A competitive content audit is simply the process of analyzing, assessing, and scoring your competitors' posts. Click the carrot next to a url on the right side of the page. It's clear, then, that you can learn many different things from a content audit. That's why it's important to not to rely on your instincts for direct business competitors. Conducting these assessments with a clear, objective eye should provide either a very tactical set of insights (e.g., improve search, simplify navigation, create more how-to content, and so on) or confirmation that you are on the right track already. Looks like our top five competitors are Piktochart, Venngage, Canva, Visme, and Infogram. 1. In this post, we've outlined a few simple steps to audit your competitors on social media. Create an Inventory of Your Content Assets. Competitors' audit is an excellent planning resource and roadmap for future social media strategies. The brand new updated dashboard (July 2020 release) provides incredible data and insights that is a beauty to look at with its new redesign. Analyze your competitors' product strategies. How often should you conduct a content audit? You must ensure that the comparison criteria is very specific so that it can be measurable but some personal judgment will come in handy. Depending on the site and your goals, the measurements, or heuristics, youll select may vary. What are the top three strengths of their content? . "refreshVisibleOnly": true, So do our competitors. To keep the task manageable, you may want to focus on the one to three top competitors in your area. How? Categorize each video. Exclude brands. Reach out today. LOCOMOTIVE Agency is an award-winning SEO agency that can help you succeed in quality content strategy, marketing, and creation; technical SEO services, local SEO, and more. Then, add your competitor's site to the "Add Comparison" field beneath. When done well and as part of an overallSEOstrategy, a competitive content audit can act as a road map tonewcontentcreation(or old contentoptimization) that will give you an advantage over your direct competitors. Its important to note that a competitive or competitor content audit that takes into account how Google and other search engines actually rank content wont just be churning out a bunch of keywords that you can then set to writing content with. For this, you need to collect the URLs of the web pages and the metrics associated with them. Share SEO roadmaps with just an HTML link to your stakeholders. A competitive content audit is a comprehensive analysis of the topics and organic keywords/queries your competitors are ranking for and how your topics and organic keywords/queries rank in comparison. Identify your Social Media Competitors New competitors? "300", Audit competitors content. Look into things like ratios of original to curated content, entertainment to industry-specific content and the most shared content. Step 1: Identify Competitors The first step is to survey the competitive landscape and come up with a list of companies that offer similar products or services as your own brand. The fact is, ensure that it is as comprehensive as possible, and dont leave any stone unturned. Competitor Content Audit Oct 27, 2014 - by alastair So, You Don't Have a Content Strategy Then? For each general heuristic, create a set of questions to ask about the site content. Here are five things you'll need to do before you begin auditing your content: 1. Run a few searches for common terms to see how relevant the results seem. You want to find competitors who are similar in domain rating (DR), number of backlinks, and the amount of organic traffic they see. It is now time to compare the scores. How well does search work? Get rid of the bad but keep the good ones. To check: Open Internet Explorer (just kidding) Chrome and go to the website you want to check. Analyzing your content helps you see what content performs well, which content needs improving, and which content may need removing so you can improve your SEO ranking. The rest are probably . Competitor equivalent: Provide links to similar content created by other brands or competitors that you can gain inspiration from. To begin a competitive content audit, youll need to understand the kind of content they have. Identify competitors' content gaps, which content types and keywords to target, and which channels to use for distribution. This might seem like a no-brainer, right? We use Google Analytics to collect anonymous statistical information such as the number of visitors to our site. Basically, by building topical authority, you indicate to Google that your site not just this or that piece of content optimized to rank for a certain query is an authority on a subject or niche. What is it that they have that you currently miss on your site? }); window['nitroAds'].createAd('SME Ad300x250', { Put simply, this audit takes stock of the content your competition is using, how theyre using it, and why its making such an impact with their target audience. Numbers make it easier to create averages, visuals may be slightly easier to quickly scan. Step 4: Draw Up an Action Plan. Evaluate content quantity and quality. Click 'View Source.'. You dont have the time for that, though. Discover Their Best. Do we have navigational and categorization structures in place to guide the users without much hassles? This includes competitors, who are definitely drooling for a slice of the cake. Are your digital marketing efforts in need of SEO services? Free social media competitive analysis template. Do we have a search button? The same translates to content auditing, which should stretch to auditing your site against the competitors, earning you a chance to weigh the contents effectiveness and identify any gaps and technical flaws. A content audit is the process of analyzing your content to find opportunities for improvement. Identify any . In the modern environment share of voice is directly proportional to potential sales. More importantly, this data can give you an understanding of the terms for which your competition is not ranking (and maybe you are NOT), providing a better idea of what may be missing from their content strategy and where you could potentially swoop in for the win. Step 5: Adjust Your Content Marketing Strategy. You can however include some more at your convenience for a more comprehensive assessment. Now, let's see the most popular content audit tools that you can use to understand your website content's strong points and weaknesses. Along with your site, you'll need to collect data on your competitors. What are they doing (blog, newsletters, white papers, ebooks, etc.)? If you want you can disable cookies from Google Analytics. To do a competitive content marketing analysis, take a list of your content marketing competitors and follow these three steps: Take inventory of your competitors' content. Well stop there for now, but in Part 2, well pick up on how to categorize data manually and present it either in Excel or Data Studio. Check out their content strategy. More importantly, it can give you valuable intelligence to leverage when making your own content better - even better than the competition's. At LOCOMOTIVE, we also have some proprietary notebooks and tools that assist us in this process. In all markets there are direct and indirect competitors and it is important to look at both when carrying out a competitor audit. This is the quickest part of the content analysis and sets you up to perform the next steps more easily, but requires the most "poking around" to find what you're looking for. This is the underlying basis for a competitive content audit. If you haven't already, it's time to face the music and stand your content right next to your competitor's. Navigate back to Content Analysis and enter your site into the search bar. By looking at the search intent of each piece of content, you can determine if a piece of content needs to be quick and simple, long-form, as pillar content, etc. Content audit As previously stated, a content audit is the best method to get a complete overview of where your content strategy stands, the present performance of each piece of content generated, and how to improve the content which under-performed. For a blog, you may focus on criteria such as frequency of publication and how frequently it is commented on, rated, or shared via social media. Also, organizing the data by topic will help you understand where you need to build or beef up topical authority. Step 1: Finding Your Top Competitors. We need to understand the forest before we head into the trees. The measurements will however be dependent on the website and your objectives for carrying out the audit. Is site search enabled? Use the search tool and search the page for 'H1.'. The first step in developing your Content Strategy is an Internal Audit. The free version lets you crawl 500 URLs. Click 'View' in your top navigation bar. This template will also help you create an actionable report. When it comes to SEO, specifically competitor analysis and keyword research, SE Ranking is the go to tool for all your queries. What kind of content is most prevalent on their site? Some typical heuristics by which to measure content and what to look for include: What is the range of topics covered? Step 6 - Run a Competitor Content Comparison. Accordingly, there are many different tools for each question and purpose you may need. Untapped keywords are those keywords/queries that a competitor is ranking for but you are not. When a consumer is looking for a solution, it's safe to say they're checking out your competitor's website and content. Does their content strictly fall in line with their main product/services, or do they go for more of a mission marketing approach? Cookies added by Google Analytics are governed by the privacy policies of Google Analytics. 2. To walk you through this guide, we've put together a free, downloadable template that you can use to perform your own SEO competitor analysis. The goal of competitor research is to get a better idea of popular topics, format, and platforms in your industry to better inform your own content ideation process. As mentioned earlier, BuzzSumo can show how often a piece of content has been shared, however, tools like Rival IQ, can offer a more detailed breakdown on not just how often a piece of content has been shared, but also how successful your competitions social presence has faired overall. Theres nothing wrong with a little friendly competition. They save us around eight hours of manual categorizing time, depending on the amount of data that needs classifying. Find out what topics your COMPETITORS are ranking for that you should be ranking for (and how theyve accomplished that ranking), Find out what the TOPICAL GAP OPPORTUNITIES are. Don't limit your audit to data gathered from TrueSocialMetrics. Do site Help functions enable users to get accurate answers to questions? A menu will appear with links to that websites data, as well as some stats. It takes time and research; it takes a Content Strategy. Take a close look at the quality, quantity, and locations of the competition's content. This makes it all the more important that your heuristics are well-defined and leave little room for individual interpretation. How to Conduct a Content Audit for Quality and Audience Experience, Crawling Private Pages of Password Protected Websites, Organize Your Website Redesign Using a Premium Sitemap Generator, Contributors, preferably their numbers and names. 4. The first step in conducting a competitive content analysis or audit is to gather data. 3. This free tool for SEO analysis will send you a report for the audit that is based on 20 vital on-page parameters that are broken down into the categories of: content, accessibility, HTML markup in the header, HTML markup in the body, and URL. Topical authority continues to be a vital component in search rankings, so its also necessary to categorize keywords into topics, so if you need to tackle entire topics, you can. BuzzSumo - Best competitive research tool for content. Enter your domain and at least three of your main competitors domains, and click Compare. Now, going back to our competitor analysis, we want to see what the user finds when he googles those keywords. We have all been there and thought to ourselves: What is it about the stuff on their site that makes them so special? This makes side-by-side comparison more difficult, but may be a more intuitive way to describe qualitative aspects of content. Free Social Media Competitive Audit Course with Lauren Teague. This information can be used to improve your website's overall performance. If there are significant differences or gaps, however, do proceed with caution. If there are loopholes, take note. This can be invaluable when it comes to seeing how well, and for what terms, their contentis ranking in search. The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. Paula Land, Founder and Principal Consultant. Completeness: This should focus on whether the content is comprehensive enough to enable a user make a decision. Playbooks. Well touch on this more later. Do they use mostly text-based content? Do they focus heavily on video? Step 2: Choose competitors, both direct and indirect. Clean your data. Know thy enemy. Individual sticky notes spread out on a gym floor?). LOCOMOTIVE Agency is an award-winning SEO agency that can help you succeed in quality content strategy, marketing, and creation; technical SEO services, local SEO, and more. Without accurate data, youll never be able to understand whats working with a, and how that strategy might also benefit you. Here are some tips on conducting your content audit: Step 1: Gather your post data. There are many reasons and ways to audit your site contentwe've covered personas, content performance, and quality, for example. Now what? Likely these sites will have different content goals, but studying their content strategies can also reveal opportunities for your sector as well. Be cautious when you identify huge gaps or differences lest you are tempted to move from your own style and adopt the competitors. Download my competitor analysis template. The main work lies in comparing your content against what your competitors have, while carefully identifying strengths, possible weaknesses and what sets the two sites apart from each other. Here are . And how do you decide how to leverage that information? The second step, which is an essential step that should never be bypassed, is a Competitor Content Audit. But how do you discover what content and content types are performing well for your competitors? Cookies can be themselves or others. While located at the place of business, search on Google for that phrase and click on the local pack to be taken to the full local search results, called the "local finder". Whatever you choose, avoid using simple checkmarks or Yes/No if possible, since that generally provides too little qualitative information to be useful. So when you access our website, in compliance with Article 22 of Law 34/2002 of the Information Society Services, in the analytical cookies treatment, we have requested your consent to their use. TL;DR. Semrush - Best competitor analysis tool for SEO. This way you can evaluate what sort of budget your competitors are putting into video content. The answer to both questions is a competitive content audit, also known as a competitive or competitor content analysis or a competitive content gap. Interestingly, Easel.ly didn't make the cut as they don't rank in the top 10. Sitechecker. Is content written in a consistent voice, appropriate to the audience? Keywords are important, yes, but at this stage, theyre too granular to put into meaningful context. Content audits are completely customizable. They offer tools that will conduct an SEO audit of a competitor site, analyze your competitor's backlink profile, analyze your competitor's SEO strategy, analyze your competitor's content and keywords, and help you identify content opportunities. Click 'Developer,' under 'View.'. Excel. ] If yours dont, you may want to add that to your content planning. No matter how well you plan your audit, you can't account for everything before you start. If a blog, how frequently is it published? To keep top of mind, you'll need to create content that rivals your competitors. Make a copy of the spreadsheet by clicking here. Pay close attention to help functions, ease of access to information, among others. Benefits Of A Competitive Content Audit Auditing a competitors website is not any different from your own. Of course, it may need to be tailored a bit to meet the needs of your specific industry, but it is quite comprehensive: Did you find this Competitor Content Audit framework helpful? If you are looking at a product website, how many products are there and in which categories? "refreshTime": 60, Ideal SEO and PPC Tool for Professionals. Why would I want to, DYNO Mapper has many features to use in the content planning phase of designing a website. Are your digital marketing efforts in need of SEO services? OK, now that's out of the way. Other factors of interest in an ecommerce website might be ease of finding various products, how they are categorized, and various user tasks like ease of comparing more than one product, among others. Like backlinks, social shares are also a signal of your contents strength. It crawls the website to do an audit and generates a report with SEO insights and other problems to be fixed. On the other hand, you will want to look at how much information each product carries in an ecommerce website, and how well the content is synchronized to encourage a new user from making the first contact with the product to making a purchase. Select 7-10 competitors. Once you are done with the above, your competitive audit is complete. For the purposes of this How To, well be utilizing SEMrush and, as you saw above, Ahrefs. For local businesses, "competitors" might mean the sites ranking on page one for your primary keyword (or group of keywords). Tips for analyzing content audits. The main work lies in comparing your content against what your competitors have, while carefully identifying strengths, possible weaknesses and what sets the two sites apart from each other. Looking at the topics enables you to better understand the gaps between your competitors and yourself and the content opportunities that exist in those gaps. Where are they promoting their content within their website? By evaluating these backlinks, you can see not only which high-authority sites are linking to your competitor, but you can also see which pages those high-authority sites are linking to most often. Below we've broken down the step-by-step process for your first audit, much of which can be rinsed and repeated next time you need to analyze your presence. Evaluating your competitor's content is an important component of a competitive analysis. Blog articles, social posts, explainer videosevery brand creates a variety of content across channels and across the buyer journey. Next, compare your competitor list with the list of competitors websites identified by Ahrefs. A competitor audit is most definitely a helpful tool in your strategy toolbox. Compile a list of all of the content assets that you are going to audit. Specifically the competitors that will be within your personas' consideration set. There are several elements that you need to focus on during the assessment. Take a holistic view of your key content metrics. Ideally you should audit a mix of competitors, according to the dimensions outlined above. It can also be valuable to examine the SERPs here and find specifics regarding your competitors ranking pages, since how content is organized and the format and type of content presented can also affect rankings. What are the top three weaknesses of their content. Video types include employee testimonials, workplace features, and company overviews. Evaluate each channel's performance 5. Step #4. With that in mind, check the following metrics: The kind of backlinks a site has can be a clear indication of its strongest content. At CC&A, our audits are comprehensive and meaningful. The word audit probably evokes some level of discomfort for you, and, yes, a Competitor Content Audit will take time and effort. All of these tools below have a free trial and paid version. Enter that keyword phrase in the top field of the spreadsheet. If you want to get really technical, you can perform a complete content audit on your most successful competitors. Without accurate data, youll never be able to understand whats working with a competitorscontentstrategyand how that strategy might also benefit you. Personalize an audit to map to your short- or long-term needs, which can range quite dramatically. This will come in handy later when you're trying to refine your own social media brand voice. Choose up to nine of your top competitors to get an in-depth look at how their followers and analytics compare to yours, and how you can adjust your strategy to remain . Usability: Pay attention to the use interface. Can people find content or products on your site? Are articles or product descriptions sufficiently descriptive and informative? andreea_macoveiciuc_content_expert (Andreea Macoveiciuc - Content expert) January 18, 2021, 10:11pm #1. Business Benefits. Start by identifying 3 to 5 core competitors for your research. By evaluating how well a piece of content has been shared socially, you can gain how well said content resonated with the target audience. A competitor content gap analysis report can help you identify where your website falls short and how you can improve your website quality, SEO, and traffic flow. The first step is creating your competitive list. Why would a website be password protected? Cookies are short reports that are sent and stored on the hard drive of the user's computer through your browser when it connects to a web. Follow the instructions to gather data. Step 2: Add your target queries &. If the content or your goals dont lend themselves easily to a literal scorecard, you may also create a written assessment of each of sites, addressing your audit criteria. How can I make my content stick like theirs? This competitive content audit willshow you how. You might also follow this great advice on conducting a competitive communication audit, which ensures your positioning and messaging are both relevant and differentiated in the market! If you are entering a new market, there might be no actual "direct competitors." However, there is likely a company doing something similar to what you are thinking. If your site or products target a particular audience demographic, how well do you compete? How to Perform a Content Audit, Kristina Kledzik, How to Conduct a Content Audit for Quality and Audience Experience,Sonia Simone. 3. In your scorecard, rate various elements on a scale of say 1-5 and thereafter work on averages. You can also hone in on Missing or Weak keywords/queries but Untapped will give you a good general sense of the topics and queries your competitors are taking advantage of and profiting from, as well as a solid direction and information for content strategy. that assist us in this process. Map the Gap: A Simple Grid Approach to Successful Content Gap Analysis, Content Migration: When (and when not) to Automate. A common mistake many companies make during a competitive . Click below and fill it with the results of your competitor audit. Is content up to date? Get a comprehensive assessment of your website through the eyes of a search engine. It gives comprehensive data and many businesses, companies, entrepreneurs, and content creators use this. Please share your ideas and join the conversation in the comments below! You can be aspirational here, but not too much. Follow the four steps below to create a comprehensive analysis for your brand to create a higher-performing content strategy. Cookies can be used to collect and store user data while connected to provide you the requested services and sometimes tend not to keep. Never lose your style, tone, voice, personality and unique point of view. Understand your audience on each platform 6. To find out who are your organic competitors are, you can visit: Domain analysis > SEO research > Competitors 5. Our SEO team will look at what kind of content your competitors produce, including their webpages, blogs, and videos, and analyze how those pages are organized and the overall tone and voice of the content. "sizes": [ Have any questions to add to the list? After following the above steps, you should not only be well-informed about the kind of content your competition is creating, but you should also understand which of their content is hitting the mark with your target audience. What type of information are they sharing? Warning: Its possible to spend hours upon hours auditing the competitions content, depending on how big they are. Are there a lot of photos? Begin by performing a website audit of your competitors with the aim of determining where content is housed on their site. Indirect competitors can satisfy the same customer needs as your product or service. "renderVisibleOnly": false, Fortunately, you can gain a strong understanding of the competition in a fewshort hours with this quick n dirty competitive content audit that evaluatestwo primary factors: By evaluating these factors, you can get a much stronger understanding of the kind of content dominates your market. It can allow you to understand who your main competitors are and what they're offering, giving you an opportunity to make your own business stand out among the rest. This work often reveals new competitors (from a content standpoint), which you'll want to monitor. continues to be a vital component in search rankings, so its also necessary to categorize keywords into topics, so if you need to tackle entire topics, you can. The saying "content is king" still holds up for a reason. Not all cases are the same and they shouldn't be treated that way. What problem are they solving for their audience? You will now see highlights the H1 tags throughout the page. What kind of response are they receiving from their audience? How do you find out who you can and cant reasonably compete with? If identifying content gaps was a goal, look at your completeness scores. When it comes to creating content that generates relevant organic traffic, you not only need to meet your customers needs and desires; you also need to understand and know your competitors content. . In this guide, I'll walk you through 5 essential steps on how to audit your content: Step 1: Define Your Goals and Metrics. You can also pass on keyword . Analyze your competition's content strategy. Step 3: Collect and Analyze Data. 1. You probably have a good idea of who some potential competitors in the industry may be from past experience or reputation alone. What kind of content (articles, video, etc.) If a product site, how many products across how many categories? Simple searches and timed browse exercises can help you determine how discoverable your content is compared to your competitors. Wrangle all of your existing social media profiles First thing's first: you're going to need to take inventory of your social profiles. Topical authority is broad and specific expertise thats spread out among many web pages on your site that are internally linked, and when you build topical authority, Google will reward your domain with higher rankings. Direct competitors offer the same product or service, and tend to be in the same geographical area as you. Looking at the topics enables you to better understand the gaps between your competitors and yourself and the content opportunities that exist in those gaps. A competitor audit will look at 3-5 of your key competitors and how they're performing in different areas, including SEO, branding, UX, etc. This can give you a good idea ofwhat content on yourcompetitors site is getting the most attention from other sites. More importantly, it can give you valuable intelligence to leveragewhen making your own content better even better than the competitions. Do we have a similar content construction? A content audit gives brands a high-level overview of all their content assets. Its important to note that a competitive or competitor content audit that takes into account how Google and other search engines actually rank content wont just be churning out a bunch of keywords that you can then set to writing content with. A competitor review audit gives you actionable data on your competitor's strengths, weaknesses, goals, and objectives. Detailed analysis of your competitors' external links and anchor text. Do product descriptions include all the information you need to know to make a purchase decision? Assess your competitors web sites on the same measures you use on your ownor on the measures you hope to compete with. The goal of categorization is to identify the. Create, edit, customize, and share visual sitemaps integrated with Google Analytics for easy discovery, planning, and collaboration. More importantly, it can give you valuable intelligence to leverage when making your own content better - even better than the competition's. Put simply, this audit takes stock of the content your competition is using, how they're using it, and why it's making such an impact with their target audience. If you find out what is working for your rivals you can leverage and improve those same strategies to beat them online. See where they got their links Serpstat offers more than 50 tools for keyword research, competitor research, rank tracking, site audit, backlink analysis, content analysis, and keyword clustering. Brand24 - Best for monitoring brand mentions across social media. It can be tempting to take the findings too literally and jump too quickly to standardize your content and site experience with others. Competitor analysis template. An infographic? Try to avoid simple checkmarks or No/yes because this will give very minimal qualitative data that wont be useful for your analysis later. that are relevant to your business, industry, and niche. With the right approach and consistent effort, your competitors will supply you with everything you need to inform and improve your client's review acquisition strategy. Consistency and Quality: Is all the content on the site in a consistent voice for the right audiences? window['nitroAds'].createAd('SocialMediaExplorer', { Step 2: Add your target queries & competitor names to the spreadsheet Split the queries in two sections solution-aware and problem-aware, to keep things more organized. This isnt your actual set of heuristics yet, but much like doing your own site inventory and audit, it serves the purpose of familiarizing yourself with the landscape youll be assessing. Complete an SEO audit of their sites; Screaming Frog and other SEO audit tools can give you a deeper dive into your competitor's sites, looking at their structure and content. Your Content Marketing Success Depends on It A competitive content audit reveals the areas in which your own content and topical offerings are weak, strong, non-existent, and middling, and a competitive audit will also reveal those keywords and queries where ranking high up in the SERPS is possible. A competitor is a person, team, or company that shares your goals, mission, and vision. It helps you identify pages that aren't performing well, why they aren't, and how to fix that. Check in on your branding 3. An SEO content audit is when you inventory the content on your website and analyze its performance. So we'll add all these queries to the spreadsheet. Michael Ferrari began his career married to journalism then started heavily flirting with web design before finally settling down with SEO and marketing. You may want to partner with your UX counterpart to look at findability, product categorization, and user tasks like product comparison and purchase. Much like performing an audit of your own site, the act of auditing someone elses requires a few basic tasks to start. Explore competitor performance trends. An example for support content might look like this: The metrics you choose to include in your scorecard can be numeric (rating on a 1-5 scale, for example) or ideograms such as Harvey Balls. This make. To gather data, then, youll need access to one or two SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, etc. Content Social Media Explorer, 2007 - 2022 | All Rights Reserved. How to run a social media audit 1. Your audit should begin by determining your goals and the measures (or heuristics) youll use to score the sites. 3. What sets their tone and voice apart from yours? Put simply, this audit takes stock of the content your competition is using, how they're using it, and why it's making such an impact with their target audience. Fortunately, there are some tools to help you save time, as this can be the most time-consuming part of the audit process. [ All of this is to improve our services. You can create a longer list to use in the Competitors appbut for your core list, try to limit it to your direct competitors. Using the same attributes, measure the websites against each. A Competitor Content Audit is an in-depth look into the content efforts of your competitors to see what information is out there for your industry; what is working, what is not working; and where there is open space and opportunity for you to add value for your consumers. The first step in conducting a competitive content analysis or audit is to gather data. . Why should I conduct an SEO content audit? Next select your Keywords column and filter accordingly. . #6: Research Competitor Strategy. Still, the most common content audit-related goals most marketers set are as follows: Improving SEO results (positions, traffic) If you want to conduct a content audit for SEO purposes, there are several major things to consider. function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}gtag('js', new Date());gtag('config', 'UA-2393221-5'); window['nitroAds'] = window['nitroAds'] || { createAd: function () { window.nitroAds.queue.push(["createAd", arguments]) }, queue: [] }; As a marketer in todays world, its our responsibility to generate a lot of content. Gather data. Review the goals you established at the outset of the audit process. After all, your competition represents your frame of reference for what your target audience and Google find valuable. Competitor Content Audits: Why & How to Vet Other Players in Your Industry. However, please note that you can enable or disable cookies by following the instructions of your browser. Topical authority is one of the most important ranking factors utilized by Google. All Rights Reserved. So, you see, we cant simply churn out a bunch of random, useless information and cross our fingers that it resonates with our target audience. A Competitor Content Audit is an in-depth look into the content efforts of your competitors to see what information is out there for your industry; what is working, what is not working; and where there is "open space" and opportunity for you to add value for your consumers. 1. You . What is a password protected website? Audit Your Site's Existing Content. Step 1 of a Competitor Content Analysis: Gather Data The first step in conducting a competitive content analysis or audit is to gather data. Identify your top-performing social media content 4. Obviously, auditing content marketing is very important for a thorough audit. Prospects don't like to be overwhelmed by sales talk, and brands to be positioned as authorities in their fields. The home of Strategic Content, a Seattle-based independent consultancy specializing in content strategy, content management, taxonomy, and content development services. Revert to your initial goals that necessitated the content audit. The report will show you the areas where your website lacks content as compared to your competitors. Example; when auditing a blog, you definitely should be more interested in frequent fresh content that is published, commented or shared on various social networking sites. Top Content Audit Tools. Do a pilot audit. Heres how you clean up your data. Are there features such as support for misspells or synonym matching? For example, do all your competitors include how-to articles to accompany their products? You can create and maintain a spreadsheet manually that includes details like: URLs and titles. But, when done correctly, a Competitor Content Audit can yield priceless information that will set you on the path to success with your own Content Strategy. Is similar content constructed similarly? To help with your competitor analysis, I've created a competitive analysis template. So we'll add all these queries to the spreadsheet. Create a list of all your social media accounts 2. For some, these tools are a bit too technical, but they do give you a deeper look at your competitor sites beyond the tools listed in #5. Create a list that identifies their key categories and break down their top-performing . We need to understand the forest before we head into the trees. Make sure criteria are specific enough to be measurable, although a certain amount of judgment calls will be inevitable. Well also go over how to uncover meaningful insights for designing your own content strategy. Key features. Visit him at MichaelFerrariCreative.com. marketing, content, research, audit, competitors. If you would like a general purpose competitive content audit, then you should monitor; Gathering data is only the first step. What would that even be? Are they ranking with a white paper or webinar content? There are many reasons and ways to audit your site contentweve covered personas, content performance, and quality, for example. Exclude brands. Therefore, take inventory on all of them! You can tailor the template to suit your business. (You can also do this later if you choose.). If you are doing this audit on behalf of a client, have them perform the searches and send you the data. So organizing data according to topic is an essential step in determining what content you need to create. Without accurate data, you'll never be able to understand what's working with a competitor's content strategy and how that strategy might also benefit you. For general purpose competitive audits, your list could include: When youve gathered this information, your next step will be to do a side-by-side comparison of your site against your competitors sites and objectively evaluate where the strengths, weaknesses, and points of differentiation lie. Through the process, you will better understand their strategy that you can use to your advantage. "refreshLimit": 10, Breadth and Depth of Content: How broad are the topics? We are so excited and proud to announce the release of DYNO Mapper v5.0. Part 1 of a two-part LOCOMOTIVE Agency series. With a competitive audit, your business will: Learn who your true competitors are online and offline. These insights can ultimately be used to improve and shape your social strategy moving forward. For an e-commerce site, you will be looking not only at content depth and breadthhow much information is provided for products?but also how well other site content is integrated with product content and how well content supports the user journey from evaluation to purchase. Categorization is the most time-consuming part of a content audit, but its an essential step in understanding what topics are relevant to your customers and competitors and whats missing in your content game. Keywords are important, yes, but at this stage, theyre too granular to put into meaningful context. Competitor content This is the part most of you waited for. Well touch on this more later. Copyright 2010-2021 Strategic Content LLC. Does your writing have a voice appropriate for that audience or do your competitors do a better job of hitting that tone? 16. You can do this by filtering on each competitors column; just be sure not to delete any blog.Company1.com subdomains as a blog will likely have valuable content. Not only do we have to generate a significant amount of content, we have to provide information that our consumers find enough value in that they are willing to give us something in exchange for it their time, their personal information, their money, and hopefully their business. Also, organizing the data by topic will help you understand where you need to build or beef up topical authority. Does your target audience prefer more on-the-nose content that relates directly to the products/service you offer, or do they prefer something else? The easiest way to search and destroy keywords you dont need is to go to Data and then Filter in. A competitor audit shows you who is dominating the conversation in your category and how big your share is. How does your content or product range stack up? Before looking at anything else, you must first understand your competitors' products and target markets. Identify and understand your target audience Success in marketing depends on knowledge of one's target audience. Ok. Now that youve double-checked who your competitors are, its time to start the audit. If youve done an inventory and audit on your own site, you will have a baseline for auditing competitors content against your own. Start measuring the impact of your social media campaigns with our 14-day free trial. A social media competitive audit can provide valuable insights into what tactics work well in your industry. Before you begin actually scoring the content, youll want to do a quick assessment of what their sites contain and identify whats there. We all want to create great sites that engage and serve our customers and readers well. At SME Digital (the agency arm of Social Media Explorer), we support an audit framework that evaluates what your competitors are doing and provides valuable insight, rather than just listing all content ever created into a spreadsheet. . Now that you understand their content and how well it resonates, you can create your own content that blows theirs out of the water! Back to the example we mentioned earlier, if your website has hundreds or even thousands of content pages that weren't ever audited, a content audit may last up to 2-3 months. A content audit can help you see this stuff). Make notes on their color schemes, imagery, brand voice, and tone in your audit document. Take action: Update your social media marketing strategy If you're auditing with other people, you'll need to run a pilot - one that involves the whole audit team. These are only but some of the questions that you have to bear in mind. In order to get started with your SEO competitor audit, you must first find out who they are. "format": "video-ac", Content Audits. For a broader view about how you compete in the niche, consider conducting up to three competitive content audits targeting the top three players in your niche. Filter to the Top 20 positions for All domains. Currently, he fools around with each discipline behind the others backs, and loves every minute of it. If you cannot easily score the content, then consider creating a written appraisal of each site and address the criteria used in the audit. Learn more. But, whatif that competition is kicking your butt all over the Internet with highly shareable content? Social Status - Best for monitoring your competitors' social profiles. So do our competitors. window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; Frequency: How frequent is the content published on the site? Her passion lies in turning great ideas into measureable results through well-planned implementation and a true partnership with each client. But you still need to maintain your own voice, point of view, and personality. 5. Competitive content audit: A report on how one site's content compares to that of competitors'. Ideas to improve: This is generally an open-ended item. Advertised Perks. The general idea is to leave a spot where auditors can leave any additional notes or ideas (that may part of our outside the goal of that particular audit.) When carrying out the analysis, maintain a clean and objective eye for areas on which you need to improve on, or determine if you are getting your content right. Step Four: Analyze Their Social Media Presence Social media doesn't have much of a direct effect on your SEO success, but it plays a powerful secondary role in promoting your content, earning you links, and generally improving . Is there an embedded podcast episode on the page? Delete irrelevant subdomains (e.g. Step 2: Take an Inventory of Your Content. The length of the list depends entirely on which vertical you're operating inyou want the list to be comprehensive but not unreasonable. One thing to keep in mind here . Posted by Michael Ferrari on May 18, 2015. . H1 tag Checker by Sitechecker is an online tool to check the presence of the H1 tag, which will also analyze and calculate its length. What themes or concepts tie all their content together, if any? Examples of keywords that we delete at the outset of organizing our data for a competitive content audit include keywords with the following: The easiest way to search and destroy keywords you dont need is to go to Data and then Filter in Excel. Whats the word count? SEMrush also offers dandy video and written tutorials if you want to learn more. Make an in-person visit to all of your competitors' profiles to note the overall strategy behind their social content. By using a tool like Open Site Explorer, you can export the backlinks for your competitors entire site. Navigate to the Keyword Gap function in SEMrush. Multiple audits will also reduce bias; you can as far as seeking third-party reviews about the websites and ask for recommendations on how best you can improve on yours. Organize your data. We want to help you succeed, so allow us to take the leg work out and provide you with the list of questions to get you started on the front end. To get a wider range of viewpoints and reduce bias, Rahel Bailie suggests having several reviewers independently audit the sites. As an account manager at SME Digital, Danielle is the gatekeeper of WOW for each client partner. As an SEO agency, now and again, we come across clients who give us a competitor list that isnt as accurate or useful from an SEO perspective as it could be. To do so, audit your competitor's content too. So, to make sure youre actually looking at the right competitors, enter your url in Ahrefs Site Explorer, and then use Ahrefs Competing domains tool under Organic search. Being an authority on a particular topic means that when users click through to your site, theyre more likely to find the answer they seek, plus related information that helps them on their journey. Tag and analyze content topics. This step is important for understanding what you need to do to improve your site's SEO performance. The Competitive Content Audit Strategic Content The Competitive Content Audit We all want to create great sites that engage and serve our customers and readers well. What is an SEO content audit? A thorough content audit can deliver more traffic, engagement, and conversions. 3. Can users access support documentation when needed? But most importantly, it answers the question, " Is our social media performance good enough ?" LinkedIn rolled out customizable competitor analytics in your LinkedIn Page Analytics tab. 2. How long a content takes isonce againaffected by several factors. Do you think users find all necessary content and products on the website as fast as they should? For the purposes of this How To, well be utilizing SEMrush and, as you saw above, Ahrefs. For the most part you have to do it the old-fashioned way manually. Discover competitor marketing approaches that work and those that don't. Auditing your competitors is all about gaining valuable insights you need to stay ahead. Every content audit has to be backed by properly defined goals and modalities that will be used to measure and score the websites. Draft a Scorecard Every content audit has to be backed by properly defined goals and modalities that will be used to measure and score the websites. Analyze your competition. 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