An SEO Benchmarking consists of studying the natural referencing of direct competitor sites, in order to discover their positioning strategies. This analysis focuses on various key indicators, the structure and content of their pages.
If you want to improve your position in search results, hire an SEO writer to write SEO friendly articles.
Do you want to optimize your visibility with Google? Find out how to perform an effective SEO Benchmarking and implement concrete actions to maximize your SEO.
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| SEO Benchmarking |
The criteria for achieving an SEO Benchmarking
From the title tag to the meta descriptions, via the keywords and the type of content, what elements to analyze, among your competitors, for a relevant SEO Benchmarking?
Competitors to analyze
Who are the competitors to analyze? Before answering this question, it is advisable to choose the number of websites for your SEO Benchmarking .
Our advice: compare between 3 and 6 competitors. If you are in a niche sector, it is not necessarily wise to analyze more than 3 sites.
business competitors
Start with your direct competitors. In other words: companies that belong to the same sector of activity and the same geographical location as you (if you have local points of sale), which offer a service or a product similar to yours.
For example, if you are a car dealership, your direct competitors will be other independent dealerships in your area, as well as large groups like BYmyCAR.
SEO Competitors
Blogs, specialized media or associations do not steal your customers… but they can steal positions in search engines! Your SEO Benchmarking should consider these websites to improve your traffic.
If we take the example of the car dealership again, these sites can be: blogs of car enthusiasts or online media such as Automobile magazine, Auto-Moto or Auto Plus.
Analyze the presence of competition on your keywords
During this analysis, you must pay attention to the competition of your keywords. If you try to position yourself on queries already used by your biggest competitors, you may experience difficulties…
At the time of your SEO Benchmarking , identify the keywords that you use little or not at all, and check their competition. You can do this via tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest (which we present below in the article), or use Google's Keyword Planner.
Ideally, find phrases with high search volume and little competition.
The type of content present
What content are your competitors publishing? Which topics get the most traffic?
This is the time to analyze the URLs through which your competitors are getting more visits. The objective is to understand the formats and themes they address, then the weight that each of them represents in their SEO strategy.
The strategy implemented by the competition
By deciphering all the information obtained, you will be able to identify the successful strategies and techniques used by your competitors' websites.
Let's take a simple example: if you observe that a competitor always uses the keyword first in his title tags, and that he is well positioned on these expressions, this may be a good practice to apply to your pages. .
Likewise, if you see that articles on a specific topic (on a car model, for example, to stay on the case of a car dealership) attract more traffic than others, this is a topic to create on more content in the future.
Presence of advertising on your keywords
Among the flagship SEO strategies, we often find paid ads in Google. Search engine advertising allows companies to buy visibility on relevant keywords.
Your SEO Benchmarking must be interested in the purchases of the queries you are targeting. It will be more difficult to position yourself on expressions purchased by many advertisers.
Moreover, if you want to set up a paid referencing strategy, it is better to choose keywords that are not in high demand. The bids, and therefore the cost per click, will be lower.
SEO indicators to compare
Who says evaluation says indicators! For a useful SEO Benchmarking , you need to compare accurate values. Here are the 4 main metrics to monitor.
The number of pages
One of the first metrics to track is the total number of pages Google has indexed. Compare the volume coming from your website with that of competing sites.
If the latter benefit from a better positioning in the SERPs, and they have more indexed pages, this is an avenue to explore. This means you need to publish more content or blog posts.
Conversely, if they have fewer referenced URLs, but increased visibility, it's time to optimize your texts.
Estimated organic traffic
How many visitors come to your website each day? And on those of your competitors? Being able to compare organic traffic allows you to better position yourself in terms of visibility.
Indeed, the number of pages is not a sufficiently relevant indicator to judge the notoriety of a site. The traffic brings interesting information on the possible margin of progress, in particular if your competitors receive more visits.
Our advice: remember to compare traffic at regular intervals to check if your optimizations are working.
backlinks
One of the most important Benchmarkings for SEO is link authority. Namely: the number of reputable websites that link to at least one of your pages.
Even with all the changes to Google's algorithms over the past few years, this metric remains a powerful indicator of the success of your SEO strategy.
Link building – and getting good quality backlinks – can get your website to the top of competitive keyword searches. Result: your traffic benefits from exponential growth.
By evaluating the domains bringing visitors to your competitors, you will be able to spot opportunities for optimization. Indeed, you will have the opportunity to contact these sites to offer them to make a link to one of your articles.
The number of keywords
Keystone of natural referencing, keywords play a major role in the quality of SEO. During this Benchmarking, you will need to check the volume of keywords leading to your website and that of competitors. Also observe how the ratio between the number of branded and non-branded keywords looks like.
You can examine the phrases your competitors are ranking on on the first page of organic search results.
This list helps you identify competitors with the best SEO strategy. This is the time to learn valuable lessons to optimize your tags (title and meta description, for example) and try new content ideas.
Analyze the strategy of your competitors
How do your competitors rank ahead of you in the SERPs? What are the common points of the articles that are referenced in the first results? Your SEO Benchmarking must absolutely evaluate the content marketing strategy of other sites.
What types of content do they produce?
One effective method of identifying popular industry topics is to analyze your competitors' content categories. To do this, you can examine the main sections of their blog and review their title tags and page titles to create a list of subjects and formats. This list may include blog posts, videos, webinars, infographics, case studies, white papers, podcasts, and more.
By compiling this list, you can gain insight into your competitors' content marketing efforts and understand the resources they allocate to it. Armed with this information, you can identify ideas to replicate or differentiate your own content strategy. This approach can help you stay ahead of the competition and create content that resonates with your target audience.
How often do they produce content?
Analyze post dates to find out how often your competitors are posting. Google appreciates fresh content. The more a site updates its pages, the more likely it is to rise in the search results.
Also, knowing if they post daily, weekly, or monthly helps you optimize your own content marketing strategy.
What is the length of the content?
Assessing the average content length of your competitors helps set goals for your articles. Use tools like the Word Counter Plus Chrome extension to measure the word count of a specific webpage or blog post.
You can then compare with your texts to know if it is necessary to lengthen your contents.
What should be done to compete with them?
Now that you've gathered all this data on your competitors' content strategy, the final step is to summarize and compare the strengths and weaknesses of each (yours included). Ask yourself these questions in particular:
- How are the title and meta-description tags of the pages written?
- How are the articles structured? (H1, H2, H3, with or without image…)
- Are competitors posting content more regularly than you?
- What are the formats and subjects that they often address and that you do not deal with much? Conversely, on what topics do you communicate more?
- Is it necessary to write longer articles? If so, do you have the time to do it or the necessary resources? If necessary, you will surely have to delegate part of your SEO writing…
Tools for performing an SEO Benchmarking
You will have understood it throughout this article: to achieve your SEO Benchmarking, you need tools. Discover 4 platforms allowing you to analyze your website, as well as the competition.
Semrush
A well-known marketing and SEO tool, Semrush brings together different practical features to evaluate the SEO strategy of competitors. First, it helps you identify similar sites. Simply enter your domain name to receive a list of competitors.
For each website, the platform displays detailed information such as organic traffic, volume of backlinks, main keywords, referring domains or positioning in the SERPs. You will be able to easily analyze and compare the main SEO indicators essential to your Benchmarking.
Majestic
Majestic essentially focuses on the netlinking strategy of your competitors. With just a few clicks, you get a complete overview of a website's inbound links and referring domains. The tool also indicates the Trust Flow (detailed by subject) and the Citation Flow.
In order to facilitate your SEO Benchmarking, Majestic allows you to directly compare 10 domains. Thus, on the same dashboard, you have a global and hierarchical vision of the performance of your competitors, compared to yours.
Ubersuggest
Being best known for its keyword research tool, Ubersuggest can also analyze your competitors' SEO and content marketing strategies.
By entering a URL, you immediately obtain useful data for your analysis: estimated organic traffic, most viewed pages, volume of backlinks, list of incoming links, positioning in the SERPs, main keywords, etc.
All this information helps you identify the SEO strategy of other websites and detect good practices to apply in your content.
SEOptimer
A free and easy-to-use platform, SEOptimer generates a comprehensive report including the SEO strengths and weaknesses of a website. The tool gives a score, then lists possible improvements.
The platform reviews title tags, H1 to H6 titles, meta descriptions, robot.txt file, image alt attributes and many other technical parameters.
It also provides a list of the main keywords used on a page, as well as the top 10 queries leading to the site and the estimated monthly traffic.
Our tip for performing an SEO Benchmarking
Objectivity is an essential factor in a successful SEO Benchmarking . If you can carry it out yourself, using the best practices and tools listed in this article, we advise you to entrust this mission to an agency or an external service provider.
Redacteur.com offers you a turnkey content strategy that includes an SEO audit with a Benchmarking of your SEO competitors, as well as 15 to 60 written contents ready to be published on your site.
To improve your natural referencing, delegate the management and writing of your blog articles to a web editor specializing in SEO by placing an order on our web writing platform !
FAQs SEO Benchmarking?
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| FAQs |
1- Why is it important to benchmark SEO performance?
Benchmarking SEO performance is crucial because it enables you to measure the number of keywords driving traffic to your website. Ideally, this number should increase over time. If the number remains stagnant or declines, it indicates that your SEO strategy is failing and needs to be reevaluated immediately.
2- How to benchmark SEO performance?
To benchmark SEO performance, start by defining your keywords and conducting a competitive analysis. Analyze your keywords, assess technical differences, identify content opportunities, and compare user experience. Additionally, perform a backlink analysis to further evaluate your SEO performance.
3- What are the four steps involved in successful benchmarking?
The four phases of successful benchmarking include a current state assessment, benchmarking participant identification, comparative analysis, and strategic prognosis.
4- Why is benchmarking considered the best tool?
Benchmarking is a powerful tool because it adds a new dimension to strategic thinking. It enables you to constantly check your internal performance and process behavior against those of the toughest competitors and best-in-class organizations, ensuring that your strategy formulation and implementation are on the right track.