Competitor analysis is a common task to do when you start a business, either online or offline. But not everyone does that properly. On the other hand, if you’re trying to create a website and need to rank first, you must know how to make a competitor keyword research. Because that’s all you need to know before action.
Today, we will talk about competitor keyword research and how to do it properly (like a pro)!
With these hacks, you can increase your monthly traffic/sales and rank first on search results. Remember, our target is to beat your competitors and let you be the first!
What is Competitor Keyword Research, and Why Does it Matter?
Competitor keyword research determines all the strong and potential keywords that your competitors are using. Afterward, you take these keywords and add them to your website and content. Therefore, you start beating your competitors on search results and start getting traffic from their keywords.
It is important because it helps your website to stand out from competitors. With competitor keyword research you understand your weaknesses and improve your website much better.
How to Do Competitor Keyword Research?
First, determine your niche and competitors. It is easy when you use Google or other search engines. For instance, you are selling shoes. So, your competitors are shoe sellers. If you search for “shoe shop” you can find at least 2 million results. But, not all of them are your real competitors. You need to be selective at this point. My suggestion is to pick the first 15 websites and not include the ads.
After you select your competitors, use a tool to analyze their top keywords.
But which tools?
Which Tools Are Best for Finding Competitor Keywords in 2024?
There are tons of competitor analysis tools on the internet. If you have a budget to spend on your SEO strategies then I suggest you use Semrush. It is easy to use and makes it clear to understand. Simply add your competitors and your domain and analyze. Semrush gives the top keywords and also analyzes if your website contains these keywords or not, which is called the “Keyword Gap”.
If you don’t want to spend any budget, there are other free tools to use for competitor keyword research. Like SE Ranking or MOZ. You can add your competitor one by one and analyze their keywords.
How to Apply These Keywords to the Website?
There are many options for you to add these potential keywords. According to your marketing and SEO strategy, there are several ways. Let’s see one by one how to add these keywords to your website:
- Creating content according to these keywords and making internal linking
- Buying backlinks based on these keywords
- Adding these keywords to meta titles and descriptions
- Adding keywords to existing content
What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid in Competitor Keyword Research?
The first and most commonly made mistake is not knowing the right competitors. As I’ve mentioned above you need to filter your competitors. Another mistake is keyword stuffing. Not all the top keywords are important for your website. You need to select the proper ones and add them correctly to your website.
If you think that you need to add all the keywords that competitors rank higher, then you’re wrong. Be selective and focus on a few keywords. That will make it easier to rank higher than your competitors.
