In this article, we’ll cover one of the most fundamental (and often overlooked) activities in SEO analysis: the analysis of the competitors. You’ll find out how to spy on your rivals, why you should do it, and how to use SEO Tester Online’s new Keyword Explorer.

• To obtain keyword ideas;
• Have a deeper understanding of the SERP and the websites that you have to beat for each keyword.

Let’s dive in.

What is SEO Competitor Analysis?

The SEO Analysis of competitors is the study of how your contenders are doing from an SEO point of view. It is essential because it can give you a great headstart when starting a new project or a boost in your SEO if your already-existing website doesn’t get a proper positioning within the SERP. Most of all, it can help you understand what the strategy behind your competitor’s so-good positioning is.

Why should you do it?

You can get ideas about what keywords you should use and what you should avoid because the competition is too stark. SEO is more a matter of adaptation and strategy rather than brute force. 

With SEO competitor analysis, you can see what makes your competitors position themselves so high in the SERP and then try to outperform or get around them. 

How to do it?

Explore their domains with Keyword Explorer

Keyword Explorer Tool is not just a tool to discover keyword ideas. It is also the tool to find the ones that your competitors are using. The first thing to go to the Keyword Explorer and choose to search by the domain, write your competitor’s URL, and select the country.

Create a list and add long-tail keyword ideas

Below, a list of keywords will appear. They are the keywords with which your competitor is positioning. If you click on one, you will get, on the right, its metrics: difficulty, volume, trend, and, below, the best-positioned websites for that keyword. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, let’s focus on the left side of the screen. You can spot the  long-tail keywords with low competition and difficulty your competitor is using. Check the metrics for each one and, add it to your list.

Explore the SERP

Now it is time to see how hard the competition is for each keyword. Select one, look on the right and check what the most popular pages within the SERP for each keyword are. Examine it with SEO Checker to see how much it is optimized. To do so, click on the three dots near each result in the SERP. If it is not optimized from an SEO point of view, it could be easier to compete with them. 

On the other hand, if it is well-optimized, do a long-tail keyword search to find alternative keywords to beat your competitors.

Maybe you’d want to see with which keywords that website is positioning. In that case, select “Find keywords”.

Study the SERP metrics

SEO metrics such as Domain Authority, Page Authority, Facebook Shares, backlinks, and Visits per Month can give critical information about how hard it will be to beat your competitor.

Metrics such as volume, competition, or keyword difficulty tell you just half of the story. Even a promising keyword can yield no results if your competitors have a good number of visits and authority. 

In this case, the keyword “iphone headphone jack” sounds promising if we limit ourselves if we look at its metrics: decent volume for a long-tail keyword low competition and difficulty. But the competitors are quite hard to beat: websites such as apple.com big boys, and it’s not wise to try to outperform them. Maybe you should look for a keyword with lower competition, such as “incase airpods”. 

See why it is essential to do the SEO analysis of your competitors when doing keyword research? This may avoid you competing for promising keywords that will not deliver results because the competition is too fierce.

Are you struggling in positioning your content on top of the SERP? 

You may have already experienced that, sometimes, it does not matter how good you write a blog post. There’s no way to surpass your already well-positioned competitors.

The hard truth is that sometimes quality is not enough. Other websites are just too authoritative. But don’t despair; there’s a way to position your content and build your way to the summit. 

In this post, you’ll learn the Skyscraper technique. It is a mixed strategy of content creation and link building that helps you in positioning your content.

What is link building, and why is it important?

Link building is a strategy that aims to make other websites link to your content. If they are authoritative enough, link building can generate quality traffic. It will give you authoritativeness and improve your ranking.

The more reliable is the site that links to your content, the more the backlink will count as a ranking factor. 

One of the best ways to get quality backlinks is the Skyscraper technique.

What is the Skyscraper Technique?

The name, and the whole technique, are the brainchild of Backlinko’s Brian Dean.

He is the author of Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days. In his article, he explains the on-site and off-site SEO strategy that got him to write a huge blog post.

Then, he made the backlinks to it to skyrocket, and the organic visits to his website doubled within 14 days.

But continue reading, we added extra insights from the content creation point of view.

How it works: a Guide to Skyscraper Technique 

The Skyscraper technique is, in a nutshell:

– discover what content gets the most backlinks in your niche,

– make a better version of it, 

– ask relevant websites to backlink your blog post instead of the other.

Why is it called so? In the words of its inventor:

Have you ever walked by a really tall building and said to yourself:

“Wow, that’s amazing! I wonder how big the 8th tallest building in the world is.”

Of course not.

It’s human nature to be attracted to the best.

And what you’re doing here is finding the tallest “skyscraper” in your space…and slapping 20 stories to the top of it.

All of a sudden YOU have the content that everyone wants to talk about (and link to).

It is about creating great blog posts delivering updated, useful, and well-designed content. But let’s have a look at all the three phases of the Skyscraper technique.

Find content with a lot of inbound links 

On  Keyword Explorer, choose a general topic that can interest you. Let’s take, for example, “SEO strategy.”

Click on Filters and set a minimum keyword difficulty of at least 10. In this way, you’ll get the very best-positioned content for every related keyword. The reason is that the presence of backlinks increases the difficulty. By selecting only high-difficulty keywords, you’ll be filtering the content with the most backlinks. 

Now, choose the right keyword in your niche and check what content is top-ranked. You can check how many backlinks each result has under “links.”

In our case, the most ranked page is no less than on the SERP’s zero position, with 8.6K backlinks. 

Also, on Keyword Explorer, you can check both domain and page authority. You’ll find them under DA and PA.

Of course, also use reasoning. If the content is too well-written, designed, and updated, choose a different topic. 

In this case, you can opt for a different keyword, a long-tail one. What about the keyword “SEO strategy for small business”? 

Export the SERP list by clicking on the button and then check the articles that get more links. They will be the base of your skyscraper.

Create even better content

Now, you have to start building the other floors. There’s (almost) always room for improvement. And this is where you come into play. 

For example, you can write a better article than the starting one. You can rely on the SEO Copywriting techniques you’ve learned on this blog. Flawless language, an engaging rhythm, and a well-dosed keywording will make the difference.

You can also add long-tail keywords as secondary ones. They will help you reach more search intents than your competitors. In general, you can follow these three strategies. 

1. Add more details to your skyscraper

Make your article a long-form. 

Brian Dean wrote about the 200 ranking factors, much more than any other article. You can do the same here. As you browse the Keyword Explorer SERP for “SEO strategy for small business,” you can see results such as:

• “5 Top SEO Strategies for small business”, 
• “7 Effective Small Business SEO Strategies And Ideas”, 
• “Top 10 SEO Strategies Small Businesses Should Follow”,
• “6 Small Business SEO Tips for Time-Strapped Entrepreneurs”. 

There are a lot of numbers here, and each article has its list. Why don’t you write a blog post that gathers all of them?

It means you’ll have to write a Roastbeef article filled with information. It will take you a lot of time writing it and doing research, but quality always pays. Who does not love to find all the information in one place?

2. Add data-driven content

As Pawel Grabowski points out, data-driven content will increase your credibility. Remember Brian Dean’s story about he increased by 110% the organic visits? It is data. People love it because you give them a magic number that will stick in their heads. 

In our case, you can do the same with your article about SEO Strategies for small business. You can show a case study that shows how these strategies increased the ranking.

3. Create a catchy headline 

Now it’s time to write a compelling Headline. As we pointed out in our guide to SEO copywriting, they’re the first (and often the only) thing your audience reads. It means that it must anticipate the topics of your article. It will give you a good head start if it sticks to one of these categories.

• Benefit promise («Increase your income with this one simple rule»);
• How-tos;
• Numbers («the ten rules to…»);
• Questions («Do you want to become rich while sleeping?»);
• Empathy/a shared problem («I know how it feels when you are single and broke»);
• Promise entertainment («Try not to laugh!»)
• Avoid pain («You don’t have to get stuck in a job you hate»).

If you write in English, here’s a great tool. 

In our case, why don’t you use a title like “20 super-effective SEO Strategies to boost your small business?”

4. Spy your competitors

Spying on your competitors’ SEO strategy can give you valuable information. Back on Keyword Explorer, choose the competitor you want to spy on the SERP. 

Then, click on the three dots. You can choose either:

• “Analyze page SEO” to see the grade of optimization of the page (and the areas in need of improvement you can exploit); 
• “Find Keywords” to look at all the keywords with which that content is ranking. 

5. Make it updated

Sometimes, the most linked articles are also outdated. It makes them reliable, but with time it may miss some newer – and critical – updates. 

It is good news for you because it means there’s a lot of room for improvement. Search the internet for the most updated information and add it to your article. 

Also, be sure to sign up on Google Alert for the latest updates about the topic. 

6. Work on content design

Believe it or not, you need to please your reader’s eye, too. A better-designed content will keep people reading your content and share it. Bloggers want to please the sight of their readers with good-organized, good-looking content.

You may enrich your blog post with customized images and infographics, banners. You can also add a menu like the one you found at the beginning of this article. 

It can build a loyal audience, and it also helps link building. 

Let people know

Now it’s time to make website owners link your content. The goal is to find those who backlink to the blog post(s) you used as a starting point for your skyscraper. 

Then make those website owners aware that newer and better content is in town, and they should consider linking it.

First of all, let’s check the backlinks that point to the starting articles. We’ll use Monitor Backlinks. 

Now clean up the list from forums and platforms like Quora, leaving only the blog posts. Here you have the list of blogs you’d want to contact to make them to backlink to your article.

Be kind and convincing. You can use a mail like this:

Hi [NAME],

I’ve read your blog post [title] at [url], and I loved it!

I noticed that you put a link to the article [title]. I read it too, and I found it very interesting, even if a bit old. For this reason, I’ve written an updated version of it. 

You can read it here: [URL]

Maybe you could use it as a more up-to-date reference?

Keep up the good work!

Now, customize the template for each recipient and click send. 

Of course, most of the time, people won’t even reply, but Dean had an 11% success rate, which is a lot.

Have you tried the Skyscraper Technique?

Now it’s time to go to work. Remember: you have to find an article with a lot of backlinks, improve it and then reach the right people.

Have you tried the skyscraper technique already? How did it go? Let us know in the comments section.

How to find the right ideas to create content that is easy to position high in the SERP? Long-tail keywords are keywords with low competition and low search volume that can help you in your mission. Let’s see what they are, how to find them, and how to use them.

What is a long-tail keyword?

A long-tail keyword is a search term consisting of 3-5 words on average. They are very specific and therefore express precise research intent. Thus, they have a lower search volume, as well as the number of results for that keyword.

How a long tail keyword looks

To understand what are the main features of a long-tail keyword, let’s start from its opposite. 

A so-called “broad keyword” (i.e., a short, one-two word and very generic search term) is something like “pizza.” 

This keyword can be the outcome of many types of search: someone can use it as a query to find out when pizza was born, or how to prepare it. Another user could be hungry and looking for pizzerias in the area. 

Then there are the “middle-tail keywords” or “keyphrases.” These are sentences consisting of 2-3 words. A phrase like “pizza Margherita” is more specific than the mere “pizza,” but still too generic. It means that the competition is lower, but so is the possibility of obtaining conversions. 

On the other hand, a long tail keyword can be something like “eating pizza Margherita in Milan.” Whoever types it is looking for a specific thing. Such a keyword does not have a large number of searches, but it’s specific. What does that mean?

The advantages of the long tail keyword

Long-tail keywords make up the bulk of Google searches

Long-tail keywords often (not always!) have a meager number of searches. Nonetheless, keywords with little search volume are 92% of the total searches. Also, 29.13% of searches with a volume higher than 10,000 consists of long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords have less competition

The main advantage of long-tail keywords is their specificity. If you want to position yourself to “eat pizza Margherita in Milan,” you will have to compete with seven million results, which is not a high competition when you compare it to the five billion you get by typing “pizza.” 

Long-tail keywords are conversion-oriented.

Their specificity allows long-tail keywords to intercept a search intent much closer to conversion. Your keyword will be searched for by fewer people, but they’re looking for a thing that you can give them. 

How to find the right long-tail keywords for you

First of all, keep in mind that finding the right long-tail keywords is to find a niche of topics. They have little competition, and it’s easy to position yourself on the SERP with them. With this premise, let’s get started!

Make a list of general topics that affect your activities

The first thing to do is brainstorm the general topics you cover and create a list. “Pizza,” Calzoni,” “Italian Cuisine.” These are the “broad keywords” we mentioned at the beginning.

Now, open a new spreadsheet and create five columns: keyword, volume, competition, difficulty, search intent. 

Use Google!

Now, enter these topics on the Google search bar, you will get lots of ideas.

Related searches

You can find the related searches at the bottom of the SERP. Most of them may be other broad keywords or middle-tail keywords. Click on the most interesting ones. For example, if you searched for “Pizza,” click on “pizza delivery.” There, among the related searches, you will find, for example, “pizza delivery near me,” or “pizza delivery near me order online.” 

Repeat the operation all the times you want and put the keywords you like in the spreadsheet.

An alternative is Soovle, which collects related searches from platforms like Google, YouTube, Ask.com, Amazon, etc.

Google autocomplete 

Another method may be to use autocompletion. On the search bar, next to the starting keyword, add a letter: “pizza a,” “pizza b,” and so on. 

If you are looking for “pizza a,” and you find the suggestion “pizza and wings near me.” You can repeat the procedure and type in the search bar “pizza and wings near me a.” You will find “all you can eat pizza and wings near me,” which, with only 496,000 results, is an excellent low-competition long-tail keyword with which to position yourself.

Repeat the process as many times as you want and also put these ideas into your spreadsheet.

People asked…

Sometimes the section “people asked …” may appear in the SERP. It is another excellent source of ideas as questions are long-tail keywords, so enter them in your Excel.

What if the section doesn’t appear? In this case, you can use Wondersearch, an excellent alternative service.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is another excellent source of ideas. Just select the country and language, type the starting topic, and click on “Search.” Answer the Public will provide you with hundreds of ideas, sorted by keywords starting from prepositions (“pizza without tomato sauce,” “pizza for delivery near me,” “pizza near me open now”), comparisons (“pizza vs. marinara sauce,” “pizza like pizza hut”) and much more.

Forums

Forums and discussion platforms such as Quora or Reddit are excellent resources for understanding people’s search intents. Search on Google “(your topic) + forum” to discover the most popular questions and answers.  

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is an underrated tool when it comes to finding ideas. Take a look at the queries that lead to your site going to “Performance” and searching for “Query.”

You can discover that many people find your site when looking for “light pizza Margherita.” You can create a blog post about it to attract visitors. 

Google Trends

Google Trends can tell you how popular a search term is over time. Search for Trends topics and find what’s trending. Below, among the “related topics,” you will find a lot of suggestions for long-tail keywords. 

Google Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner is a tool Google Ads designed for paid ads, but it can turn handy for SEO. It can give you many ideas, like synonyms you should use and many other related keywords.

Use the Keyword Explorer Tool

With the new Keyword Explorer, you can do much more! You can find new ideas already equipped with metrics. You can also add them to a list and check the trends and competitors for that keyword. Once you have added all your keywords, you can export it to a CSV file with all the metrics you need.

For example, you can search for “pizza” on the keyword explorer.

So, select a long tail keyword that interests you, in this case, “pizza nearest me”. Click on the “+” to create your list and add the keyword.

You can now search for ideas starting from that long-tail keyword you have found and maybe use a filter to search for those with low difficulty.

You found a lot of ideas for your SEO and for your business, too. For example, you can position yourself for pizza delivery in Lambrate. Or for gluten-free pizzas. You can also immediately see trends, competition, volume, and the difficulty of positioning. 

Finally, download the list of your long-tail keywords.

Go to “my keywords” at the top, near the star. Select your list and then click on the search button (the magnifying glass). Select the keywords you are interested in and download the CSV, and you will have all your keywords sorted. 

Finally, download the list of your long-tail keywords.

Go to “my keywords” at the top, near the star. Select your list and then click on the search button (the magnifying glass). Select the keywords you are interested in and download the CSV, and you will have all your keywords sorted. 

What to do next?

OK, now you have your list of long-tail keywords and, if you have used Keyword Explorer, you’ll also have the metrics you need. 

If you haven’t used it yet, now is the right time. Type the long-tail keyword in the search bar. You’ll get all the metrics you need. Now, add them to a personalized list and repeat the operation for all the keywords you have found. 

Now, you just have to export the list and check the data. If a long-tail keyword has a fair number of searches, low competition, and the difficulty is little, it is the right one. 

Create new content or modify existing ones

Now, you have many ideas to create content with which you can position your website within the SERP.

Do you have other ideas on how to find long-tail keywords? Or do you have experiences you want to share with us? Let us know in the comments!