How important is competitor research? Even if you’re not using your competitors’ strategies, knowing what they are can help your organization in the long run. This is particularly true when it comes to their on and off page SEO tactics. If you’re curious about how you can get a leg up in your industry, it’s important to know what your competitors are doing. Here are some questions you should investigate.

What Keywords Are They Targeting?

Hopefully, you’ve taken the time to do carefully crafted keyword research that caters to your industry and demographic. However, you’ll also want to take note of the terms your competitors are using. While there are numerous third-party applications that can give you this information, you may need dedicated digital marketing experts on your side to help interpret it. For instance, knowing that a competitor ranks extremely well for “orange county dental services” is one thing. Leapfrogging them is a completely different task.

How Does Your Competition’s Content Match Up Against Yours?

No matter the industry, the best keyword research is worthless without content to back it up. Once you have an idea of the keywords your competitors are targeting, analyze their content. Take an unbiased note of the following elements:

• Does their content speak to the intended demographic?
• How many internal links does each page have?
• If you were a consumer, would the call-to-actions compel you to contact them?

Compare your competitor’s content to your own—with an open mind, of course. While it’s natural to think that your website has the best blogs in the world, use your competitors to see if there are any opportunities to bolster your own content.

How Are Their Backlinks?

On page SEO is definitely important, but don’t neglect the value of strong backlinks. Backlinks have immense value in helping websites build up authority. However, it’s not just quantity. 100 links from low authority domains aren’t worth nearly as much as 10 backlinks from high authority domains.

Compare your backlinks with the competition—not just the total number, but also look at the authority of the referring domains.

Dreamscape Marketing Knows the Value of Competitor Research

How important is competitor research? Dreamscape Marketing knows that it’s vital to an organization’s success or failure. Instead of doing the legwork yourself, our Dream Team can take your goals and turn them into executable strategies.

To learn more about our digital marketing services, call Dreamscape Marketing today at 888.307.7304.