How well do you understand your competition? Knowing your competitors well can help you build your brand, your website, and your marketing strategies. Completing a website competitive analysis will help you understand where you rank compared to your competitors and what you can do to change or maintain your ranking. What is a Website Competitive Analysis?
An analysis of your website looks at your position relative to your competitors. The results can inform your own business marketing strategies. Whether you're planning a new site, improving your existing one, or looking for ways to create benchmarks that you can work with over time, an analysis of your site compared to your competitors can help you understand where you're strong and where you need to improve.
Who Are Your Competitors?
During a website analysis, you'll examine your business and those of your competitors. While you might compare your site against the competitors that are foremost in your mind, it's important to expand your comparison to other competitors as well. Who do your customers consider when they look for your products? What competitors rank in search engine results for your field?
A website analysis can help you pinpoint strengths and
weaknesses so that you can continue to build your online brand.
When you're comparing your online presence to that of others, what should you look for? You want to know what keywords your competitors rank for and what kind of traffic they receive, but you're not just looking at keywords. You need to look at your competitors' online presence and interaction with customers so that you can understand what is good and what is missing in your business.
How do your competitors present themselves to customers? Are their sites mobile-compatible? Examine the kind of information and connection they have with prospective clients. This might include a blog, a webinar series, or another communication vehicle. What resources do your competitors host on their website? Whether it's a video introduction or PDF files, what resources can customers access?
How do your competitors connect with their customers? Is there an email address, or do customers have the ability to conduct a live chat? Look at the different calls-to-action that are present on your competitors' websites.
Finally, look beyond the website to your competitors' social media profiles. What kind of a profile do your competitors have on different social media sites, and what content gets shared by the most followers?