The Benefits of Competitor Analysis

Regardless of the type of business you own or manage, competition is inevitable. Your competitors could be someone in the same industry as you or even a company offering similar services or products as yours. 

Healthy competition in business can advance innovation, diversify supply, and create better prices for consumers and businesses alike. However, if you’re not up-to-date with your competitor’s activities, you can miss out on significant growth opportunities.

That said, competitor analysis can prove impactful to any investor that’s keen on gaining an edge over their business rivals. To widen your understanding of how competitor analysis can help your enterprise grow, here’s a breakdown of what it essentially is, its potential benefits, and how to conduct a fruitful competitor evaluation.

Competitor Analysis Explained

One of the misconceptions constantly circulating among business owners is that competitor analysis is complicated, time-consuming, and unnecessarily extravagant. This notion is borderline misleading, especially if you consider the amount of knowledge you can acquire with a few well-articulated online searches.

Essentially, competitor analysis refers to the strategic identification and meticulous evaluation of your business’s competition. During this time, your focus should be on analyzing and comparing the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses to the products or services you’re offering.

Therefore, whether yours is a start-up or longstanding company, you should coordinate a periodical competitor analysis. It could go a long way in ensuring that you stay ahead of your commercial adversaries in the foreseeable future.

The main aim of your evaluation should be to;

• Study the market scenery of the local industry.
• Predict the market demand and supply trends.
• Reshape your business strategy.
• Establish and acknowledge possible threats.
• Recognize upcoming opportunities.
• Reinvent your company’s objectives.
• Determine your competition’s next course of action.
• Identify or speculate on future market trends and patterns.

By understanding how your competitor works, you can effectively transform your business strategy to improve performance and distinguish your company from others in the same industry. Below are some of the ways a well-executed competitor analysis can benefit your business.

The Benefits of Competitor Analysis

Actively seeking more insight into your business’s competitive landscape can pose a myriad of benefits. For example, information about your niche market can help improve your understanding of the external and internal environments the business is operating in.

Analyzing more complex aspects such as digital marketing and promotion scheduling strategies could give you a more significant edge over your business rivals. Past that, below are some of the expected gains associated with a competitive analysis.

• Enhanced understanding of the market.
• Improved customer targeting.
• Forecasting the market becomes easier.
• You can track the economic climate.
• Enabling competitor products tracking.
• Influencing competitor pricing.
• Creating tertiary market possibilities.
• Improved customer acquisition.

Debunking SEO Competitor Analysis

Most business owners constantly seek information about their competitors. Although it may sound simple, this constitutes competitor analysis. However, with the advent of technology and its increasing popularity as an important part of any business, new techniques that can be used to gauge the competition have come up, one of them being SEO competitor analysis.

Also known as competitive analysis, SEO competitor analysis, refers to a robust research strategy that can help modern business owners;

• Attract more traffic to their websites.
• Earn more conversions.
• Rank higher on search engine platforms such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

A competitive analysis typically involves analyzing the content, links, and keywords of your SEO competitor, reverse-engineering their SEO tactics, and incorporating them into your business’s SEO strategy. Essentially, instead of spending a significant amount of time developing a new strategy, you’ll use what’s proven impactful for your competitors to improve the chances of success for your company.

Although competitive analysis can be complex, it can provide viable answers to any one of the following questions;

• Who are my business’s SEO competitors?
• Which keywords should I target?
• What topics should I cover?
• Where can I find the links?
• What do I need to stay ahead of the competition?

With that in mind, stay advised that SEO competitor analysis can happen in several ways. However, it may typically involve;

• Identifying your true SEO competitors.
• Keyword gap analysis.
• Content evaluation.
• Link gap analysis.
• Google SERP analysis.

In a Nutshell

Even though it can be notably beneficial to both budding entrepreneurs and established business owners, competitor analysis shouldn’t be a one-time feat. Instead, it would be best to do it consistently since new competitors may appear without warning as old ones phase-out. As you analyze other businesses, remember to scrutinize yours regularly too.

While you’re at it, you should consider working with Virtual Surge, a leading SEO firm in the Baltimore area.