Update Nov. 2, 2011: We’re excited to announce that we have released a full Competitive SEO Analysis Guide that helps explain how to execute each section of the checklist.
About two weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking on a Competitive SEO panel at SMX East in New York City. My presentation focused on analyzing your competitor’s onsite and offsite optimization strategies, and learning from them.
As promised, I put together a formal SEO Competitor Checklist that covers the following:
- Identifying broad and niche competitors to analyze
- Onsite competitive analysis (keywords, content and technical analysis)
- Offsite competitive analysis (backlinks, link building strategy)
- Competitor surveillance (keeping tabs on their SEO strategy)
Competitor analysis for SEO is much more valuable than people realize. You should think of it as free marketing insight as to how your SEO campaign could perform. Think about it. In some cases these companies have invested thousands of dollars in their SEO — and with the right analysis, you could see what is working and what you shouldn’t waste your time on.
Download the PDF checklist now. And don’t forget to use Raven Tools to help do the heavy lifting for you.
Here are my slides on SEO Competitor Analysis in case you missed the presentation at SMX East.
Updated October 22, 2010
The checklist just became even better thanks to Blueglass Director of Search Services, Annie Cushing. She made the checklist interactive, so you can now click on the checkboxes in the PDF. If you appreciate this as much as we do, please thank her on Twitter: @anniecushing
With the Competition Research tools from Raven Tools, you’ll see what methods your competitors are using and be able to strategically take your own website to the top.
Super handy to have all of this vital information in one document.
Thanks for sharing, I’m definitely incorporating this into my revised workflow.
Nice presentation on competitive analysis “Army style” 🙂 I am in charge of this roll at our company and I enjoy anything about the subject.
This is some amazing content, a must have for anyone in SEO. Don’t miss this other great SEO checklist from RavenTools – http://media.raventools.com/documents/Competitor-SEO-Checklist-110111.pdf
Nice article Taylor,
That checklist sounds great and my thanks to Annie Cushing for making it interactive. I think most firms should find this to be helpful.
Would just like to add though that if you plan to perhaps use an external company to handle the competitive analysis check it might be useful to check if they also have these item in their checklist. I tried this with one particular company called SQM (http://goo.gl/iwx450) and they indeed had all items checked off.
In any case, thanks for sharing these.
You’re welcome. 🙂
nice