SEO competitive analysis involves researching the links, keywords, content, and more of your SEO competitors in order to reverse engineer the most successful elements of these tactics into your own SEO strategy.
This page is your home base for education on SEO competitive research. You'll find content here that's suited for learners of all skill levels.
Webinar - Uncharted Territory: Competitive Research For New Sites
In this presentation, Dr. Pete walks through aspirational analysis to find the sites you'll be competing against in the SERPs before you even launch.
20 Years in Search & I Don't Trust My Gut or Google
Presented by Wil Reynolds (he/him) at Mozcon 2019
What would your reaction be if you were told that one of Wil's clients got more conversions from zero-volume search terms than search terms with 1000+ searches per month? It's true. Wil found this out in seconds, leading him to really look at his whole client strategy through a new lens. It also made him question company-wide strategies. How prevalent is this across all clients? Don't they all deserve to get these insights? It required him to dig into the long tail, deep. To use big data and see PPC data as insights, not just marketing. What would your reaction be if you were told that Google's "bad click" business could be generating as much annually as Starbucks or McDonalds? Wil will be making the case for big data, agencies, and why building systems that looking at every single search term you get matched to is the future of search marketing.
Content Marketing Is Broken and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You
Presented by Oli Gardner at MozCon 2018
Traditional content marketing focuses on educational value at the expense of product value, which is a broken and outdated way of thinking. We all need to sell a product, and our visitors all need a product to improve their lives, but we're so afraid of being seen as salesy that somehow we got lost, and we forgot why our content even exists. We need our M.O.M.s! No, not your actual mother. Your Marketing Optimization Map — your guide to exploring the nuances of optimized content marketing through a product-focused lens. In this session you'll learn data and lessons from Oli's biggest ever content marketing experiment, and how those lessons have changed his approach to content; a context-to-content-to-conversion strategy for big content that converts; advanced methods for creating "choose your own adventure" navigational experiences to build event-based behavioral profiles of your visitors (using GTM and GA); and innovative ways to productize and market the technology you already have, with use cases your customers had never considered.
Local Competitive Intelligence
This Moz Academy video will help you learn how to get a leg up on the competition in local SEO and Google Maps.
How to Find Your Real SEO Competitors — Whiteboard Friday
Competitor identification and competitor research is absolutely key to a good SEO strategy. Your real SEO competitors are the ones who target the same keywords, speak to the same audience, and solve for the same consumer needs. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Lidia Infante walks you through two approaches to find out who those competitors are.
Hey, These Aren’t My Competitors!
There are many reasons why the results from a tool like True Competitor might not match your expectations, and that could be a good thing. In this post, Dr. Pete digs into five of those reasons.
Aspirational Analysis: Competitive Research for New (or Small) Sites
Competitive SERP analysis is based on understanding the broader ecosystems of your ranking keywords. This is great if you’re an established business, but what if you’ve got a brand new site or are still developing your SEO strategy and aren’t ranking for many keywords? Dr. Pete walks you through a solution: aspirational analysis.
How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit (Updated for 2022)
Are you outranked in Google's Local Pack? Then it's high time for a competitive business audit. Use this example analysis and downloadable spreadsheet to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of multiple businesses and devise a plan to win.
Level-Up Your Search Strategy with the Professional’s Guide to SEO
Over 14 million people have cut their SEO teeth on our Beginner's Guide to SEO, learning the ins and outs of search engine optimization from scratch. Now, for the first time, we're introducing the next-step resource to take you from practicing SEO to preaching it.
Daily SEO Fix: Competitive Keyword Research
Before you begin your quest to find new keywords, you need to know exactly who your competitors are. In this newest Daily Fix, some of our best and brightest Mozzers will show you what you need to do to get the most out of Moz Pro’s Competitive Research tools, which allow you to find your true competitors, what keywords they rank for, and what their top performing content is.
New Competitive Research Suite: Actionable Data to Drive Real Results
We’re thrilled to announce Moz’s Competitive Research Suite, built from the ground up to drive targeted data and actionable insights about your competitors, your competitive keyword gap, and your content gap.
SEO Gap Analysis: Leverage Your Competitor's Performance
Presented by Lidia Infante (she/her) at MozCon 2022
Ranking is as easy or as hard as doing better than your competitors. For that, you have to benchmark the sites on your search landscape, meet them where they are, and gain an edge. In this talk, Lidia will share how she built SEO strategies off the back of a gap analysis, along with her templates and success stories.
10-Minute Sales Research with True Competitor
Last month, Moz launched our True Competitor beta to help you reveal your search rivals. Today, Dr. Pete shows you how to use this new tool to quickly understand your brand’s competitive landscape when researching a prospect.
Reveal Your Rivals with True Competitor
Today, after years of rethinking how competitive analysis should work (and, honestly, re-rethinking it on many occasions), we’re proud to announce the next step in Moz’s competitive analysis toolkit — True Competitor.
How to Choose Pillar Page Topics
With the growth of conversational search intent, pillar page strategies have entered the scene to fulfill those queries. Like anything in the SEO space, pillar page strategies take time and a great deal of planning to do correctly. Let’s break down this process.
Long Tail SEO in 2021: How You Can Have It All or Die Trying
Due to Google’s advancements in Natural Language Processing, the long tail of search has exploded. However, I will argue that NLP has also imploded the long tail, and understanding how and why may save our collective sanity.
Impactful SEO Audits for B2B
A comprehensive audit of your B2B website can mean the difference between winning new clients and losing them to the competition. In this brand new episode of Whiteboard Friday, guest host Carly Schoonhoven walks you through four areas that can take your audits to the next level.
Mapping Local Essentials: Being the Business that Grows, Sells, or Markets the Beans
Where there’s need, fulfilment can be a public good, and where there’s upheaval, any possibility is worth considering. Necessities are emerging in bold relief on the map of each town and city. Demand must be met by determined small entrepreneurs to keep society functional.
Which of My Competitor's Keywords Should (& Shouldn't) I Target? - Best of Whiteboard Friday
Which of your competitor's keywords are worth targeting, and which can be ignored? Learn how to tell the difference in this fan favorite Whiteboard Friday. Plus, save a seat our upcoming webinar, Competitive Analysis for SEO: Size Up & Surpass Your Search Rivals!
Super-Practical Tips for Improving Your Site's E-A-T
Presented by Dr. Marie Haynes at Mozcon 2019
Google has admitted that they measure the concept of "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness" in their algorithms. If your site is categorized under YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), you absolutely must have good E-A-T in order to rank well. In this talk, you'll learn how Google measures E-A-T and what changes you can make both on site and off in order to outrank your competitors. Using real-life examples, Marie will answer what E-A-T is and how Google measures it, what changes you can make on your site to improve how E-A-T is displayed, and what you can do off-site to improve E-A-T.
How to Optimize for Competitors' Branded Keywords
It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor, from determining their worthiness to properly targeting your funnel to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.
The Illustrated SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow
An integral part of keyword research is an in-depth look at your competition. This post offers a concise flowchart to visualize and guide you through that process.
How to Use Your Competition's "Top Pages" Data to Bolster Your SEO Efforts
By comparing top pages data from multiple sources against one another, you can get some really cool, powerful advanced SEO opportunities in your content and keyword targeting. Rand explains how in this Whiteboard Friday.