A quick guide for small and medium businesses looking for competitor keywords
At the heart of a solid SEO strategy are your keywords. These are the words and phrases your ideal customer punches into Google to find your business, products, and services.
But there are two problems with this.
1) Other businesses doing a similar thing to you are competing for those same keywords.
2) Search is not static. The words and phrases people type into search engines to find businesses, products, and services such as yours will change over time.
For these reasons, taking the time to find competitor keywords keeps you, well, competitive.
In this short article I’ll share what competitor keyword research is, how I find competitor keywords as part of my client’s SEO services and how this information will benefit your business.
What is competitor keyword research?
Competitor keyword research is usually just one part of a larger keyword research service. It involves finding the keywords that online businesses similar to yours are targeting. Competitor keyword research reveals what these businesses show up for in search engine results, as well as where they’re missing the mark and not ranking well. Being aware of what’s working and what isn’t for your competitors can, and indeed should, influence the keywords you choose.
When’s a good time to look at competitor keywords?
The sooner you find competitor keywords, the sooner you can start contending for search engine rankings. The only exception to this is if you’re new to business, as in the early stages you might not have a full understanding of who your direct competitors are. And there’s a distinct difference between your direct competitors and your keyword competitors.
If you’re a little further down the track, now’s a good time to start competitor keyword tracking. Especially if you’re already ranking OK for certain keywords and want to compete on the next level. Looking at what others are doing will:
- avoid your rankings plateauing or dropping—it’s always good to reach a little higher
- keep you relevant if new industry phrases are coined and products adopted
- give you an awareness of any fresh competition and the keyword approach they’re taking.
But whatever your motivation, catching up with what similar businesses are doing will keep your hand in the race.
4.5 ways for finding competitor keywords
If you read my articles regularly you won’t be surprised to hear me say that competitor keyword research isn’t a 10-minute job. Most of my clients prefer using their time for customer care and business planning, so keeping that time free means flicking the competitor keyword research over to me. And when that happens, I do one or all of the following.
1. Visit your competitor’s website
I use Keywords Everywhere as a quick way to find out a page’s target keyword. This is a Google Chrome extension. Once installed, I can visit any page on any site, click it and it tells me:
- the page’s metadata
- title tags
- links within the page
- schema markup data.
This information is helpful if your competitor has launched a page promoting a new service or product. In a matter of seconds, Keywords Everywhere shows me the keywords they’re targeting, which paints a picture of the audience they’re aiming for with this shiny new thing of theirs.
2. See who’s in the top 20
This involves putting each exact keyword phrase from your keyword list into Google and then seeing who turns up in the top results. The next step is identifying which results are your direct competitors.
3. Do an SEO tool deep-dive
It’s worth investing in a tool if you plan to track more than a few words. And I can tell you that there are lots of tools to choose from. However, after trying several over the years, my main competitor keyword finder tool of choice is SE Ranking. Its site-crawling technology is second only to Google. For competitor keyword analysis I use the Competitive Research function—when I enter your competitor’s domain I see detailed information such as:
- where they’re currently ranking for their certain keywords
- how much organic traffic those keywords are pulling in for them
- the cost of any keywords they’re ranking for in paid search (pay per click or PPC)
- what backlinks they have and the authority those links bring to the site.
It’s then able to give you an accurate overview of where you stand in the keyword race.
4. Find the words your competitors want to rank for
Using a crawling tool called Screaming Frog you can get an idea of the keywords your competitors want to rank for, but aren’t yet.
Put the URL of the site into Screaming Frog. It takes a few minutes to crawl every single piece of content on that site and then return a neat, organized list of
- the page titles
- descriptions
- and meta information.
Analyze the words and language to get a glimpse into the keywords your competitors are trying to rank for. When you discover any that could work for your business, make a note of them. And then think about what content you can create so you can target that keyword too.
4.5 Play with tag clouds
Creating a word or tag cloud is a fun but unconventional way to visualize your competitor’s target keywords. Tools like Wordclouds.com let you enter a URL and see the most frequently used words on that page, displayed in a pretty graphic.
The larger the word, the more it’s used on the page. The assumption is that the larger words are the ones your competitor is trying really hard to rank for. Relying on this as your sole way of competitor keyword tracking isn’t ideal. And certainly shouldn’t be used in place of one (or all) of the other 4 methods. But if you find working with huge data sets and long lists of words difficult, then this fun exercise may help.
Taking on the competition
Now we’re armed with all of this data, how can we put it to good use?
Firstly, we can use it to measure your site’s keyword performance against your competitors. If they’re ranking higher than you for certain keywords we can evaluate what they’re doing and work out a strategy in an attempt to beat it. This could involve updating a page’s content or creating fresh content. Or it could mean finding more opportunities for quality backlinks, which contributes to increased site or page authority.
Next, we can use the data to identify missed opportunities. These are the keywords and phrases your competitors are ranking for that aren’t currently on your radar. Again, creating great content puts you back in the race.
Finally, competitor keyword analysis reveals where your competitors are falling short—the words they want to rank for, but currently aren’t. By identifying these opportunities you can get ahead and win the search traffic before them, positioning yourself as a trendsetter or authority.
Ready to find competitor keywords?
Now you know what competitor keywords are, how these are unearthed and why it’s so important to be aware of what they are trying to rank for, the next step is incorporating all of it into your SEO strategy. And I can help with that.
Let’s start your SEO Power-Up Plan
What if you could see the actual return you’ll get from investing time in competitor keyword tracking? Could knowing the benefits in black and white give you the nudge you need to get started?
If you’re intrigued, then The SEO Power-Up Plan is for you. This service delivers a clear picture of where your website is right now. And what needs to be done to up its SEO game. Period.
Walk away with concrete steps you can take immediately to start improving your SEO and website traffic.
