The Basics of Collecting Competitor SEO Ranking Data

The Basics of Collecting Competitor SEO Ranking Data

Research is everything when it comes to putting together proper SEO for your website. Part of that research pertains mostly to your business and the space you want to compete in. The other part of that research will be analyzing and understanding your online competition. What’s important to note is that Google does not rank businesses against each other based on a business model; rather, they rank your competition based on keywords. Your competition on search engines for the keywords your targeting is the competition you’ll want to focus on. Collecting competitor SEO ranking data is a multi-step process that looks at many different elements contributing to the SEO rankings.

There is automatic data collecting, and there is a manual collecting of SEO ranking data. Automatic data collection is done using SEO platforms like Google Analytics, Moz, or Searchmetrics. There are lots of different SEO data collection tools made by many different companies. These tools will do most of the legwork for you as far as finding specific metrics and information. Putting those statistics together into a cohesive big picture is where we come in. Proper and in-depth analysis has been proven to yield successful new strategies and areas of focus. Some of the more basic functions of these tools can be found in demos online for free; the more advanced information, though, will usually cost a subscription fee to use regularly.
Manually collecting data and information on your competition can give you a more in-depth more direct picture of what is going on. It’s a much less user-friendly approach but yields potentially more information about things statistics and numbers might not be able to show you. First keywords, you can use online crawlers to find out what your competitors are ranking for. Keyword density is another thing to look into using free online tools. This metric can be done manually and gives an indicator of how aggressive you might want to be in your niche. Next, you can simply look into their overall on-site SEO practices and strategies and understand simply their execution. Your competitors’ content does matter regardless of your business opinion, and content analysis ultimately gives you a leg up on what is and isn’t working. The list of things you can check manually to get metrics and information is huge. Everything from checking their Google business pages and social media to backlinking and design will ultimately give you workable information for moving forward with successful SEO campaigns.