A Step-By-Step Guide to Competitor Content Analysis

The phrase competitor content analysis may conjure up images of spies, but you don’t need to put on a disguise to do it (although you could if dressing up is your thing). Checking out what works for your successful competitors is a great way to learn how to improve your own content.

In this blog post, we’ll look at the what and the why of competitor content analysis and take you through our seven steps for how to do it:

1. Identify your competitors
2. Identify their content
3. View their content as a customer
4. Evaluate their content as a professional
5. Investigate the stats
6. Expand your search
7. Apply your findings

What Is Competitor Content Analysis?

What do we mean by competitor content analysis? It’s the process of seeing what works for your successful competitors and comparing that with how you do things.

Why Should You Do Competitor Research?

You might wonder why no one is reading the blog you’ve spent so much time writing. If you research what works for your successful competitors, you will likely find out.

By examining the content produced by others, you can discover your own weak spots. Of course, that may be why you haven’t done it yet. Finding out what you don’t do well can be disheartening, but it’s the only way to improve.

How do you decide what to write about, or what sort of content to produce? Careful research can help you produce content your audience wants to read and place it where it’s likely to be found.

How to Do Competitor Research

Now that we’ve established what competitor content analysis is and why you should do it, how do you go about it? Here’s our step-by-step guide:

1. Identify Your Competitors

These might be:

• Direct competitors: those who provide the same service or product to the same audience
• Indirect competitors: those whose products or services tackle the same problem but in a different way

To get an initial idea of who your top competitors might be, try a Google search (other search engines are available; a quick bit of competitor research suggests the most popular alternatives are Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and Yandex). Type in a description of your product or service, or the problem you’re offering to solve, and look at the first page of results – that’s where you want to be, so those are your successful competitors.

2. Identify Their Content

Follow up Step 1 by visiting the websites of each of your top competitors and looking at their content. You may find it by clicking on their blog, but make sure you also explore their site for other forms of content, such as:

• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Newsletters

If you find a competitor’s website difficult to navigate, then that in itself is a key finding. If you ensure that your content is easy to find on your site, then you’ve already made an improvement that your visitors will appreciate.

3. View Their Content as a Customer

Having identified your competitors and their content, read it from the point of view of a customer. Think of a query they might have and search for that, then consider:

• What was the featured snippet?
• Did the content answer your query?
• Did it hold your attention?
• Did it sound authoritative?
• What follow-up did it offer? Was there a call to action (CTA)?

4. Evaluate Their Content as a Professional

Now that you’ve read it as a customer, analyze the content as a fellow professional. Consider these points:

• What held your attention? Was it the layout, the length of the piece, or the use of humor, perhaps?
• Did anything lose your attention? Did it go off-topic, or use too much jargon that wasn’t explained?
• What made it sound authoritative? Maybe it was the tone of voice, layout, or language. Or perhaps it had a good balance of relevant links.
• Did anything make you doubt its credibility? Were there spelling, grammar, or factual errors?
• What sort of follow-up options were available? Did they use a CTA? Were the next steps easy to follow?
• How often is it updated? How are any updates highlighted? 
• How much engagement did it get? A snapshot of this might be available from the number of times the content was liked and shared, if displayed with the post, or the number and content of comments.

5. Investigate the Stats

What appealed to you may well have appealed to others, but there is a good way to find out what has worked across the board: checking out your competitors’ stats. You can gain a lot of useful information by investigating others’ SEO performance, organic traffic, backlinks, high-ranking keywords, etc. You can use online tools and templates, some of them free, for this step.

Consider how much of each type of content is published by your competitors and which of those competitors have been successful in attracting and retaining an audience. Look for possible gaps that you could fill with content of your own.

6. Expand Your Search

Content reaches an audience in a variety of ways, so have a look at how your competitors are driving people to theirs. Explore how they are making use of platforms such as:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook
• TikTok

7. Apply Your Findings

You’ve put in the hours, but now comes the important bit – applying what you’ve learned to your own content. Here are some things you might consider:

• Should you change your layout? If your more successful competitors present information in smaller chunks (e.g., using bullet points and headings), then you could adopt that practice without losing your own voice. It could even land you the highly prized spot on a search engine’s featured snippet.
• Could your titles be more attention-grabbing? Having studied what works for your competitors, you will be better informed about what makes for a click-worthy title.
• Which keywords worked? What did you type into the search bar in Step 2? Make sure to include – and naturally incorporate – those words in your content.
• What did they miss? This is vital: fill those gaps and you will have a greater chance of rocketing up the rankings.
• What did you miss? If, for example, your analysis shows that your successful competitors are regularly posting on social media, maybe it’s time you did too.

Summary

Your successful competitors didn’t get to the first page of search results by accident. They worked hard to improve their content and its visibility, and so must you. And, having invested the time in analyzing your competitors, you need to keep up the hard work of refining your own content; that way, you can reach your audience, attract them to your content, and keep them engaged.

Checking out the competition is one way you can prepare for a writing project. Our Becoming A Freelance Writer course has an entire module dedicated to this topic. Why not try it out for free?