SEO Competition Analysis

I apologize if this is too basic of a question. I did a search but could not find what I was looking for.

I am brand new at this and I have been following a tutorial in the tutorial they suggest buying a software package that is priced more then I'd like to pay. I would rather either do the seo competition analysis without software or if you think that software is necessary where is a good one that is not to expensive. Thanks for the replies!

Those "tutorials" that you were reading probably only suggested using the software because they get paid a commission every time someone buys it or they own the software themselves.

I'm not going to go into great detail about how to create your own SEO competitive analysis reports, but you can start by gathering the following information about your competitior:

Inbound Links Profile: the links pointing to their website. You can find this by using free tools such as Backlink Watch
Outbound Link Profile: What websites are they linking to? You can find these easily by looking for hyperlinked content on their page.
Targeted Keywords: These are keywords that usually appear the most when you check their keyword density. Speaking of keyword density...
Keyword density: How often the keyword appears in the article. You can calculate keyword density manually or you can use free tools such as SEOCentro.
Link building strategies: Are they using their own websites, are they using PBNs, are they spamming blog comments, or are they letting people create links naturally?
Marketing Strategies: Are they using PPC, SEO, Classifieds, or another method to drive traffic to their website?
Local Strategies (Local SEO Only): Are they building citations? Do they have a presence on social media? Do they have a verified local Google+ business page?
Other websites owned by your competitor: You can usually find these by typing in their company name or searching their link profiles.
Monetisation Strategies: How does their website make money? Do they use Google Adsense? Do they sell their own products (check to see if they have a products page)? Are they affiliates for another company?
Other Statistics: While not perfect, you can use metric tools such as Moz or Majestic to get an idea of how competitive your competitor is in the SERPs.

Once all of this information is gathered, you can then compare your own website to your competitors (use the methods to create a report on your own website) to find out what you need to improve on to really compete with them.

ThePoolPlayer said:

I apologize if this is too basic of a question. I did a search but could not find what I was looking for.

I am brand new at this and I have been following a tutorial in the tutorial they suggest buying a software package that is priced more then I'd like to pay. I would rather either do the seo competition analysis without software or if you think that software is necessary where is a good one that is not to expensive. Thanks for the replies!

Click to expand...

You can get SEMRush account for as low as $10-15/month. Try google-ing "semrush group buy" or something like that..

That piece of sw is all you really need when it comes to comp research (well, it won't hurt getting Ahrefs account tho, but you can get it also in a group buy mode)

ThePoolPlayer said:

I apologize if this is too basic of a question. I did a search but could not find what I was looking for.

I am brand new at this and I have been following a tutorial in the tutorial they suggest buying a software package that is priced more then I'd like to pay. I would rather either do the seo competition analysis without software or if you think that software is necessary where is a good one that is not to expensive. Thanks for the replies!

Click to expand...

A number of site's available in the web which provide's you the complete analysis of your website at free of cost. if your going to create competitor analysys mannually, by analysing and recording the serp result ie..(inbound, outbond profile's, keyword's, LB Strategies,etc.. ) it will take's much of your time in gathering complete data. As per my experience software's are easy to use and accurate, in this way SEM rush is a better option for you.

Get these addons - SEOQuake and MOZBar. I use them on a daily basis along with Ahrefs SEO toolbar (that's paid).

You may want to read this as well - http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...seful-favorite-chrome-extensions-add-ons.html

There is a free version of traffic travis you could use.

It would probably help if you named the software that was suggested so we can tell you if it's worth it. Ditto on SEMrush however that can be pretty expensive for newbies and there are much cheaper alternatives that do a decent job.