Semalt Recommendations On How To Check The Keywords Of The Competition
Keywords play an essential role in the positioning and promotion of a website. However, their analysis cannot only focus on what is on our website. To compete successfully for a high position on the Internet, you must first know your competition. Who are they? The main competitors and more specifically the key phrases they use on their website and in Google AdWords ads.
To talk about effective online marketing, you need to get to know the keywords, then use them to create valuable content, build a link profile and deal with SEO. But again, to know what we need to achieve our goal, which is usually a high position in Google search, we need to know who we are competing with. And one of the most important aspects of knowing your online competitors is finding out what keywords they are using. So let's look at the most common ways to easily access this knowledge and apply it to your business.
Why should you analyze your competitors' keywords?
It's hard to find anyone in the internet marketing world who doesn't underestimate the importance of keywords. In most cases, however, people solely focus on the keywords used on their own websites. We look for the most relevant options and ideas to create website content in the form of articles and descriptions of the website and subpages. In all of this, we forget the value of analysing the keywords used, consciously or not, by competitors. Through these activities, we can see what our competitors are really doing and what area of activity they are mainly focusing on.
Thanks to advanced tools, we also learn what opportunities they offer. By browsing the keywords used by competitors, we are guaranteed to find something for us on almost every level. We can also easily notice new phrases that will generate traffic to our website in the future and, therefore, increase the benefits of sales or leads. The overview of the competition's activities also allows us to discover whether they are using new solutions and options that we did not know about before. The fight for a position in Google is hard, therefore such actions are not unethical. Moreover, almost all large websites that want to have a chance to occupy and maintain a high position in the Google search engine use similar procedures.
The easiest access to your competitors' keywords
Keywords play a decisive role in the appearance of a given site in Google results. Messages about the phrases used by a given website are also essential knowledge for SEOs. You can access them in different ways - both very simple and more complex methods - allowing you to reach a treasure trove of information. Which methods and tools to use depends mainly on your need.
One of the easiest ways to get information about keywords on the website is by typing "site: https: // www." In the search box. After WWW, we enter the website address. We will then receive a list of indexed subpages and their key phrases. This will give you a very basic knowledge, which, however, can be very useful in the later stages.
Another easy way is to check the source code. This can be done without access to the site. Being on the main page, we use the CTRL + U combination or the "Investigate" option obtained after right-clicking anywhere on the page. The data is scattered and it's hard to read anything from them, so we're just looking for a few of the most important points: "head", "keywords", "description" and "title".
Free tools to know the keywords of the competition
There are free tools that can be used to perform keyword analysis. However, we don't get a much richer set of information, because then we don't have access to the level of competition for each phrase, how hard it is to rank high for a specific phrase and how many people are searching for a specific phrase. In addition, the information is very general and can be confusing.
Paid competitive analysis tools
Using the free tools so far, we will receive valuable information, but it will be very basic. The real secrets can be discovered only after using specialized tools and analytical software. It involves a certain investment, but the knowledge that we gain from them is worth much more. To start with, it is worth looking at one of the new generation options on the market, which is the Dedicated SEO Dashboard. Initially, we recommend that you use the trial period and, only after it expires, decide whether it is worth using the full version.
So, let's take a closer look at the value of this tool in the field of competitor analysis!
The Dedicated SEO Dashboard - The Best Keyword Analysis Tool
The Dedicated SEO Dashboard (DSD) is the only tool that deserves to be examined from a broader perspective. Access to a wealth of knowledge is at your fingertips. All you have to do is log in to the user panel and open the section in the left menu that says "Competitors". Just provide the competitor's website address. you will then get a basic comparison. In addition, you will find out who is the biggest rival of a given page. It will also display information about the common keywords of both pages and a list of all the keywords for the specific page. the DSD allows you to compare up to several dozen pages at a time, which is why it is a very good option for general competitive analysis. Thanks to this tool, we can collect almost all the information needed for other marketing activities.
Also, it is important to note that this analysis includes not only the top-ranked sites but also young sites that could become serious competitors in the future. With the Dedicated SEO Dashboard, we can filter competitors and display many reports that show overlapping keywords. Many filters also allow us to compare pages in terms of ranking efficiency.
It also allows you to find out which keywords are being used the right way and which ones could still help your site. The DSD has the ability to perform instant in-depth analysis of the keywords used by a competing website and omitted by the base one. This means that with this tool we can rethink our promotional strategy and apply some adjustments to improve its level. All combinations of comparison variants are available in this tool. We can use the grouping of phrases, examine their competitiveness and learn more about the current trends. The mechanism of the software automatically suggests phrases that may be attractive for a specific website. Thanks to this, we can also use this tool to inspire us when creating our content.
Don't hesitate to dip your toe into these data-driven tools functionality on demo.semalt.com.
Simple ways to analyze the competition in terms of key phrases
Check competitors' page content
A very simple solution, but perfect for a start. We go to the competition's website and look at the texts on the home page and in the most important tabs. We also check several blog texts. Here is what we are looking for:
- In the article on the main page, we check the title and subheadings and similarly, in the articles on the tabs. This is where the key phrases are most often found.
- In blog texts, we are primarily interested in internal links, or more precisely, their anchors. It is there that we can find interesting phrases and long tails. And if the internal linking is carried out correctly, in the links from the blog, we should find a few traces of positioned tabs, and thus keywords.
In addition, it is worth checking the competition's website every now and then. Perhaps something has changed since our last visit? And not only in the content and text layer but also at the interface level or even the entire website layout? It may turn out that any of the possible changes will be so inspiring that we will also decide to make this type of modification on our website.
Checking the source code of the page
Under this scary sounding name, there is a trivial operation. It consists in the fact that on the page or subpage that we want to check, we right-click and from the drop-down menu select the option "display page source", "show page source" or something similar. It is important not to click on the image, link, window with a thumbnail of the movie, etc. We should see the source code of the page. We are interested in the following lines of code in the header, i.e. the < head > section:
- < title > tag content;
- the content of the meta tag < meta name = "description" content = "..." />
- possible content of the meta tag < meta name = "keywords" content = "phrase_1, phrase_2, phrase_3 ″ />
We can find them using the system search engine: Ctrl + F on a Windows computer or Command + F on a MacBook. Why is this part of the code the one that interests us the most?
- The meta-content of the title tag should contain the phrase for which the given subpage is optimized.
- Meta description, i.e. page description, is a kind of extension of the title. It should also display your keywords.
- By definition, meta keywords include key phrases, but this meta tag is less and less often found in the source code because currently, the algorithms of most search engines ignore its content. Nevertheless, in the code of some websites, you can still find meta keywords. If this happens - let's examine its content.
Is the analysis of the competition in terms of the used phrases really so important?
Definitely yes. It is worth spending these few hours at least once every six months to track how our direct rivals are doing on the Internet. What new solutions do they use on their websites, what do they give up, whether and how do they optimize the content, links…? It may turn out that our competition came up with a great idea, but implemented it very poorly. It may also turn out that we had a great idea, but we completely failed to implement it. Such knowledge is priceless since only due to the fact that having it, it will be more difficult for us to make the same mistakes again.
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.