Competitive research can help your business in many ways to grow. It helps you understand your industry better, gives insight into your customer’s preferences, and is an effective tool to assess how your business is performing.
Among the varied parameters that are considered for effective competitive research, it is crucial for you to check traffic to websites and fetch useful insights about your competitors’ online traffic. Analyzing details about website traffic is a brilliant way to understand your competitor’s top-performing content. You can take inspiration from their content and apply your strategies for improved content ideation that works for your business.
First, identify your competitors
Before you start, it is essential to identify your competitors. There are two types of competitors in your business:
- Your traditional competitors offer the same products or services like yours and target the same audience you want to target.
- And then there are those competitors who rank on the search engine for a given keyword related to your products and services.
With the advent of the digital era, the second type of competitors should be taken seriously. The name of the companies appearing in organic search is capable of driving away a lot of your customers, even if they are not your traditional competition. Therefore, you must do adequate research and find out the reasons why they rank above you.
Next, understand your research objectives
It is essential to list down the keywords you wish to rank for. Ensure that the keyword should relate to your products and services. Several tools show important keywords for your industry, their popularity, and how difficult it is to rank them. Take your time, think and then select the right keywords; it is the essential step. Once done, you can carry on with the research:
- Try to find the type of content that is shared the most in your industry.
- Look out for trending topics related to your industry.
- See the content your competitors are promoting.
- Have a look at the activities of your competitor’s followers and what they are likely to share.
- See the content the big firms in your industry are sharing.
How to use your research for generating better content?
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Try to find the type of content that is shared the most in your industry:
Researching about the type of content most of the competitors in your industry share will help you to understand what engages your audience. You will not have to do it manually; there are different tools available to assist you in the process. Look out for the number of social shares of relevant content.
It is one of the most valuable pieces of information but makes sure that you do not put all of your focus only on a single competitor. Instead, choose multiple competitors, collect data from them and also follow the trend.
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Look out for trending topics related to your industry
You should follow multiple accounts related to the business and see the amount of engagement those content is getting. See the number of likes, shares, and comments for each post. Also, have a close look at what type of content is getting more attention- text, images, or videos. These days video content is a hot topic, but you should also concentrate on creating and text and image posts. Finally, try to find out the social platform that generates maximum share for your competitors and industry as a whole.
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See the content your competitors are promoting
Backlinks are an efficient way to get better ranks and more recognition online. Try to research which type of content is generating more backlinks for your competitors. For example, viral content is likely to generate more backlinks. There are tools available online that can help you to get this information; they can show you the URLs that have attracted more links in the past.
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Have a look at the activities of your competitor’s followers and what they are likely to share
Start reviewing the individual and business accounts that share the content of your competitors. It will help you identify social influencers capable of generating more engagement on your content. You can get a detailed report on this data using widely available online tools.
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See the content the big firms in your industry are sharing
Finally, it is essential to carry out in-depth analysis by keeping track of your competitor’s brand mentions online. Setting up alerts for Google Analytics can help you with that. It will help you to understand what type of content is getting better coverage on the web.
These are a few ways of using competitive research to enhance your content generation ideas. Data collection and research are the essential components that help you to perform better analysis on your competitors. You can use this information to start with your content ideation strategies.