Keyword research is one of the very first steps in any SEO campaign. Choosing
the right keywords for your pages may mean a large amount of qualified traffic
to your pages in a relatively short space of time. What’s more, because this
traffic is so well targeted to the content of your pages the visitors should
be more responsive to your marketing message. In contrast, poor keyword choice
can result in using more difficult keywords with masses of competition. This
can require a lot of time to start receiving any traffic for these keywords.

Good SEO Keywords

A good SEO campaign should use well searched keywords that generate targeted
visitors and your pages should face as little optimised competition as
possible. Not all pages in the search engine results will have conducted SEO
on their pages so when you see thousands of pages of results it may only be
the top two or three pages that you need compete with. Of those that have conducted
SEO, you can gain something of a headstart by completing a competitor analysis
and determining what helped them reach the higher rankings.

Competitor Site Analysis

In marketing, competitor analysis has long been one of the preliminary steps
of a new campaign. Identifying the actions of your competitors enables you
to work out the things your SEO campaign will need to achieve. You can look
at how well their pages are optimised, how many inbound links they have, and
even where those links are coming from and what keywords are being used as
the anchor text. In short you can begin to plan your own SEO around that of
your competition.

Finding Link Sources

Finding sources of links is a difficult part of SEO and different sites within
different industries may benefit from a variety of different link acquisition
methods. By conducting even cursory competitor analysis it’s possible to start
out your own SEO campaign with a good knowledge of the type of links that work
well. If a page at the top of the results has a lot of article links then article
marketing can play a part in your link building. Consider SMO and directory
links and also look at the number of high profile links (edu and gov links
especially) that a page has.

Using The Information

Consider requesting links from the same sources as your competitors. Out and
out link requests rarely result in a link to your page, so consider offering
something in exchange. Web content, a blog post, or some other form of content
is a good place to start because most website owners will happily include a
new and unique page of content on their own site.

Competitor Analysis For SEO

Competitor analysis is used throughout business to help with every stage of
running a company. For websites, it can prove an invaluable source of information
on how well optimised your site needs to be in order to have a chance of gaining
top rankings. Look at their on page optimisation and consider the inbound links
they have and how they got them. This information can be used to start an SEO
campaign on the front foot.

Get Involved