Here are the 4 steps to your analysis plan.
Can you guess the first step in your competitive analysis?
Strengths?
Weaknesses?
Opportunities?
Threats?
If you picked “threats,” you picked correctly.
You can beat your competitors at their own game. Here’s how:
Step 1: Find blogs like yours, in your niche with your DA.
To do this, I go to Alexa.com.
Scroll down to Browse Top Sites and put in your URL.
Scroll down to Which Sites are Related To [Your Blog Name].
Copy the URL of the first site.
Step 2: Go to semrush.com/dashboard/.
If you don’t have an account, make one.
Paste the URL of the competing blog where it says All Reports, Input Domain, Keyword, or…
Make sure the drop-down says Domain Overview
Scroll down to Top Organic Keywords.
This is what I found:
triberr 11(6) 880
One of my competitors ranks for the keyword Triberr. He is at position 11 with 880 searches per month.
I actually have a draft started about Triberr. Suppose I wanted to beat his position 11.
What would I do?
Step 3: Click the keyword. At Semrush, the keywords are links.
You will see all your competitors that rank for this keyword.
When I clicked the link, I saw this article at Position 2:
https://ninjaoutreach.com/hacking-triberr-got-5-million-reach-two-weeks-80-twitter-followers/
Considerations:
NinjaOutreach is a reputable blog. Would they have a DA greater than mine? Probably.
Look at the numbers in the headline. You want to be able to beat those numbers so people click on your link. I can actually beat that number since I have an 8 million reach on Triberr. Writing about Triberr is still a possibility.
Notice how I now have guidance what to name my article. I want to make sure search engine users see my 8M number in my headline so they click on my post.
Can I get to Position 1 so people see my post next to Ninja Outreach’s?
Note: Semrush only allows 10 free uses a day.
Step 4: Go to Moz’s Open Site Explorer: https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/.
You need to see if your competitor has a greater Domain Authority ranking than you do.
Paste your competitors’ link where you see URL.
At the time of this writing, Ninja Outreach has a Domain Authority ranking of 55. Mine is 46.
Google is more likely to show the Ninja Outreach article to its readers than mine.
Conclusion: At least for the time being, I will not finish my Triberr article.
You might ask wouldn’t Position 3 be okay for me? Do I have to be on top of Page 1? My answer is yes, I do.
No one will click on my post even if the numbers in the headline beat what is already on the internet. No one will click my article if they don’t see it.
If these are your conclusions, go back to Alexa and repeat the procedure at Semrush with #2.
Nice and easy! Rinse and repeat!