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Competitor site analysis is one of the most effective methods of determining the main Internet marketing strategy. You are probably wondering what your competitors are doing to get high in the issue. And this information is of particular importance if you have just created a site and started working on its promotion.
By analyzing competitor sites, you can understand:
Most of the secrets are practically in the public domain, and it is not difficult to get them, especially if you competently use specialized online services and independently analyze successes and mistakes.
It should be noted that you should not get too carried away by analyzing competitor sites in order to borrow fresh and useful ideas.
To stand out among the crowd, it is necessary not to copy competing sites, but to offer users new and fresh ideas.
Therefore, try to adhere to an integrated approach:
Before you start analyzing competing resources, you should find really worthy projects. If you have been implementing in a certain industry for a long time, then you probably already know successful projects that are definitely worth a look.
However, it is necessary to analyze the most competitive sites that are in the TOP-10 of Yandex or Google search results. You can also evaluate those projects that are slightly lower in the ranking, but do not get carried away, because the process of analyzing a competitor's site takes a lot of time. Take on top projects first.
It is not difficult to do this: we create a short semantic core, which will include 3-5 of the most appropriate high-frequency queries. We fill each request in the Yandex and Google search engines and select those addresses that suit you in terms of subject matter and main direction.
You can also reveal the success of competitors with the help of automatic services. Most popular:
Website evaluation is an analysis of its convenience by an ordinary user. If the site attracts with an interesting design, has a clear and convenient interface, then the likelihood that the user will want to use your services will be higher than that of competitors.
Third party usability analysis evaluates competing websites from the point of view of their visitors, which will reveal all the advantages and disadvantages of structure, navigation, appearance and design, etc. Thanks to this, you can make your site much more convenient for a potential user.
To analyze the technical characteristics of target sites, you can use the following tools:
You can also evaluate the design, functionality, and usability of competitor sites manually: pay attention to attractive services, landing pages, navigation components, and conversion.
To promote your site effectively, you need to know the keywords used by competitors. After analyzing the resources of competitors, you should find out the main keywords and compare them with the semantic core of your own site. Surely after that you will have a lot of ideas.
Firstly, you can find out the keywords of a competitor without resorting to magic. It is enough just to walk through the pages of the resource and pay attention to the titles of articles, urls and subheadings.
Secondly, use special paid services for analysis, for example:
SpyWords - get information about the words of competitors in the search results of Yandex and Google, as well as requests to Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords with a price per click. Plus, you can compare requests from several sites at once.
SEMrush - find out the keywords of competitors and their positions in Google.
Analysis of a competitor site is a catastrophically necessary step on the way to successful and effective promotion in search engines.
As you analyze, take a look at their key metrics:
By evaluating these key parameters from your rivals and implementing relevant features, you can not only increase the success of the project, but also save a lot of money and time on finding your own way of promotion.
Before launching advertising campaigns in Yandex.Direct, you need to analyze your competitors. Niche research will help you understand what the approximate cost of advertising will be, how you need to improve your ads and website in order to achieve maximum conversion. If you ignore this stage of work, then, most likely, more than half of the advertising budget will go nowhere, and you can only dream of a quick return on investment in advertising.
Competent and complete analysis of competitors will determine:
You can spend one day or a whole week on competitor analysis. The quality and completeness of the study will depend on the time spent. Let's take a closer look at what areas we need to work on.
First you need to get to know your competitors in person. The easiest way is to use the section tools "Budget forecast" in Yandex.Direct. Log in to the service, click on the required tab and set the advertising campaign settings. Specify the display region that applies to your business. For example, if you provide services or sell goods only in Moscow and the region, specify only these regions in the settings.
In the "Get keywords" section, specify the words and phrases that are suitable for advertising your business. Use the built-in word selection feature if no keywords have been identified yet.
Select the appropriate key phrases, add them to the list and click on the "Calculate" button.
The service will generate a table with a forecast of impressions and clicks, approximate CTR, costs for each keyword.
To see a list of competitors and their ads, check the box next to the key phrase you are interested in and click on it. Examine the information in the opened window with the results.
At our request - "infrared heater price" - at least 50 sites are advertised in Direct. Most of them show ads to users from Moscow and the region. The list also includes companies that sell equipment not only in the capital and the region, but also in other regions of the country - for example, in Krasnodar, Vladivostok, Voronezh.
Most likely, these companies have not only retail heaters, but also an online store. To check this information, click on the request link - a competitor's website will open in a new tab, which can already be studied in more detail.
In order not to spend a lot of time analyzing competitors and studying their landing sites, put yourself in the place of a potential buyer and select the most successful creatives from the list. Most likely, the list will include no more than 5-10 sites with which you will have to compete.
Just finding competitors before launching contextual advertising is not enough. It is important to understand what keywords they are advertising for. Thanks to this assessment, you will find out the approximate cost of advertising, determine the most profitable phrases - those that will give you more clicks.
You can superficially analyze keywords using the same Yandex.Direct tool "Budget Forecast". The service will show how much you have to spend on advertising for the keywords you are interested in, predict the approximate number of impressions and clicks, the average bid, and other useful information.
Remember that when calculating the budget, the service focuses on those sites that have already launched contextual advertising. The numbers on the Budget Forecast report and on the ad campaign page will be slightly different. The Budget Forecast report shows the average data for ads in the selected region, while the campaign shows the metrics for specific ad groups at the moment for the most expensive regions.
To get more accurate information, you will have to use third-party keyword analysis services.
Using the Serpstat service, you can find all competitors that are advertised for the keyword you are interested in. To do this, you need to go to the website and enter the query in the search bar.
Next, specify the search engine and the region where ads are displayed, click on the "Search" button. The service will generate a detailed report - it will show the frequency of the phrase in Yandex.Direct for the last month, the average cost per click, variations of the key phrase for which sites from the top 50 Yandex place ads in Yandex.Direct.
The service will not only provide statistics on key phrases, but also show competitors in search results, as well as in context.
In addition, Serpstat will show examples of ads that competitors use in their advertising campaigns.
You don't need to buy a paid subscription to use Serpstat's competitor and keyword analysis tools.
The SpyWords service will also help you analyze the keywords of competitors and get acquainted with examples of their ads. To do this, you need to go to the website , enter a key phrase in the search bar and click on the "Track" button. When you enter a query, the service gives hints with similar phrases.
SpyWords will show the number of advertisers who use a given keyword, the average cost per click, the number of impressions in Yandex and Google. In addition, the service will show examples of ads with text, a link to the landing page, and the number of requests.
With the help of SpyWords you can also identify similar queries. The service will show them in a separate list.
Most SpyWords features are available for free. To use the extended package of tools, you will have to buy a paid subscription. Cost - from 1950 to 4950 rubles per month.
The Advse service will help you find competitors and determine the key phrases for which they are advertised. To do this, you need to go to the website and enter the phrases of interest into the window.
The service will generate a list of ten competing sites, sorting them by the share of impressions.
To find out the keywords for which competitors are advertised, you will have to register on the site, buy a paid subscription - 1500 rubles per year, - in your personal account, specify the domain of your site and start the analysis. In 10–20 minutes, the service will generate a list of competitors, after which you can see what queries they are advertised for.
As shown in the screenshots above, almost all services allow you to view competitors' ads. Moreover, to analyze promotional materials, it is not necessary to buy a paid subscription. If these tools are not enough, you can view competitors' advertisements in Yandex manually.
Enter the query of interest in the Yandex search bar and see the results of the advertising issue.
Based on the results, you will be able to determine which keywords to use in your ads, which extensions - phone numbers and store hours, quick links, etc. - will help you overtake competitors.
Be sure to use the advanced search options. Set the correct display region, define the time interval, specify the accuracy of the occurrence of words in the query.
Yandex will show all paid ads in the specified region.
Ideally, before launching an advertising campaign, you need to evaluate not only competitor sites, ads and key queries for which they are shown in the search, but also find out the approximate cost of advertising. Make it real. The main thing is to create a list of key phrases, arm yourself with a calculator and use the tools of online services.
You will have to analyze each key phrase for which ads will be shown, and then summarize the indicators of phrases from the list. The calculation is carried out according to the formula:
Budget = cost per click * number of requests * position CTR
Let's use the Serpstat service described above and collect the main key queries of competitors in Yandex.Direct.
Let's say that the site is planned to be promoted by the request "buy an infrared heater." We have two values from the formula - this is the number of requests and the cost per click. It remains to find out the CTR of the position.
The service blog provides approximate CTR values for positions.
These data can be used as a starting point when calculating the budget of competitors. It remains only to multiply the numbers in the report. For the keyword “buy an infrared heater”, you will have to pledge at least 5,057 rubles to be in the first position: 90.6 (cost per click) * 1595 (number of requests) * 0.035 (position CTR). The numbers will be approximate, since Serpstat calculates the cost per click in dollars, and the data in the system is updated only once a month.
You can also find out the approximate budget of your competitors using the Budget Forecast tool in Yandex.Direct. Type the keywords you are interested in into the window and click on the "Calculate" button. Don't forget to set the display region, otherwise the data will be inaccurate.
When analyzing the data in the report, pay attention to the columns "Traffic Volume" and "Budget Forecast".
Remember VCG auction rules in Yandex.Direct. To be in the first position among the ads for the query "buy an infrared heater", you will have to pledge at least 95,557 rubles to outbid the nearest competitor's bid. For placement on the second and third line, you need to allocate about 77,000 and 62,000 rubles, respectively. There will be less traffic, but you can compensate for positions with attractive ad text. To do this, you will have to turn again to the search results for the query of interest in the specified region, analyze the texts of creatives and landing pages, find possible mistakes from competitors and prevent them when creating your own promotional materials.
Try to analyze your competitors in Yandex.Direct today and make changes to existing advertising campaigns. Evaluate the results of impression performance with the previous period and make sure that the main thing in context is good preparation.
Hello dear friends!
In this post, I decided to write about how to recognize competitors. The article will contain a selection of interesting services with which you can identify and select some of them to promote your project.
A few months ago I wrote, for an article. But if your topic has an already promoted competitor, then you can easily see some requests from him. For example, I prefer to look at interesting ideas for writing posts or the main keyword, and already I select various tails and additional queries for it. So let's get started.
1.
Seobuilding.ru
With the help of this service, you can make a complete analysis of the keywords of competitors and not only. The service shows the number of main competitors, the approximate cost of the site, puzomerki, IP address and much, much more. At the very bottom, there is a list of all requests for the resource that it is moving along. Keywords can be exported to Excel:
2.
Xtool.ru.
I really like this service. With it, you can find out how much the resource is spammed with links, and see the approximate promotion of the site in search engines. Below, the service shows very valuable information: competitor's search queries, site positions for these queries, wordstat frequency, and even the price of one impression in Yandex Direct.
All you need is to enter the site in the line and click on the "check" button. At the very bottom left there is a button "Export (Execel)", which allows you to export all queries.
3.
Megaindex.ru.
This service is very useful for any webmaster, it allows you to find out a lot of information about the site. In the section "seo-services" - "site visibility", it is possible to find out the competitor's keywords. Moreover, site positions for these queries, keyword statistics for wordstat and cost in Yandex Direct are also shown.
4.
Pr-cy.ru.
The service shows a good visibility of the resource in the search engines Yandex and Google. In addition, you can see the position of the site on request, impressions per month and the approximate cost of promotion. As I see it, it is impossible to export queries, but you can simply copy them and paste them into Excel.
5.
Cypr.com
Here, before looking at the keywords of competitors, you need to register, because for ordinary users the service shows only a few queries. After registration, all queries can be exported to Excel.
6. Attendance statistics.
Sometimes it happens that a competitor has open traffic statistics and you can even see search queries. This does not happen often, of course, but if you try, you can find it. First you need, which I wrote about in detail yesterday, and see what statistics are connected to the site. Then click to go:
For example, in the most popular queries, you need to search in the “by search phrases”, “positions in Yandex” and “positions in Google” section. If they are not hidden, then you are very lucky:
7. Title tag.
If a competitor promotes a resource by search queries, then at least one of them will be written in the title tag. In order to view all the titles of a competitor's website, you need to enter the following construction into Yandex:
Or Google this address:
Instead of a website, do not forget to enter the address of a competitor. Now it remains to go over the headings and determine the keywords. I think it will be easy for you, as a SEO specialist, to do this: smile :. With this method, I like to look for ideas for articles more. After all, you can even go to the page, see the number of comments, and find out how relevant the article is and what visitors need.
Similarly, keywords can be written in the H1 tag and keywords. Some optimizers highlight queries in text with bold, italics, or underlining.
The best paid way to analyze competitor keywords.
Service Spywords.ru
5 queries on this site can be learned for free, but if you want more, you need to pay. This service differs from all others in that it shows several times more requests than all free services. Also, right on the server, you can see how the site will look in Yandex and Google search engines for queries.
The service also has a very interesting tool, even shareware, called "domain battle". With it, you can compare 3 and even find common queries. I advise you to register on this service, a very useful thing.
That's all for today! Now you know how to find your competitors keywords. Good luck, friends ;-).
You need to understand what is happening in your niche, what techniques and methods your competitors use. If everything is done correctly, you can achieve exceptional results in setting up your contextual advertising.
In this article, we will look at how to analyze the contextual advertising of competitors in Google AdWords and Yandex Direct.
And let's answer the main question.
Let’s take a look at the components of competitor analysis:
We use the following tools to analyze competitors' contextual advertising:
Especially for our blog, colleagues from Serpstat prepared a description of the main functionality for analyzing competitors' contextual advertising.
The basis of paid search traffic is the keywords that trigger ads. Instead of wasting time manually collecting key phrases, select keywords from your competitors and use them in your campaign.
Let's show with an example: enter the competitor's domain into the Serpstat service search, select the region and go to the "Site Analysis - Domain Analysis - PPC Analysis - Keywords" tab.
Also pay attention to the number of ads in different regions of search engines. In our case, the site buys only 173 ads in Google RU, and in Yandex. Moscow time - 26 800! Explore all regions for a complete semantics download.
If you have a pre-made list of negative keywords that are not relevant to the content of the site, add it to the appropriate filter before downloading the report.
Another way to find keywords that competitors use but we miss is by crossing requests between three different domains.
Let's show with an example: in the same module "PPC analysis", we go down to the "Comparison of domains" tool. We enter two competitor domains that give advertising into the windows, and look at the results.
Intersecting segments in the diagram are common key phrases, non-intersecting segments are unique keys related to the same domain. Click on the desired segment and get the semantics we missed, which you can already use in your advertising campaign.
All the way your competitors present themselves can be used for your own purposes. Headlines and ad texts are a very important part of such positioning and a method of influencing users. Explore these elements in detail: see what your customers offer, what their unique selling proposition is, if there are promotions and bonuses, what are the prices. Borrow interesting ideas and offer the best conditions. How to find competitor ads? Manually or using all the same services.
Let's show with an example: if you want to find out the texts of ads for a particular product or keyword, enter the keyword in the Serpstat search box and go to the "Keyword Analysis - PPC Analysis - Ads" section. The service will show you ads that include the search phrase in the text or synonymous words:
Do you want to study all the ads of each individual competitor? Do the same, only in the search bar enter not the key query, but the competitor's domain. Then you will see all his ads.
Upload all the results into a single table, analyze them and create your own unique offer! Create a table like the following:
Pay attention to the completeness of your competitors' ads: the virtual business card is filled, whether extensions are used, whether dynamic inserts are used. No? Then you already know an additional trick that could stand out from the competition. How to find additional items in ads? By hand or with tools.
Let's show with an example: enter the competitor's domain in the Serpstat search and go to the "Site Analysis - Domain Analysis - PPC Analysis - Keywords" section, special icons will tell you about the presence of additional blocks:
It's also helpful to look at your competitors' ad history. With this information, you can find out for yourself how often competitors test different ads and which ads perform best. Agree, if a competitor periodically tests new ads, and then returns to the old ones - apparently the tested ones did not bring a positive result.
How do I view competitor ad history?
Let's show with an example: go to the Semrush service, go to the "Domain Analytics - Paid Search Analysis" section, enter the competitor's domain in the search and open the "Ad History" tab. Choose a period for any month - and voila, you will see the history of ad changes!
When evaluating the contextual advertising of competitors, it is important to thoroughly study the landing pages - the pages of the site where the ads lead. Check the quality of these pages, their completeness, what and how they offer, how they stand out and how relevant the page is to the query. If your competitor brings visitors to general pages, you could take this into account and do better - create a separate landing page for the request. How to quickly view the landing pages of competitors?
Let's show with an example: Enter the competitor's domain in Serpstat and go to the "Site Analysis - Domain Analysis - PPC Analysis - Landing Pages" section. Here you will get a complete list of pages where the ads of this competitor lead. It also shows the total number of ads for each individual page.
I want to note right away that it will not be possible to find out the exact budget of competitors, it will only be possible to calculate its approximate value. No service can give exact data. Nevertheless, even using these numbers, you will benefit for yourself. By finding out how much a competitor pays per click, you can compare their performance with your cost. This will help you find a development vector: either develop towards high-frequency requests (expensive), or pay attention to low-frequency ones and collect cheap traffic.
Let's say your budget is 1,000 rubles, and a competitor has 10,000 rubles. Guess who will show up more and more?
And now how to check the budget of competitors?
Let's show with an example: enter the competitor's domain into Serpstat's search and go to the section "Site analysis - Domain analysis - PPC analysis - Key phrases" and filter the "Cost" indicator from higher to lower. Here we will also get data on the level of competition for the key phrase in percentage terms.
Let's check the cost in Semrush and get the same result.
It is very difficult to identify information on display advertising on your own, but services do an excellent job of this. Find out what type of banners your competitors create, where they are placed, and use this data for your own purposes. How to study competitor ads on the Display Network?
Let's show with an example: open the Semrush service, enter a competitor's domain in the search and select the "Display advertising" tab in the "Domain Analytics" section. Soon we will receive a summary report for the site we are looking for, or an empty report if the domain does not display display ads:
The number of points for analyzing competitors in contextual advertising can be increased depending on the specific task. And having received all the results, combine them into one table in order to take a closer look at all the "chips" of competitors and identify your weaknesses. The work will take a lot of time, but it's worth it.
Inna Velcheva, Serpstat.com
Regularity. Competitors do not stand still, they work on their advertising campaigns and move forward. You need to keep up with their actions.
At least once a month, do a complete analysis of competitors on all the points listed above. Especially pay attention to the completeness of your list of keywords and keywords of competitors. Find differences. Create a separate table for each competitor. Download the list of his requests and find the latest ones added to the advertising campaign.
Competitor's budget calculation. How can you quickly calculate the budget that a competitor spends on certain keywords?
Clicks = Impressions * CTR
In addition to third-party tools, contextual advertising systems themselves also give you the opportunity to learn something about your competitors.
Where can you find this report, see the screenshot:
And in the new interface:
What information does this report give you:
This is what the report will look like:
How to use this report
The more detailed you look, the more accurate the data. Therefore, try to look at the level of keywords, and not the entire account.
To view a report by word or group, select it with a checkmark and select "Selected", in the new interface you will immediately have an additional panel with a button
If you have a weak search query and keyword relevance, then the data will also be less accurate, because the report takes into account all queries that caused an ad to be shown for this keyword.
Often this report answers the question, “Why did CPC go up?” and consequently the effectiveness of the advertising campaign has fallen. Check if a new player has appeared in the auction, maybe other participants have raised prices.
In Google Analytics, in the audience section, there is a report that allows you to compare the performance of your site with similar sites.
The report is located here:
In the report, you need to configure which sites you want to compare with. To do this, you need to select the industry, region, number of sessions per day.
Set the settings that best suit your site. If you do not have a lot of traffic, then compare yourself separately with those similar in volume to you, and with large niche players.
In the report, you will see comparative figures for the main metrics. For example, from the channel report, you can see not only how much more or less traffic your competitors receive from a paid channel, but in general understand which channels you are lagging behind.
You can also roughly understand how your site is better or worse, on average by niche, in the context of behavioral metrics. If the numbers are not in your favor, then you should not think about increasing the budget for advertising or changing the marketer, but about improving your site.
Most often, competitor analysis is important at the initial stages, when forming a semantic core. But this does not mean that if your site has been functioning for several years, then you do not need to resort to this procedure. It is always useful to find out what keywords a competitor is promoting for.
The first step is to determine who your main competitors are. You need to analyze not everyone in a row, but the most successful ones who are in the top of the issue. It is the most competitive sites that will give you a lot of useful information, chips that you can borrow or remake in your own way, and much more.
There are two ways to determine the most competitive sites in your niche.
Take 5-10 high-frequency keywords (for example, buy windows, order windows, install windows in Moscow, etc.). Enter them all into Yandex and Google. Analyze the SERPs on the first page and select sites that are relevant to your topic. It is advisable to choose those who are in the search results for all requests (or for the majority).
You can find out your main competitors using the following tools.
After the main competitors have been identified, you can begin to analyze their resources. Based on the analyzes carried out, you can find out what queries the site is being promoted for, find the most clickable and successful ads, add them to your advertising campaign, etc.
For example, you forgot to take into account some keys that can get you a lot of traffic. After analyzing the competitors, you found these keys and added them to yourself. Or you noticed some working methods, chips. They can also be borrowed.
With such an analysis, it is important to understand what exactly you and your promotion need. Do not copy everything, and copy in general. Better think about how to use this or that chip in your case. Or how to beat a competitor by getting all the traffic.
It also makes sense to pay attention to the mistakes and shortcomings of competitive sites in order to avoid them in your work. For example, ineffective, but at the same time expensive clicks in contextual advertising.
One of the most effective and popular tools among Yandex users. If you want to promote your resource in this particular search engine, then you definitely need SpyWords.
With it, you can conduct a thorough analysis and find out the quantity and quality of keywords for which a competitor receives traffic. In addition, the service will even help you find out information such as ad texts, advertising budget, positions and snippets in search results, etc.
To use the service, follow these steps:
Everything is pretty simple. The price for such a tool is from 1950 rubles. per month.
One of the best services for Google and Bing search engines. The service will help to conduct a thorough analysis of competitors, find out the main ones, show what keywords the site is promoting for, and provide a lot of other useful information.
The service will help you find out:
The service allows you to receive information on low-frequency requests, which clearly distinguishes it from other, less effective tools.
How to use:
The service can be used for free 10 times. Further usage costs start at $99 per month and up.
A service that is rightfully considered one of the best for competitive intelligence. With it, you can do the following:
To use this tool, you need:
This tool is paid. The price is from $199 per month and up.
One of the first in its field. The service is popular with both beginners and experienced professionals. With Advsho you can perform the following tasks:
To use the service, follow these steps:
After the done actions, you will be shown some information. If you have already been authorized, you will see the full information, if not, you will be prompted to authorize.
Unlimited access costs from 1500 rubles per year.
In addition to the tools described above, the following services are also used for competitive intelligence:
Analysis of competitor sites is an important aspect of successful promotion. Knowing the enemy by sight, it is much easier to achieve good results.
