As a business owner, you might be inclined to focus on your own operations and marketing efforts rather than getting into the minds of your rivals. However, taking a peek at their digital footprint could go a long way in improving yours. Learning how to analyze competitors’ websites will help you make the most of the opportunity.
A proper analysis should reveal valuable insights about the market in which you operate. You may find some areas where the competition is succeeding but where you’re sure your skills would also translate nicely. There’s nothing wrong with learning from the successes of others.
Keeping an eye on your competitors is a key step to improving your business performance — as long as you know how to make the most of your time.
Identify Your Competitors
It might seem obvious to say this, but learning how to analyze competitors’ websites starts with knowing who they are. Competitor identification isn’t quite as easy as it may sound, which is why it helps to have a game plan going in.
Brainstorm Direct and Indirect Competitors
You’ll have direct and indirect competitors to watch out for. Various tools exist to help you find these competing businesses, making the process easier than it would be on your own.
Start by paying attention to who you see in your market. If you’re a local dentist, direct competitors will be all the other dentists in your immediate area. This will include both the dentist with an office right around the corner from yours and those on the other side of town.
You may also have indirect competitors who offer services similar to yours in nearby cities. You might be the only personal injury lawyer in your area who handles dog bite cases. However, a larger personal injury law firm in a neighboring city might also cater to those interested in filing such cases, taking some of your potential clients indirectly because they have a better web presence, more reviews, and an active social media account.
You likely know who your direct competitors are, but your indirect competitors may be more difficult to spot initially, so consider the following.
Tools for Finding Competitors
Tools that can help you find direct and indirect competitors include:
- Google Trends: Learn to use Google Trends to understand the popularity of search terms in various regions. You might be surprised by what your target demographic is searching for.
- Google Search: Use Google search for keywords that apply to your business and see which other businesses have high rankings for those keywords.
- SimilarWeb: SimilarWeb analyzes your audience demographics, helping you find competitors.
- Spyfu: Spyfu shows how many users are visiting competitors’ websites.
Analyze Their Website Design and User Experience (UX)
Be as objective as possible when looking at the design of your competitors’ websites. We understand this can be challenging. Approach it as if you were a new customer in search of information. Create a scale from 1 to 10 and rate a competitor’s site accordingly in a few different areas.
Website Navigation and Usability
Is it easy to find information on the website? Are menus seamless to navigate and well-organized? Drill down to specific design items, like the readability of the fonts, the placement of graphics, and the speed at which pages load.
Mobile Responsiveness Check
An overwhelming percentage of internet searches are conducted on mobile devices, so websites must cater to anyone using a smartphone. Any site that doesn’t work smoothly on mobile will likely turn away potential customers before they even have a chance to engage with your content.
Be sure to compare the mobile experience with the desktop experience. Do the competitor’s website navigation and usability suffer when using a mobile device instead of a standard computer?
Tools for UX Analysis
Although you should rely on your UX analysis using the competitor’s website, you can also take data measurements. Testing tools can help you compare your site’s UX performance to that of the competitor’s site. It’s important to understand which metrics actually matter when using tools rather than just your own judgment.
- Google Analytics: One of the most powerful data processing tools on the web, the custom explorations available in Google Analytics enable you to track user behavior and analyze based on demographic and Audience information.
- Hotjar: A premium option trusted in industries worldwide to deliver reliable and detailed user experience data and feedback
- Adobe Analytics: For enterprise-level companies serious about upping their data game, this service offers unparalleled competitive advantages.
Content Audit: What Stories Are They Telling?
One way to analyze a competitor’s website is to study its content in greater detail. You may find that you are missing certain items your competitor uses successfully. This provides an easy to-do list of content for you to create to fill those gaps.
Types of Content
The type of content offered is one area where your competitors may be setting their websites apart from yours. By analyzing what your competitors are doing, you may spark new ideas for enhancing the content you offer on your website.
- Blogs: Study the blog articles on competitors’ websites with an eye for topics, article length, use of artwork, and headline styles.
- Videos: Are your competitors’ most successful videos showing their employees at work? Do the videos focus on answering customer questions?
- Infographics: Infographics can be attention-grabbing pieces of artwork on a website, especially when they feature images. Do your competitors’ infographics make good use of images as opposed to words?
Content Frequency and Quality
Measure the frequency with which your competitors publish new content. If you create new high-quality content twice a month but your competitors are having more success publishing daily, you may need to upgrade your content creation strategy to keep up.
Tools for Content Analysis
Using software tools, you can measure how successful your competitors’ content really is compared to your own.
- BuzzSumo: With BuzzSumo, you can see a measurement of some of the most shared content on social media. This shows you the types of content that your competitors are using successfully.
- Ahrefs: You can use Ahrefs to see what types of content your competitors use on their websites for certain topics and keywords.
- Semrush: Use Semrush to measure the types of content your competitors are deploying that match the top keywords on your website.
SEO and Keyword Analysis
Using software tools can provide a significant advantage When analyzing the SEO strategies and keyword usage on your competitors’ websites.
On-Page SEO Factors
Start by analyzing the SEO factors that appear directly on the pages, including the text, images, and videos visitors see. Here’s a breakdown:
- Keywords: Keyword analysis of a competitor’s website helps determine which keywords perform well. If your website doesn’t have information incorporating these keywords, you may want to add it.
- Meta Tags: Use analysis software to determine which meta information your competitors leverage on their most successful web pages. Then, you can try to adapt some of those meta strategies for your own business.
- Alt Text: Some website owners ignore alt text on images, preferring to focus on other areas of on-page content. However, through analysis, you may find that your competitors are gaining an edge in searches because of alt text.
Off-Page SEO Factors
Off-page SEO factors are those items that aren’t directly part of content creation on web pages.
- Backlinks: Backlinks are links that other websites make to your website. Your competitor may outperform you in search results because they have far more backlinks showcasing their authority on a topic. Backlink analysis reveals this information.
- Domain Authority: Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank in searches so you can measure your competitors’ overall site performance.
Tools for SEO Analysis
To receive hard numbers about the performance of your competitors’ websites, rely on software tools like the following:
- MozBar: MozBar works as an extension for Chrome, giving you instant metrics about a particular web page you’re viewing.
- Google Search Console: Google Search Console is a free tool that monitors the performance of websites in Google search results.
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs measures how your competitors’ sites compare to your website in terms of shared keywords and backlink prospects.
Dive Into Their Social Media Presence
When deciding how to analyze a competitor’s website, it’s important to remember that social media and website performance have a strong relationship.
Analyze Their Main Social Media Platforms
Look at where your competitors are focusing their social media time and effort. Posting on TikTok may bring in a different type of customer than posting on Facebook, for example.
If you believe your competitors are having great success with one social media platform, you may also want to focus more on that platform.
Engagement Levels and Audience Interaction
Audience engagement and interaction are important barometers for determining the success of a social media campaign. Study how your competitors generate customer interaction on social media and see whether you can duplicate these efforts. Figure out which platforms are delivering the most customer interactions for your competitors.
Tools for Social Media Analysis
Beyond studying your competitors’ social media pages, you can also use software tools to measure performance accurately. You can then apply that hard data to change your social media strategy to see whether you can gain an advantage over your competitors.
- Social Blade: Social Blade measures data from various social media sites, helping you determine your business’ performance against competitors’ performance.
- Hootsuite: The Hootsuite tool helps you measure ROI on your social media sites. It also delivers information on how your performance compares to competitors’ performance.
Become a Customer!
Now, it’s time to dig into how to analyze competitors’ websites. You can pretend to be a customer of your competitors and sign up for anything they offer through their website or social media platforms.
You probably don’t want to use your personal or business emails or social media identities. It’s typically better to create other online profiles to use when pretending to be a customer of your competitors.
Sign Up for Their Email Lists, Free Trials, or Demos (If Applicable)
Sign up for things that your competitor offers through its digital marketing properties. If the competitor has an email newsletter available, ensure you receive it each week. Use it to keep tabs on any changes the competitor makes to its marketing strategies.
Experience Their Sales Funnels and Communication Style Firsthand
If your competitor offers sales demos or chat-based sales help on its website, test these services yourself. You may find areas where you can enhance how you communicate with potential customers on your website.
Reviews and Ratings: What Are Customers Saying?
Pay attention to any online reviews and ratings your competitors receive. Note the frequency with which customers leave reviews for you compared to your competitors. Outperforming your competitors here may be as simple as being more aggressive about asking customers to leave reviews.
Read Online Reviews
As you read your competitors’ online reviews, you want to be sure you’re looking at real reviews. A couple of websites deliver genuine customer feedback that you can use.
- Google Business Profile: Many businesses ask customers to leave reviews on their Google Business Profiles — and for good reason. Positive reviews on GBPs can help companies improve their online reputations and give their brands a boost. Google reviews also carry a certain cachet that can lead to better local rankings.
- Trustpilot: Trustpilot has almost two decades of experience accessing reviews from actual customers. It provides online reviews in various business markets, giving you a good cross-section of your competitors.
Analyze Common Customer Complaints and Compliments
Online reviews can be a key source of information about your competitors’ performance.
If reviewers list information in the online reviews that shows your competitor is making consistent errors in a few aspects of its service, you can emphasize your strengths in those areas. You may want to emphasize them on your website and social media to draw business away from your competitors.
If your competitor is having great success in a certain area with its reviewers, you can try to emphasize that same area for better results.
Competitor Advertising Strategies
Another aspect of figuring out how to analyze a competitor’s website is determining how the competitor uses online advertising as part of its digital marketing strategy. Whether your competitors are using advertising regularly or aren’t using ads at all, it’s important to understand the strategy in place.
You may find that your competitors’ advertising spending is not delivering a strong ROI. You may operate in a market where organic search is the better option and can find the information to determine which is which.
Identifying Paid Advertising Campaigns
To determine whether competitors are using paid ad campaigns, perform searches for the most important keywords for your website. If you see website results from your competitors at the top of the page, but these results have a marking of “Ad” or “Sponsored,” they are paid ads.
If you’re targeting certain keywords organically, but your competitors are paying for ads, their ads will show above your organic results. It may be necessary to invest into paid ads to compete for certain types of clicks.
Analyzing Ad Copy
Pay attention to the types of advertising your competitors are using. Are your competitors primarily using text-based ad copy, display ads, or video for their advertising? You may find that customers in your particular market respond better to one type of advertising over another.
Tools for Advertising Analysis
You can use software tools to determine the specific areas of advertising that your competitors are using.
- Facebook Ad Library: Now called Meta Ad Library, this is a free searchable database that includes a list of ads run on all Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
- Google Ads Transparency Report: The Google Ads Transparency Center lets you search for related advertising based on domain name. These reports help you track what your competitors are doing with ads.
Turn Insights Into Action: Your Competitive Advantage
With all this information, you can evaluate the areas where your competitors show strengths and weaknesses in their digital properties. You also can determine areas where you are underperforming and outperforming your competitors.
Create a SWOT Analysis
Creating a SWOT analysis is a good step for learning how to analyze competitors’ websites. The aspects of SWOT are as follows:
- Strengths: Determine why your competitors’ websites have strengths in certain areas compared to yours. Are your competitors doing a better job of showcasing authoritative content than you are?
- Weaknesses: Determine which areas your competitors are underperforming in and build up your strengths in these areas.
- Opportunities: Take special note of areas where you have strengths and where you are underperforming versus your competitors. Then, tweak your message to showcase your strengths better, hopefully delivering quick improvements.
- Threats: Do you notice areas where your competitors’ websites are starting to catch up to you? Focus on strengthening your website in these areas to regain significant advantage.
Develop a Strategy Based on Your Competitor Analysis
With this information, you can create an informed digital marketing strategy. In areas where you have comparative weaknesses against competitors, improve your website performance by adapting what your competitors are doing — not by copying it wholesale, but by doing it better.
You also can find areas where your website is especially strong compared to competitors. Don’t neglect these areas while you’re building in others. You want to keep these strong with fresh content.
Final Thoughts
Although you may prefer to focus on what you’re doing right, sometimes your competitors’ successes and failures can illuminate how you might improve. Studying competitors can spark great ideas for improving the performance of your website.
When determining how to analyze competitors’ websites, it can be challenging to know where to start. However, this analysis is time well spent when you can find that nugget of information that pushes your site forward. The team here at Connective hopes these winning strategies help you understand your competition so you can dominate your market!
