Competition can be beneficial. Due to the competition, businesses remain on their toes and continuously work to provide optimum product/service. Additionally, there are numerous opportunities for your brand, such as learning from first-movers. If you have an online brand, you must have benefited from this competition. But there’s another way to use this competition to your advantage, especially if you are an online business. You can use it to increase your demand and capture more of the market share. Yes, it’s possible. We are talking about competitor analysis. Your competitors have a wealth of information that you can benefit from in the long-run. The best part is that it is abundantly available for you whenever you want. Read on to find out the benefits you can have with competitive analysis for your online business.
1. Identify the right keywords
Your entire SEO strategy depends on the identification and selection of the right keywords. Most businesses target keywords based on various trends, keyword suggestion tools, or just plain old guesswork. And it proves helpful most of the time, but if you analyze your competitors who have already been in the market for some time, you can hit the jackpot. For this, it is beneficial to utilize competitor analysis tools and conduct extensive research. Additionally, view your competitor’s website, content, social media posts, and more to decide which of your keywords will help you achieve ranking and which won’t. You can also take their keywords and apply different variations to them.
2. Improve Your Backlinks
Another thing that you can do after performing a competitive analysis is improving your backlink profile. There are various tools that you can use for this purpose. It will enable you to see how many backlinks your competitors have. You can also use those tools to notify you whenever there is a new backlink with a good SEO value. Backlinks are a significant factor in any business’s SEO strategy. If you are on top of your game, you can take the necessary steps to rank higher than your competitors.
3. Avoid Costly Mistakes
As far as your SEO strategy is concerned, there are various mistakes that you will make along the way. The only problem is if those mistakes get bigger and more frequent. But if you analyze your competitor’s SEO strategy, you can learn from them. You can find out what works and what doesn’t. This way, you will formulate your SEO strategy with the least amount of risks. A great example of benefiting from the competitive analysis is PPC campaigns. You can see which keywords your competitors are ranking for and which keywords bring in the most traffic. It will help you with your PPC campaigns.
Another way you can benefit from it is by identifying any gaps that are present in the market. Find out which products and services you are currently not offering, but your competitors are. You can hop on the bandwagon and avail the opportunity.
4. Know Where You Stand
One crucial thing, especially for an online business, is identifying its place in the market and keeping up to date with the current position. You might think that your sales are good and that customers are satisfied, but you have to know how you compare with others in your industry. Once you have a competitor analysis in your hands, you will be able to find out exactly what your position is and where you want to be. It will help you come up with better goals and identify the means to achieve them. You can create different strategies that can enable you to overthrow your competitor’s hold on the market and capture a bigger market share.
5. Spot New Industry Trends
We all know that markets everywhere depend on trends. These trends and fads come and go, and if you want to benefit from them, you need to identify them before they hit the market. Your competitive analysis can help you in predicting the upcoming trends. You can analyze multiple factors to see how the market is shifting and predict what will happen soon. Once you have the predictions, you can create marketing strategies to provide your users with a better and more relatable experience.
6. Enhance Your Content Marketing
Content marketing is one way you can set yourself apart and personalize your content to engage your customers and turn them into repeat customers. Here too, you can use competitor analysis to drive more traffic to your website or e-commerce store. You can check out their blogs and identify which content is performing better than the rest. You can also find out what type of content they are regularly posting on their website, guest blogs, as well as their social media platforms. If you are a direct competitor, it is safe to say that you have the same customers. And if they are enjoying your competitor’s content, they will enjoy yours too.
When we talk about content analysis, we are not just talking about their blogs, videos, and social media posts, but also:
- The structure of the website
- Types of content used, images, videos, infographics, etc.
- URL structure
- Font Family, the layout of the Webpage, etc.
Once you have done the analysis, you can optimize your website and your content accordingly.
7. Set Yourself Apart from the Competition
Nowadays, it is critical for you, as an online business, to show your customers how you can cater to their needs better. For this, you have to show your USPs and how you are different from many businesses in the market. Only your value proposition can help you stand out. If you don’t have that, your customers will have no reason to buy from you. Analyzing your competitors can tell you what their value propositions are and help you create your own. Even if you have your value propositions, you need to keep an eye on your competitors and identify their missed areas.
Conclusion
Competitive analysis has a myriad of benefits that you can avail of for your online business. It tells you how your competitors are doing, what they are doing, and so forth. It also tells you the similarities and differences between you and your competitors. Based on this data, you can successfully create, optimize, and implement your digital marketing strategies and ensure your position at the top.
