Step 3.4: Identifying Competitors
Intermediate SEO Concepts
This may not be as obvious to the layperson as it seems… Just because there’s a business like yours, in the local area, providing similar services, doesn’t mean they are your online competitors. In this section we are discussing your online competition.
Who Are Your Competitors?
What we mean, is that who ranks well for your target keywords, may be different to who is seen locally as the biggest competitor. In SEO, ‘the online’ bit is all we can influence or have any control over.
Conversely, just picking a bunch of sites you’ve found online that do what you do, doesn’t mean they are your competitors.
Keywords First
In order to understand who your competitors are, you must first understand what your keywords are. Once you have a list of target keywords, you can start to check who ranks well for them and where you rank for them.
We typically break these down into the following categories:
Competitors that rank near you
These are sites that consistently rank around the positions your site ranks in across the target keyword list.
Gatekeepers
Gatekeepers are sites that sit at the bottom (bottom 5 positions) of the front page of the SERPs, you need to get passed these to rank on the front page.
Top Spot
These are the sites that rank in the top 5 positions on the front page of the SERPs and represent the sites that are leading the game for your target keywords.
< Previous Step 3.3: Authority Distribution Analysis