality and rate of your content production, as well as how keen your capabilities are in doing SEO will all factor in how high you can rank in SERP and stay on that ranking.

Forming Topic Clusters Using Keywords

Our next step is to create the keyword groups that you will be utilizing for the creation of your contents and the optimization of your pages.

For this process, the Topic Cluster structure is recommended for creating keyword groups due to the following reasons:

When creating Topic Clusters, don’t group keywords based on relevance. While that seems like the sensible and logical choice, it would make your job harder after forming one or two groups.

If you group your keywords using relevance you’ll end up with topic clusters which are stronger than others. You will also end up having less keyword groups since you will run out of supporting keywords for other clusters.

To do it right, create your topic clusters based on the following considerations:

Now that you have everything you would need to optimize your existing pages and create new contents, it’s time to take advantage of your competition.

This is it. We’re fully equipped and we’re ready to rumble. It’s time to put everything you have acquired so far to good use.
All that’s left for you to do now is to present the solutions your content provides to address your customer’s needs through actionable solutions to their queries.

Be mindful of which stage of your customer’s journey you will incorporate these keyword groups.
To do this, it would be best to have a visualization of your customer’s buying cycle akin to a diagram that you and your team can use as reference. This is also referred to as a customer journey map.

Identifying the needs and pain points of your customers will allow you to hone in on specific audiences at specific points on the customer journey map.

SEMRush

What Makes it Special

SEMRush is one of the most popular online keyword tools out there for you to utilize. It has a comprehensive research tool, domain analytics, backlink tracking, desktop to mobile search comparisons, you name it, SEMRush can do it for you.

You can also create project-based SEO campaign structures. Plus it has a huge database of keyword suggestions and proactive SEO recommendations.

What it lacks

Pricing

SEMRush has three main packages for its pricing: Pro, Guru, and Business

At first glance, it does look like SEMRush is a premium SEO tool since there’s no option to use it for free. Or is there?
New SEMRush accounts start off as either a Pro or a Guru package which you can try out for 7 days.
What most people don’t know is that after the 7-day trial period is done, you have the option of downgrading your SEMRush account to the free version. And it will be free forever.

There are certain limitations to SEMRush’s free version though:

• 10 Searches Per Day
• 10 Results Per Search
• Can’t use the Keyword Magic Tool
• Can only create and manage one project
• You can only cawl 100 pages for Site Audit
• Can only track 10 keywords on the Position Tracking Tool
• 2 search queries in Topic Research
• 1 PDF Report

These limitations are okay if you’re just a startup business online. However if you find these limitations hindering your progress, we suggest going with Pro or Guru.

SEO Powersuite

What Makes it Special

SEO Powersuite is a “jack of all trades” online tool that has been providing organic insights to businesses on the internet for a long time now.

It boasts four powerful feature tools:

Where It’s Lacking

Pricing

SEO Powersuite comes in three pricing packages:

BuzzSumo

What Makes it Special

BuzzSumo showcases the following features that will help you out with your competitor keyword analysis:

What it lacks

Pricing

Like we mentioned above, BuzzSumo does not have a “Forever Free” option like SEO Powersuite. Instead, it has four different packages that you can avail of for a price.