How to Analyze Competition on Google?

Competition analysis on Google helps improve a website in many ways. First and foremost, it allows you to identify its weaknesses and discover competitors’ shortcomings. Additionally, it provides a range of new solutions whose implementation enhances organic search results.

Competitor analysis on Google is especially important now, as more and more people are moving their businesses online. To become a leader in your industry, you need not only to take appropriate SEO actions and avoid competitors' mistakes but also to offer your customers something extra. How do you analyze competitors on Google? What tools will be useful in this process? Find out in today’s guide.

How to identify who your competitors are?

The first step you need to take is to determine who your competition is. Start by finding a benchmark, which is a website that leads in your industry on the search engine. Often, the benchmark will be the largest company in the country, region, or city. Next, prepare a list of keywords for which you are optimizing your website. At this point, the situation becomes more complex – you will typically compete with a specific site for several or a dozen keywords.

Identify which keywords you consider the most important. Enter them into the Google search engine and check which sites appear above and below your search result. However, skip sites like price comparison portals, large sales websites, and companies using Google Ads. You won’t be able to compete with them on equal footing until you become a leader in your industry. Consider which companies on the list you recognize, whether you know their products, and if you are familiar with their visual identity.

The second step is to prepare a list of information you need to collect. Be sure to check which keywords display your competitors’ offers but not yours. Then, examine the optimization of the companies’ websites on your list. Review the content and how it is presented, as well as the site’s code. Especially important are your competitors’ external links – check how these linked sites rank on Google, their reviews, and the number of views. This will help you understand where competitors gain new customers and how they work on their brand image. Also, look at your competitors’ social media activities – where they publish, how often, and what type of content.

Competitor analysis on Google – useful tools

Conducting competitor analysis becomes much easier and more accurate if you use specialized tools. Most of them are paid but offer trial periods before purchase. One of the best-known tools is the Polish program Senuto. Its major advantage is the intuitive report creation. Simply log in and enter your domain name in the “Visibility Analysis” tab to receive a list of main competitors in a report located in the “Competition” tab. This tool will help you discover the keywords competing companies are ranking for. Senuto offers a 14-day free trial.

Link building is just as important but difficult to check manually. Fortunately, there are tools that analyze competitors’ external links and evaluate domain ratings. These include Ahrefs and Majestic. With these programs, you can peek at the sources of incoming links to competing companies and ensure that traffic is also directed to your website. The tools also allow you to check if competitors are trying to acquire new, strong links. We recommend testing both tools to see which one is more user-friendly and convenient for you.

To monitor the search engine, you can also use Google Alerts. It helps you observe and analyze competitors’ activities on Google and allows you to set notifications for topics of interest. You can customize the frequency of alerts, the keywords you want to follow, and the selection of sources for the publications. This tool is free of charge.

Competitor analysis on Google will help you improve your website and boost its ranking in search results. However, remember that competitors also change and test new SEO solutions. Therefore, try to conduct the analysis regularly. To expand your knowledge about competitors, it is also worth performing an SEO audit of your own site and those of your competitors.