Semrush Competitor Analysis Made Easy with Our Guide

Semrush competitor analysis is a powerful tool that can help you stay ahead of the competition. By analyzing your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas for improvement and develop a winning strategy.

With Semrush, you can analyze up to 200 competitors at a time, making it easy to compare and contrast your competitors' websites, social media, and content marketing efforts. This is especially useful for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs who may not have the resources to hire a team of analysts.

By using Semrush competitor analysis, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors' online presence, including their website traffic, social media engagement, and content performance. This information can help you refine your marketing strategy and make data-driven decisions.

Competitor analysis is a crucial part of the SEO process, helping businesses and websites track their competitors' content, backlink strategy, keywords, and other important SEO data. This information enables marketers to plan and strategize their future marketing efforts.

Gathering competitor data can help you identify top-performing pages with respective keywords relevant to your product. For example, if your business sells water bottles, you can analyze your competitors' keywords and backlink profiles to stay updated with their changing strategies and search engines' evolving algorithms.

Conducting an SEO competitor analysis can help you understand what SEO strategies work and don't work in your niche, reveal competitors' strengths and weaknesses, and discover top traffic generation and customer acquisition channels. You can also find keywords your competitors' websites rank for, but your website doesn't, and get new content and backlink ideas.

Authority Score is a crucial metric in competitor analysis, and it's given by tools like Semrush. It's essentially a score out of 100 that measures a website's overall authority.

This score is based on various factors, but one of the biggest ones is backlinks – a ranking factor that Google considers important. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website, and they can significantly boost your website's authority.

Semrush's Authority Score is a useful tool to understand what makes your competitors' websites tick. By analyzing this score, you can identify areas where you can improve your own website and potentially even the playing field.

Here are some benefits of understanding Authority Score:

Conducting an SEO competitor analysis can help you understand what SEO strategies work and don't work in your niche, and reveal your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

Market Explorer is a powerful tool in Semrush that helps you understand your competitors and their market share based on country. It's a game-changer for anyone looking to gain a competitive edge.

The tool allows you to insert your website URL and hit "Research a market." This generates reports that show top market players and their share of visits for every user acquisition channel. You can choose 5-10 competitors based on the organic search share of visits.

Semrush Market Explorer is particularly useful for identifying competitors and their market share based on country. By using this tool, you can get a better understanding of your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

Here's a breakdown of how the Market Explorer tool can help you:

By using the Market Explorer tool, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors' strategies and make informed decisions to improve your own marketing efforts.

Keyword research is a crucial aspect of successfully ranking your site. It's one of the most important things companies look for when hiring eCommerce SEO consultants. Semrush makes this process much easier, especially when you start with a competitor in mind.

To get started, click on the number underneath "Organic Search Traffic" and you'll see the list of keywords your competitor is ranking for. Let's review the columns:

It's essential to take a second to search the term yourself to see what kinds of pages show up, as Semrush's judgment can be off. This will help you decide whether to make a category page, product page, service page, or blog post for each keyword.

A backlink audit and analysis is a crucial part of Semrush competitor analysis. This process involves examining your competitors' backlinks to identify opportunities for improvement.

The Semrush backlink report is super user-friendly and easy to understand, showing you where the backlinks for a particular page are coming from. It's essential to note that this report includes backlinks that no longer exist, so be sure to select "Active" backlinks to get an accurate picture.

When analyzing competitors' backlinks, pay attention to the following metrics: Domain authority, the number of referring domains and backlinks, whether the number of referring domains is growing or declining, "Nofollow" vs. "Follow" backlinks numbers, and anchor texts.

An Authority Score is a measurement of a website's overall strength, given by tools like Semrush. It's a score out of 100, and it's worth taking a closer look at what factors are influencing it.

One of the key factors that contributes to an Authority Score is backlinks. We know that backlinks are a ranking factor, and if Google cares about it, we should too.

Backlinks can be a game-changer for your website, and by analyzing your competitors' backlinks, you can identify potential opportunities to reach out and obtain backlinks from the same sources.

If your website's Authority Score is lagging behind your competitors', it's worth exploring the areas where you're falling short. For example, if most of your competitors have an impressive domain authority (over 50) compared to your website's 40 or 35, you can use tools like Semrush to identify the gaps.

A backlink audit is a crucial step in understanding your competitors' online presence and identifying opportunities to improve your own backlink profile. This process involves analyzing the backlinks of your competitors using tools like Semrush.

The backlink report in Semrush is user-friendly and easy to understand, showing you where the backlinks for a particular page are coming from. You can quickly assess the backlink profile of any rival during an SEO competitor analysis by checking the Top Anchors and Link Attributes reports.

When analyzing competitors' backlinks, pay attention to the following metrics: domain authority, the number of referring domains and backlinks, whether the number of referring domains is growing or declining, "Nofollow" vs. "Follow" backlinks numbers, and anchor texts.

The Backlink Gap Tool in Semrush can help you identify backlink gaps by comparing the backlink profiles of up to five competitors. This data can be used to identify untapped link building opportunities, such as referring domains that your competitors have links from but your domain does not.

To get started with the Backlink Gap tool, enter your own domain and four of your closest competitors, and hit the green button to allow Semrush to populate the data for you. The tool will return with a graph and a table depicting the comparison between the five domains' backlink profiles.

By analyzing the backlink profiles of your competitors, you can identify potential opportunities to reach out for backlinks to your own page, such as lost backlinks that can show you potential opportunities to reach out for backlinks to your own page.

Here are some key factors to consider when analyzing your competitors' backlinks:

By understanding these factors, you can develop a more effective link-building strategy and improve your website's online presence.

For a comprehensive site audit, I recommend using Semrush Site Audit, which provides a detailed report on technical issues on your website and competitors' websites. You'll get critical information on the current state of your website.

This method is more informative than PageSpeed Insights, which only checks a single URL at a time. Semrush, on the other hand, checks the Core Web Vitals metrics for ten URLs at a time.

The results are consolidated into one report with actionable improvement recommendations, making it very convenient to identify and address technical issues.

With Semrush's Traffic Analytics tool, you can gather detailed traffic insights for competing websites. This report allows you to thoroughly examine the tactics of your rivals, analyze user behavior, and uncover trends within your desired market.

You can enter your competitor's domain in the search box and hit the "Analyze" button to get started. The resulting overview report will provide insights on important traffic performance metrics such as total monthly visits, unique visitors, pages/visit, avg. visit duration, and bounce rate.

The report also includes a line graph showing the traffic trends for the website, which can be changed to view different time periods. You can switch between different metrics to see the trends for total visits, unique visitors, pages/visit, average visit duration, or bounce rate.

You can use Semrush's Traffic Analytics tool to gather detailed traffic insights for competing websites. This report provides a comprehensive overview of your rivals' traffic performance metrics, including total monthly visits, unique visitors, pages/visit, average visit duration, and bounce rate.

The Traffic Analytics Overview report also includes a line graph that shows the traffic trends for the website, allowing you to examine seasonal trends and changes over time. You can switch between different metrics, such as total visits, unique visitors, and bounce rate, to get a better understanding of the website's traffic patterns.

To analyze a competitor's website, simply enter their domain name into the search box and hit the "Analyze" button. The resulting report will provide valuable insights into their traffic performance and help you identify areas for improvement.

The report also includes a widget that shows the website's top pages, subfolders, and subdomains, giving you a clear picture of their content strategy and user engagement. You can toggle between each of these options to examine the data in more detail.

By analyzing your competitors' traffic generation channels, you can gain a deeper understanding of their marketing strategies and identify potential opportunities for your own business. For example, if you see a high percentage of direct traffic, it may indicate strong brand awareness, while a high percentage of paid search traffic could suggest a focus on PPC advertising.

Buffer's homepage draws the largest volume of total traffic (27%) on their website.

The Subdomains report in Traffic Analytics helps you analyze which subdomains of a competing website contribute the most to its overall traffic.

To access the Subdomains report, visit the "Subdomains" tab from your Traffic Analytics report. You'll find a list of subdomains from your competitor, alongside estimated monthly visits (both desktop and mobile) and traffic share.

Common subdomains to look out for include blog subdomains, support and knowledge base subdomains, store subdomains (for eCommerce stores), course subdomains, podcast subdomains, product access subdomains (for SaaS companies), news subdomains, and geographic subdomains.

When analyzing HubSpot with Traffic Analytics, I found that a large portion of their overall traffic goes to their product access subdomain, blog subdomain, and course subdomain.

The Subfolders report in Traffic Analytics looks at which subfolders on a competitor's website are generating the most traffic.

To access the Subfolders report, visit the "Subfolders" tab from your Traffic Analytics report. At the top of the Subfolders report, you'll find the "Top Subfolders by Traffic" widget which breaks down the top 5 subfolders in terms of previous month's traffic.

The default view relates to total traffic, but you can toggle between different sources (direct, referral, organic search, paid search, referral, etc.).

Here are the 8 major factors provided in the Subfolders table:

You can customize this table by clicking on "Table settings" and deselecting the columns that are not important in your research. You can then download this data as a CSV or Google Sheets file.

Tracking and Monitoring is a crucial aspect of competitor analysis with Semrush. With the Social Media Tracker tool, you can uncover your competitors' social media activities and compare your social presence with theirs on three basic metrics: audience, activity, and engagement.

To get started, connect your social accounts and enter your competitors' domains. You can add up to 20 competitors, and Semrush will automatically populate the data for you. Once you've entered all the domains, hit the "Start Social Media Tracker" button, and in a few seconds, Semrush will return with an overview report that shows the select company's audience size, activity, and engagement on each channel.

You can also automate competitor tracking with EyeOn, which monitors your competitors' activities across the web and sends you weekly updates on newly-published blog posts, recent advertising campaigns, new pages on competitor websites, and new social media posts.

Here are the types of updates you can receive from EyeOn:

To receive these updates, simply select the "EyeOn" tool, enter up to 20 competitors, and hit the "Start monitoring" button.

Tracking your search rankings is crucial for any website. You can use tools like SEMRush to identify untapped keywords with good potential.

Conducting a competitor analysis can reveal these hidden gems. This can help you modify your SEO strategy and improve your search engine rankings.

Targeting keywords with low competition is a good idea for smaller websites. This can help you outrank your competitors and improve your online presence.

However, losing your search rankings can happen due to various reasons. Poor content quality, weak link-building strategy, and search engine algorithm updates are just a few examples.

Competitor research can help you figure out what's going on. It can also help you find out if your competitors have lost their rankings or if their web pages have replaced yours in the SERPs.

Analyzing your SEO strategy is key to recovering lost rankings. You can use competitor research to optimize your strategy and improve your search engine rankings.

You can automate the task of tracking competitor activities across the web with Semrush's EyeOn tool. This tool monitors your competitor activities and sends you weekly updates on newly-published blog posts, recent advertising campaigns, new pages on competitor websites, and new social media posts.

To get started, select "Trends" from the left navigation menu and click on "EyeOn." Enter up to 20 competitors into your list and hit the "Start monitoring" button. EyeOn will generate an Overview report where you'll see the number of updates for each competitor.

You'll see a breakdown of their Google ads, blog posts, and new pages. If you'd like to view data on your competitors' social media posts and engagement, you can do so by clicking on "Set up accounts" against the respective widgets and entering the URLs of your competitors' social pages.

The "Trend by All Updates" graph shows each competitor's number of updates over the selected timeframe. You can adjust the trend graph by using the filters above to see data on All Updates, Google Search Ads, Blog Posts, New Pages, or Social Media.

To receive weekly alerts on competitor updates, select the "Email report settings" option on top of the Overview report. You can opt to subscribe or unsubscribe from weekly email notifications and choose whether to receive weekly competitor updates and/or Google Ads alerts.

Using the right tools is crucial for competitor analysis. You can use SEO tools like Semrush to get started.

Semrush's Organic Research report shows who you compete with depending on the country. This helps you tailor your strategy to your specific market.

In just two clicks, you can get a list of over 5,000 competitors based on the competition level. You don't have to go through all of them, just choose the top 5-10 from the list.

Your competitors in organic search will likely change if you select a different country. This means you need to be flexible with your strategy.

You can estimate a competitor's monthly traffic with Semrush, but remember that this is just an estimate, and it's essential to compare it to actual numbers from Google Analytics to get a good idea of accuracy.

Checking a competitor's Core Web Vitals is crucial, as it can significantly impact their ranking in organic search results. According to Google, Core Web Vitals align with what their core ranking systems seek to reward.

If a competitor's website passes the page speed test, it's a good indication that they're doing something right. This is why it's essential to compare your website's metrics to your competitors' Core Web Vitals.

If you're looking to improve your performance with Semrush .Trends, you'll want to know about the pricing. Semrush .Trends can be purchased as an add-on for $200/month for existing Semrush users, granting full access to all four tools.

This pricing model is beneficial for those already invested in the Semrush ecosystem. The tools included in .Trends are Market Explorer, Traffic Analytics, EyeOn, and One2Target.

If you're new to Semrush, integrating .Trends with your existing subscription will cost more. The prices are as follows:

These prices take into account the additional value that .Trends brings to your existing Semrush subscription.

Improving your website's performance is crucial to outranking your competitors in organic search results. To do this, you need to analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

Checking your competitors' Core Web Vitals is essential, as it can significantly impact your website's ranking. According to Google, Core Web Vitals aligns with what their core ranking systems seek to reward.

Grabbing featured snippets is another key strategy, as it can increase your website's visibility in search results. SEMRush advises content length for featured snippets to be 40-50 words.

Analyzing your competitors' monthly traffic can help you understand their online presence and identify areas for improvement. SEMRush estimates can be compared to actual numbers from Google Analytics to gauge accuracy.

Using SEMRush's Domain Overview tool can provide valuable insights into your competitors' performance, helping you identify areas to focus on. This tool can also help you uncover your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

Checking your competitors' activity data with your own goals and strategy in mind is essential for creating a winning SEO strategy. By analyzing your niche and modifying your SEO strategy accordingly, you can improve your website's performance and outrank your competitors.

Conducting competitive research is an important part of SEO, and Semrush makes it easier to do. You can use Semrush to track your competitors' content, backlink strategy, keywords they are ranking for, and other important SEO data.

Competitor analysis can help you identify your competitors' top-performing pages with respective keywords that are relevant to your product. This information can help you revisit your landing page design, optimize your link-building strategy, and incorporate keywords that are more actionable or are "easy to rank."

To conduct a competitor analysis using Semrush, start by identifying your competition and entering their URL into Semrush's Domain Overview tool. This will give you a list of keywords that your competitor is ranking for, along with their page positions, traffic, and keyword difficulty (KD%) metrics.

Here are the columns you'll see in the list:

Conducting competitive research is an important part of the SEO process. Businesses and websites often need to track their competitors' content, backlink strategy, keywords they are ranking for, and other important SEO data.

You should conduct competitive research when you're starting to optimize your website for search engines, as it's a must for planning and strategizing future marketing efforts.

To stay updated with competitors' changing strategies and evolving search engine algorithms, it's advisable to always keep an eye on their keywords and backlink profiles.

Competitor analysis can help you identify top-performing pages with respective keywords that are relevant to your product, and revisit your landing page design, optimize your link-building strategy, and incorporate more actionable or easy-to-rank keywords.

Gathering competitor data helps marketers plan and strategize their future marketing efforts, making it an essential step in the SEO process.

Conducting a competitor analysis can be an elaborative process, but SEMRush makes it a little less complicated and a lot more rewarding.

SEMRush can be used for competitor analysis, as seen in the example of "How to Perform an SEO Competitor Analysis using Semrush".

To start, SEMRush makes the process less complicated, allowing you to focus on the rewarding parts of competitor analysis.

SEMRush provides a step-by-step guide to help you use their tool for competitor analysis, as mentioned in the article section "How to Perform an SEO Competitor Analysis using Semrush".

This guide breaks down the process into manageable steps, making it easier to conduct a thorough competitor analysis.

A step-by-step guide using SEMRush can help you use their tool for competitor analysis, making the process less overwhelming.

Manually searching for your competitors is a straightforward way to discover your organic competitors and do an SEO competitor analysis.

This method involves inserting a keyword in a search bar and hitting "Search" to see who else targets that keyword. For example, if you sell art canvas prints, inserting that keyword in a search bar will show you who else is targeting that keyword.

You can use this method to discover organic SEO competitors offering the same products and services, such as e-commerce websites selling art canvas prints and ranking high in organic search results, like iCanvas, Society6, Art.com, and Fine Art America.

This method requires you to manually review every website from organic search results, which can be a resource and time-consuming process.

To check on someone, you need to identify your competition. Take their URL and enter it into Semrush's Domain Overview tool.

The first step is to enter the URL of the competitor you're about to overtake. This can be a single page or an entire site.

Just enter the URL of the competitor into Semrush's Domain Overview tool, and you're ready to start analyzing. This is exactly how we did it in the example with Land's End.

Now you can start digging into the competitor's page to see what you can learn. You can use Semrush to analyze their website and identify areas for improvement.