Competitor SEO analysis

What competitor SEO analysis is

Competitor SEO analysis is a close read of the individual pages your rivals rank with, ending in a written account of what those pages do that yours do not. It works page by page. Pick a search you want and lose; look at the three or four pages beating you on it; say plainly what they contain, how they are put together and what a reader gets from them.

It is not search gap research, which asks which searches your rivals cover and you do not. That is a question of coverage. This is a question of construction, about searches you already want and already have a page for.

It is also not the broader competitor content analysis, which reads everything a rival publishes to work out their positioning, their promises and their silences. That one is about the company. This one is about the page.

When you need one

The usual case is a page you have already tried twice. You wrote it, then you made it longer, then you added a list of questions at the bottom, and it still sits below the same three results. Something structural is going on, and guessing at it in the dark gets expensive.

The second case is before you build something substantial: a pillar page, a set of product pages, a rebuild of a whole section. Knowing what the pages currently winning actually do saves a round of rework.

You do not need this if you have no page for the search yet. There is nothing to compare, and the honest answer is to write the page first. You also do not need it if your problem is that your own site is thin, slow to be found and years out of date. Point the same hard read at yourself with an SEO content audit and you will find more to fix, for less money.

What gets looked at

Five to fifteen searches, named by you. For each, the pages sitting above you are read in full and taken apart.

• What the page actually answers. The question it takes on, how quickly it gets to the answer, and whether a reader could leave satisfied within a screen. This is nearly always where the difference is, and nearly always the last thing anyone checks.
• What it contains that yours does not. Prices, a specification, a photograph of real work, a form to download, a named person, a date, a caveat. Concrete things, listed.
• How it is built. Heading order, where the answer sits relative to the introduction, tables, and whether it is one page or one of a cluster of linked pages carrying the subject between them.
• What points at it. Which of their own pages link to it, in what words, and from where in the site. A page that wins on a competitive search is usually being held up by the rest of the site around it.
• Where it is weak. Every one of these pages has something wrong with it: out of date, evasive about price, written by someone who has never done the work. The weaknesses are the opening, and they are written down as plainly as the strengths.

What this does not measure is keyword density, exact-match phrasing or word count. Their page does not win because a phrase appears a certain number of times or because it runs to two thousand words. It wins because a person arriving on it got what they came for, and then a machine could tell that. Matching a competitor word for word produces a longer page that loses in the same way.

What you get

The page comparison. One document, one section per search. The pages above you, what each does, what yours does, and the difference stated in a sentence a busy person can act on.

The change list. Per page of yours: what to add, what to cut, what to reorder, and whether the honest answer is that this page should be merged into another or abandoned. Some of them will be.

The structural findings. Two or three pages on the patterns that repeat across every search looked at, because they usually do. This is the part that changes how the next twenty pages get written.

The walkthrough. Sixty minutes on video, with whoever writes or approves the pages.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Barrie company that supplies and installs backup generators has a page for “home standby generator installation” that has sat on the second page of results for two years, at 1,800 words, rewritten twice.

Eight searches are examined. The pages winning them are shorter, not longer. Each opens with an installed price range and why it varies, then a paragraph on permits and the local electrical inspection, then photographs of finished installations with the house type named. The Barrie page opens with three paragraphs about reliability, mentions price nowhere, and never says a permit is required. Two of the winners are held up by a cluster of small pages on transfer switches, sizing and fuel, each linking back. The weaknesses are real too: none of the winning pages says what happens if a generator fails in a storm, and two quote prices from a year ago. The change list says to put a price band and the permit answer in the first screen, add four supporting pages, and write the storm callout answer nobody else has bothered with.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which searches matter, who is beating you on them, and what you have already tried. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Set by how many searches and how many rival pages. Agreed before anything starts.
3. Access. Read-only access to your search data, so the comparison starts from where you genuinely stand rather than from a ranking check on one day.
4. The analysis. Six to ten working days for eight to twelve searches. Every rival page is read by a person, which is what takes the time.
5. The walkthrough. The document arrives the day before the call.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the size depends on how many searches you want examined and how many pages sit above you on each. The pricing page shows the four ways of working here and the bands with published numbers. The figure is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Three routes are common. The change list is worked through as refreshes of the pages you already have, which is the cheapest and usually the first. Or the structural findings go into an ordered plan covering the pages still to build. Or, if the recurring finding is that rivals hold their rankings on the strength of the pages pointing at them, the next job is internal linking. This analysis is complete on its own: you know what the winning pages do and what yours would have to change, and nothing further is assumed.