How to Spy on your Competitors to Capture Similar Links?

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer but is the incentive to progress – Herbert Hoover

No matter which industry you belong to or your business niche, competition is always prevalent. Even if you are leading the domain or you are just another start-up company, you should always keep a close watch on your competitors.

Easier said than done, right?

In the fiercely competitive and progressive online world, some people argue that it is easier online as you have everything available within a click time. Moreover, there are plenty of tools to spy on your competitors too.

Undoubtedly, it is true.

However, only when you know what exactly to look for and how to utilize it, there is no point. Even though stalking your competitors does not guarantee success, it is quite a complicated puzzle. Having said that, it could turn out is the single greatest strategy you have ever used. Hence, regardless of how competitive the market is, you should not lose motivation.

Spying on competitors can definitely strengthen your position in this global online marketplace, but with a few critical considerations:

• You must know what you want
• You must know the right tools to derive information
• You must know how to leverage these insights to elevate business

Spying is just another non-technical term for competitor analysis. As you know, competitor analysis can be done in many ways. However, for the benefit of your business, you have to focus on the best tools and most impactful areas for all these categories.

To get an insight into your competitor’s business ideas, you have to tap into each of these fronts namely:

• Social media
• SEO
• Web traffic
• PPC and advertisement
• Blog content

Now, this is a humongous task to accomplish on your own. So, it’s best to use professional tools and strategies to avoid wasting time and build a cost-effective plan.

Here are the best tools for you to start spying on your competitors and conduct an accurate competitor analysis. Let’s start counting:

#1: Rank Signals

Rank Signals is one of the best tools to determine your competitor’s performance. If you want to build a foundation for an impeccable link building strategy, this is the tool to use. Moreover, it’s a free tool.

You can see the insightful detail data in the picture above, which shows referring pages, anchor text, and URLs. You can target the sites to get backlinks to the content. Sites linking to your competitors have good chances of getting you some trusted links.

#2: SEMrush

SEMrush allows users to track keyword position of the competitors in search engines based on geographical location. It also allows you to discover all the keywords competitors are currently ranking for on a given page. It also helps find keywords driving maximum traffic to the competitor’s site.

Overall SEMrush is an excellent tool for competitor analysis.

#3: Majestic

For a holistic view of your competitor’s SEO scene, backlinks are necessary. Majestic is the ultimate tool to enhance your analysis. This tool is preferred for analyzing the overall profile of backlink of individual content pieces.

For example, if you want to create a definitive guide to competitor analysis, your goal is to make sure that the post outranks others similar to your site by getting more quality links pointing to that specific content page.

The first step is above – a search to pick a post ranking at the top of Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for the given keyword.

Now, put the webpage URL in the Majestic search bar as shown below:

It would give you a clear indication of the number of backlinks content receives.

In this way, you know how competitive it is to rank.

Options are available free and paid a subscription. Choose any.

#4: Ahrefs

Ahrefs is much touted as one of the most useful SEO tools till date. If you are not using any other tool, this is the one professionals recommend. You can utilize it for all purposes of competitor analysis.

SEO is a complicated game. So, if you want a tool with utility in various aspects of SEO and featuring the best, Ahrefs is what you need. The major strength of Ahrefs is in backlink analysis and link target selection.

It’s a premium tool. You can sign up and enjoy a free trial.

Ahrefs also helps you to find some critical information about your competitor’s domain authority, referring domains, and new referring domains.

To succeed in this cutting-edge competitive marketplace, you must know how quickly your competitors gain new links, whether they are acquiring several hundreds of links per day, what are their targets etc.

In every sense, data is critically important.

#5: Adbeat

Do you know what your competitors are planning and up to?

If not, you need Adbeat.

Yes, Adbeat knows it all. It is a brilliant paid advertising tool that gives you access to data providing an insight when you are strategizing the next business move. Using Spider, Crawler, and Collector for crawling and pulling data from more than hundreds and thousands of websites and publishers daily, it gives you optimum results.

The Adbeat Crawler visits each publisher multiple times every day. So, you actually receive the correct data within 24 hours. Moreover, it also helps you to dig up some competitors who were hidden and you are unaware of their existence.

#6: SimilarWeb

In order to get a clear picture of your competitor’s overall online performance, traffic analysis is the key.

With SimilarWeb, you can find out the monthly traffic of your competitors, channels bringing most visitors to them, and specific points from where those visitors are coming to you. You can also get an overview of their traffic. However, make sure you check out the sources of traffic. You can even get a breakdown of each of the traffic sources.

Here’s analyzing Facebook

Comparing Facebook and Twitter

You can also compare several competitors for near perfect analysis.

#7: Google Keyword Planner

If you believe that this is a basic tool, think again!

Google Keyword Planner is the best place to start your keyword research. If you know how to navigate its features, you can also get some insightful data on competitors. In fact, some prominent keyword tools pull data right from here.

The best place to begin is to plug the URL of your competitor into the field that says, “Your Landing Page” and go.

You can get information on new keyword ideas based on competitor’s URL, keyword ad group ideas, and average keywords traffic.

In fact, you may even notice that your competitors are not targeting many keywords, maybe intentionally or not. If a keyword features in some content, it does not necessarily mean it was targeted. So, you can just grab this opportunity to compete for keywords and who knows, you might win.

The only definite way to find out is by plugging keywords into another tool and determining how they rank.

#8: WhatRunsWhere

Another tool that provides smart service for online media purchase. The purpose of this tool is to assist mobile and web advertisers to become more competitive in their approach through smart and intelligent purchase decisions, competition monitoring, and discovering new traffic sources. Furthermore, it also helps users choose decision making clever and tactical advertising strategies to maximize ROI.

#9: Pro Rank Tracker

Google now makes it possible to manually check how your keywords rank.

If you have a few hundred hours to spare, it could be a great idea. Pro Rank Tracker is your efficient and proven route to success. A tool allows you to type in the competitor’s URL adding a group of keywords to see how it ranks.

You can create a free account and get started. The only suggestion is to be mindful, as the free version is limited to 20 terms and 2 URLs. You can save all the data to your Pro Rank Tracker dashboard and get some metrics on how the keyword ranks.

Ideally, you may want to target keywords already ranking high up so that you can take optimum advantage of the same. However, if you want to make the most out of this tool and its advanced search feature, paid plans would be better.

#10: Social Mention

There is no better way to spy on your competitors than keeping a track of their social media activity. This is the place where the majority of their businesses invest time and resources these days. Undoubtedly, a great place to start analysis your competitors.

So, how does it work?

By tracking brand mentions – which implies that if you know what is being written and advertised about your competitors, and people mentioning them, you can definitely act on that. A brilliant tool analyses sites based on strength, passion, sentiment, and domain reach.

You can also see how competitors are being mentioned and pay close attention to general data. Then, you can check individual mentions and their sources for relevance. Sources are important as you can then drive traffic to the website and generate high-quality backlinks.

Final Word

It is a competitive landscape and your competitors are just looking for an opportunity to surpass. Analyzing strengths and weaknesses is an integral part of the growth strategy of online businesses. The only sure shot way of outcompeting other players in the space is by getting a holistic and thorough view of their position in the market. Using these tools, you can have a definitive edge. Nevertheless, not just one, you might have to use make tools and sets of data from various sources and connect the loose ends to get the bigger picture.

Author: SEO Services Consultants