Content marketing can be challenging.
It is easy to launch a website in any industry and start publishing content. And because it is easy, competition has become fierce — too fierce, if you ask me.
Not to mention, staying relevant and showing up in search results among the well-established and highly trafficked businesses in your industry can be hard.
That said, taking advantage of the competition and using rival websites to help you pull ahead can benefit you in more ways than one.
Today we’re going to look at the four ways you can spy on your competition and use their working strategies so you can boost your online following.
1. Find your competitors’ keywords.
Chances are, you already know what keywords you would like your content and website to rank for in search results.
But have you ever given thought to what keywords your competitors are ranking for?
If you look into it closer, you will find that the reason your rival site continues to pull site visitors away from you or rank higher than you is that you are targeting the wrong keywords.
That is why using SEMRush to spy on your competition’s top keywords is great in making your website more successful.
With SEMRush, all you have to do is type in your competition’s URL to see their top keywords.
In addition to the keywords, you will see the following data about your competitor:
- Organic and paid search traffic
- Number of backlinks and displaying ads
- Top organic and paid keywords
- Their competition, with links to their websites
- Sample ads and related copy
- Referring domains
With this information, you can determine what keywords they are ranking for that are different from yours, who else might be a competitor, and authoritative sites to reach out to for getting your own backlinks.
As you begin your research for more robust and effective SEO strategies to rank your webpages in the search engines, be sure to fortify your website’s security against cyber attacks.
After all, as your website becomes more popular, those looking to feed off your site’s good reputation, high search rankings, and increase in traffic will also rise.
This leaves your website open to security breaches if you have not taken the time to protect it.
2. Study rival sites’ social media ads.
One good business idea is to know which products to sell, which ones will make you good money. If you know your site visitors’ common interests, this will not be too hard.
But sometimes, it is not enough that you know which ones to sell; it is equally important that you know how and where to promote them. A good example is Facebook.
Facebook is not just a place to chat and share life updates. This social networking site makes for a good marketing strategy too. Businesses use it to promote products.
But if you want to promote your website’s content, products, and services on Facebook, studying your competition’s Facebook ads is a good first step.
From there, you can see what your competition is doing to get people to visit their website, what draws them to read their content, subscribe to their newsletter, or make a purchase.
Study the imagery, copy, headlines, and CTA buttons and see how you can integrate those strategies into your own content marketing plan for your Facebook ads.
And do not forget to test your Facebook ads.
Testing ads is a way of ensuring that when people click on your CTA buttons, they are directed to where they need to go and that once they get there, everything works fine.
If you need help with this, use a service that can help test the usability of your website so you know every site visitor has a seamless experience no matter where they come from.
3. Get content inspiration from others.
Sometimes, the hardest part of content marketing is coming up with fresh, original ideas to write about week in and week out.
Thing is, new content is exactly what your site visitors expect every time they visit your website.
If you find your content calendar lacking, or feel like you are running out of things to write about, see what some top competitors are doing and take inspiration from it.
After all, they are your rival because people are visiting their website over yours, which means, they must be doing something right when it comes to the type of content they publish.
An easy way to stay on top of the blog content your site visitors are publishing is to subscribe to their newsletters so that every time new content is published, you know right away.
Then you can visit their site, see what they are writing about, and study how they have displayed their content to encourage engagement and lower their bounce rates.
In an effort to avoid overwhelming your inbox, you can use a service such as Unroll.me to keep track of all your subscriptions on one convenient email sent out daily.
Keep in mind that you will want to have a variety of content types on your website to keep your visitors interested.
In fact, you will probably notice some of the top competitors have content types such as the following:
- blog posts varying in length
- case studies
- whitepapers
- ebooks
- video content
- listicles and checklists
- resource roundups
- infographics
If you are interested in creating one-of-a-kind images (especially infographics) for your website, email campaigns, and even social media posts, consider using Canva.
Use the pre-designed templates to get you started, customize things like color schemes, fonts, and elements like icons, and wow your site visitors with valuable, visually appealing content.
4. Research your competitors on Instagram.
Just like Facebook, Instagram is a major player in the social media world.
Doing the things that are working for your competitors is great, but if you do not know who your biggest competitors are, how are you to know whom to take inspiration from?
Worse, what if you start targeting keywords, writing on similar topics, and creating ads like your “competitor,” only to find out they really do not have that much visitor engagement?
Studying social media platforms is a unique way to gain insight into who your biggest competition is and how interactive their target audience is.
One of the best ways to gauge how engaged your competitor’s audience is on Instagram—and likely elsewhere they post content — is to use Phlanx, an Instagram engagement calculator.
When you enter your rival site’s Instagram handle in the search bar, you will see how many followers they have and what the engagement rate is.
The Instagram engagement rate takes into consideration how many followers an account has compared to the number of likes and comments its content receives.
This is also a great tool for finding out whether an influencer that you are interested in adding to your content marketing plan has a real following, or more importantly, a lot of user engagement.
Just remember, though, that tools like Phlanx are only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to competitor analysis and should only be used if your target audience is found there.
For you to figure out which influencer to target and which tools to use to find the influencer, you first need to determine which marketing channel is ideal for your business dynamics.
Depending on the products you’re selling, the audience you’re selling to, your budget, and the pain points you want to address (the whole shebang, basically), it might make sense for you to operate on a handful of marketing channel, rather than being everywhere.
Final Thoughts
In the end, content marketing is something all website owners, no matter how established they are, will have to continually work on to stay ahead of the competition.
Learning your competitor’s ways can actually help you beat them at their own game. And if you know how to do it right, you will find your reputation and success grow faster than ever.
There is no reason why you can’t use what works for others to help yourself. In fact, not doing so is a big mistake.
So if you want to stay afloat and get ahead of even the most well-known in the industry, do a little spying and see what you can learn from them.
About the Author: Jimmy is a freelance writer and the owner of the GuildofBloggers.com. He has contributed to several reputable websites like SEMRush, SeachEnginePeople, and Business.com.
