Competitor Gap Analysis: Get Ahead In The SERPs

Get ahead of your competition with competitor gap analysis and no guide on the topic is better than @LidiaInfanteM's in the free Summer of SEO course! Share the love on Twitter

Hi!

My name is Lidia Infante, I am the Senior SEO Manager at Sanity, and today I will be walking you through one of my favourite SEO techniques step by step. The idea of conducting an SEO gap analysis sounds like something that would put you right to sleep, but if you’re a big nerd like me, you are going to love it.

Ranking on Google’s first page requires more than just great content, links, and technical optimization. It requires understanding that SEO is a zero-sum game, and every ranking position we gain, we’re taking away from a competitor. Understanding the context in which you’re trying to rank is essential.

This is where SEO gap analysis comes into play. This analysis helps you identify areas where you’re falling behind your competitors and provides actionable insights to improve your SEO strategy.

In this chapter of the Summer of SEO course, we’ll explore how to perform one to create a strategy and outrank your competition.

The Three Pillars of SEO

Dividing the analysis into three categories—content, technical SEO, and links—allows you to determine your weakest pillar and develop a strategy to enhance it.

This is how I think about each category:

• Technical SEO is the indispensable enabler for content consumption, both for users and search engines. It involves helping search engines find, understand, and index your content, while also ensuring a seamless user experience. In ecommerce stores, paying attention to stuff like faceted navigation is extra important.
• Links serve as votes of confidence for your content. Link quality, quantity, and growth are crucial. Focus on building a diverse and authoritative link profile to strengthen your content’s reputation.
• Content is at the core of SEO. It must align with user intent and satisfy their needs. Both technical and links are there to help your content shine.

Conducting SEO Gap Analysis: A Step-by-Step Approach

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

Use an SEO tool or manually analyze search engine results pages (SERPs) to find your competitors. I wrote a detailed guide about this.

Step 2: Benchmark Your SEO Performance

For this, you’ll need to make a copy of this template and have access to an SEO tool. Personally for this exercise I like using Semrush because of how easy it is to find link and traffic metrics without having to download them into a separate spreadsheet. 

The specific steps may vary depending on the tools and resources available to you, as well as the industry you are benchmarking.

Benchmarking Content

1. Estimate Monthly Traffic: Use an SEO tool to find the estimated monthly traffic for your competitors’ websites.
2. Identify Editorial URLs: Explore your competitors’ websites and locate the subdirectory where they host their editorial content (e.g., “blog,” “articles,” “resources”).
3. Analyze Number of Keywords: Look at the total number of keywords your competitors rank for and examine the keywords ranking in positions 1-30. Note the winning keywords in positions 1-3.
4. Delve deeper into the different types of traffic ⬇️
   1. Branded Traffic: Filter your competitors’ ranking keywords to find those containing their brand name. Record the estimated traffic for these keywords.
   2. Editorial Traffic: Note the estimated traffic your competitors receive on their editorial URLs.
   3. Editorial Efficiency: Divide the estimated editorial traffic by the number of editorial URLs to assess your competitors’ effectiveness in driving search traffic through content marketing efforts.
   4. Product Traffic: This is most relevant in the ecommerce space. You’ll want to take a look at the specific traffic for product pages, categories and listings. 

Benchmarking Links

1. Perform Link Gap Analysis: Compare the number of links and referring domains pointing to your competitors’ websites with your own. Calculate the difference to assess the gap.
2. Analyze Link Growth: Evaluate the growth rate of your competitors’ links over 6 or 12 months. Calculate the percentage of growth to understand the aggressiveness of link building in your market.
3. Assess Link Quality: Examine the authority distribution across your competitors’ link profiles and your own. Use metrics like DA, DR, or AS to identify gaps at different levels of authority.
4. Explore Brand Popularity:
   1. Branded Search: Compare the search volume for your competitors’ brands with your own to gauge brand awareness.
   2. Branded Traffic: Correlate branded search with branded traffic to identify areas for improvement.

Benchmarking Technical SEO

This is slightly trickier to assess. The goal here is to understand how much your competitors are investing in technical SEO and turning that into a standarised number to benchmark your search space. Here are some ideas that have worked for me in the past ⬇️

1. Evaluate Site Audit Scores: Utilize SEO tools that provide site auditing and offer overall scores. Assess the site’s health based on factors like redirect chains and 404 errors.
2. Analyze Core Web Vitals (CWV) Scores: Extract competitor’s CWV data using tools like Chrome UX (CrUX) report or Google Looker Studio. Note the number of “good” URLs for each CWV score and calculate an average.
3. Assess Page Speed: Analyze mobile and desktop page speed scores to gain insights into competitors’ investments in web performance optimization.
4. Perform Manual Checks:
   1. Review robots.txt: Examine the robots.txt file to identify any issues or restrictions.
   2. Check Sitemap: Evaluate how well the sitemap is organized and if it includes all relevant pages.
   3. Examine Canonicalization: Assess how canonicalization is managed to ensure proper handling of duplicate content.
   4. Explore Faceted Navigation: Analyze how competitors manage faceted navigation, especially if you are in the ecommerce industry.

Step 3: Identify Your Weakest Pillar

Analyze the gathered data to identify your weakest pillar compared to your competitors. This could be content, links, or technical SEO. Consider factors like resource availability and stakeholder support when choosing which pillar to focus on initially.

If content is your weakest pillar, perform a content gap analysis to target keywords that perform well for your competitors. Assess your on-page optimization, evaluate author expertise, and educate your internal content creators about the importance of search in content discovery.

If links are your weakest pillar, conduct a link gap analysis to identify powerful links your competitors have. Research popular content types in your industry and leverage internal experts to engage with journalists and content creators.

If technical SEO is your weakest pillar, conduct a technical audit of your website. Collaborate with developers to identify web performance optimization opportunities and explore ways to improve content indexing.

Okay, now what? 

Congratulations, you created a beautiful spreadsheet! Remember there’s no ROI without implementation, so after completing the SEO gap analysis, it’s time to take action.

1. Use the insights gained to set SMART goals and develop an implementation plan for the next 3 or 6 months.
2. Evaluate your progress after that time and consider if there are any tweaks needed.
3. Share your results with relevant stakeholders to highlight your contributions to the business and gain trust and budget for more ambitious SEO strategies in the future. 

I hope this guide was useful! I am constantly sharing advice and resources on social media, so if you enjoyed this, drop me a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter. Or you can take a look at my previous guides on my blog.

All the best!

Lidia Infante

Get ahead of your competition with competitor gap analysis and no guide is better on the topic than @LidiaInfanteM's in the free Summer of SEO course! Share the love on Twitter