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Competitive Research
Competitive research in SEO means, in a nutshell, stealing your competitors’ rankings and traffic.
Well, not exactly stealing.
But it does involve reverse-engineering what's working for your competitors, and using that information to your advantage!
Competitive research typically follows a few common lines of inquiry: identifying competitors, keyword research, content gap analysis, and backlink exploration . If you're not sure where to start when it comes to establishing your competitors, check out the True Competitor feature in Moz Pro, and start building your competitive strategy.
In addition, we've listed some companion resources on competitive research and analysis for SEO.
How to Do a Competitor Analysis for SEO : A terrific introduction to SEO competitive analysis with a free template to copy for your own campaigns.
The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide : An effective competitive research process starts with keywords, and this guide outlines a step-by-step process you can implement today to identify keyword opportunities.
Link Gap Analysis for SEO : Identify opportunities to increase your authority based on your competitors’ backlink strategy.
SEO Competitive Analysis Certification : Learn how to confidently build an SEO competitive analysis plan and get certified with this 6-part series. This certification combines on-demand video lessons with tasks and quizzes to affirm your understanding.
Most Recent Articles on Competitive Research
We Dipped Our Toes Into Double Featured Snippets
Double-snippet SERPs started trickling in last year, so we took a peek at what they’re up to.
Make Sense of Your Data with These Essential Keyword Segments
Knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.
Mapping the Overlap of SERP Feature Suggestions
We explored the search suggestions packed into SERP features to see how much overlap might exist as a result of Google's endless topical organization.
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Keyword Research Master Guide
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Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis
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The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist
This comprehensive competitive analysis guide & checklist will help you ID areas of opportunity and expose niches where your site can beat your competition, without having to guess which “best practice” you should test next.
How to Use Your Competition's "Top Pages" Data to Bolster Your SEO Efforts
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Here’s How to Supercharge Your Competitive Research Using a URL Profiler and Fusion Tables
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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.
Recovering the Data Google Has Hidden Away
It's no secret that Google keeps a lot of secrets. From keyword data to link data to traffic data (and surely more), there's a lot that we could benefit from — if they'd only share it! Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, Rand takes us through various ways to access that all-important data in this week's Whiteboard Friday.