Without a doubt, Google keyword searches are one of, if not THE most important battleground for the majority of businesses. Not to say that secondary search engines and Facebook aren’t a good way to get ahead, but for the time being, Google is still king. If you don’t rank on that first page for a given keyword, then you might as well not even be in the mix.
So what do you do when one of your competitors outranks you for a keyword you want? First of all, you have to do your research to confirm that it’s not only a high-traffic keyword, but also one that will drive conversions. When you monitor AdWords competitors are using, you need to evaluate whether their strategy is working. If it is, then you need to figure out how to spy on your competitors’ SEO rankings and Adwords strategy.
Four Top Competitive Analysis Tools
There are dozens of products out there that can help you keep track of what your competitors are doing, but here are a handful you can check out, and one of them you might already be using:
1. WooRank
WooRank is designed to help you track your keyword ranking and analyze your site performance and usability, keyword usage, and the quality of your backlinks. But what’s really nifty about WooRank as a competitive analysis tool is that you can add several competitors to your analysis to see how your site and landing pages stack up to theirs in the rankings and why.
2. SEMrush
This one is a bit more of an all-in-one tool that includes SEO, keyword research, and even PR and social media intelligence, but it offers great features to help you spy on competitors.
Because it can do so many things – like analyze billions of keywords and trillions of backlinks – it can be a little overwhelming on the UI front, but SEMrush can enable you build your own toolkit to keep an spy on competitors’ SEO rankings, AdWords, and even their Google Ad budgets! And to keep you from getting caught off guard, SEMrush can also help you identify new competitors of which you might not have been aware.
3. Google Adwords Keyword Planner
We’d be surprised if you don’t already have this one in your arsenal of competitive analysis tools, and if your business is just getting up and running, this might be the only one you have the budget for at the moment. But, even though it’s a free tool, it can still help you keep an eye on the landscape by seeing how any given page – either yours or your competitor’s – ranks for any given keyword in either organic search or paid AdWords.
4. Spyfu
This tool is the one that’s the most focused in its goal of helping you spy on competitors. More than just showing current rankings, it shows you what keywords your competitors are paying for and what ad tests they’re running, giving you a window into their strategy.
Like many of the other competitive analysis tools, Spyfu also helps you analyze how competitors are achieving their organic SEO rankings, whether through keyword usage, backlinks, or other methods. All of the data is refreshed periodically to help you stay ahead of the curve.
It’s about customers, not just keywords
Ranking for your desired keywords in Google searches can be a grueling process that requires a lot of research, sneaky tactics, and a ton of trial and error. But, keywords and rankings will only go so far if you don’t really know your audience and what they want.
So, remember that as you use competitive tools and battle with your competitors, the point is not so much beating them as it is winning your potential customers. Make sure that your keywords drive the right customers to you so that you can provide them with the services or products they need.
