SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow

 

 

 

The four analysis phases

As you can see, the SEO analysis workflow is divided into four phases:

1. Identify your potential SEO competitors

This initial phase is especially helpful if you're starting with an SEO process for a new client or industry that you don't know anything about, and you need to start from scratch to identify all of the potentially relevant competitors.
It's important to note that these are not necessarily limited to companies or websites that offer the same type of content, services, or products that you do, but can be any website that competes with you in the search results for your target keywords.

2. Validate your SEO competitors

Once you have the potential competitors that you have gathered from different relevant sources it's time to validate them, by analyzing and filtering which of those are really already ranking, and to which degree, for the same keywords that you're targeting.
Additionally, at this stage you'll also expand your list of potential target keywords by performing keyword research. This should use sources beyond the ones that you had already identified coming from your competitors and your current organic search data—sources for which your competitors or yourself are still not ranking, that might represent new opportunities.

3. Compare with your SEO competitors

Now that you have your SEO competitors and potential target keywords, you can gather, list, and compare your site to your competitors, using all of the relevant data to select and prioritize those keywords. This will likely include keyword relevance, current rankings, search volume, ranked pages, as well as domains' link popularity, content optimization, and page results characteristics, among others.

4. Select your target keywords

It's finally time to analyze the previously gathered data for your own site and your competitors, using the specified criteria to select the best keyword to target for your own situation in the short-, mid-, and long-term during your SEO process: Those with the highest relevance, search volume, and profitability. The best starting point is in rankings where you are competitive from a popularity and content standpoint.