Drawbacks of competitive analysis
Clarke Ricks
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 690: Policy and Strategy in Global Competition
Dr. Hicks
April 8, 2021
Drawbacks of competitive analysis
There are some drawbacks to competitive analysis you should consider before moving
forward with your report. While these drawbacks are minor, understanding them can make
you an even better manager or business owner.
Don’t forget to take action
You don’t just want to gather the information from your competitive analysis—you also
want to take action on that information. The data itself will only show you where you fit into
the market landscape. The key to competitive analysis is using it to problem solve and
improve your company’s strategic plan.
Be wary of confirmation bias
Confirmation bias means interpreting information based on the beliefs you already
hold. This is bad because it can cause you to hold on to false beliefs. To avoid bias, you
should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions. In the example above, the
business owner may believe they’re the best in the SEO dental market at social media.
Because of this belief, when they do market research for social media, they may only collect
enough information to confirm their own bias—even if their competitors are statistically
better at social media. However, if they were to rely on all the data available, they could
eliminate this bias.
Update your analysis regularly
A competitive analysis report represents a snapshot of the market landscape as it
currently stands. This report can help you gain enough information to make changes to your
company, but you shouldn’t refer to the document again unless you update the information
regularly. Market trends are always changing, and although it’s tedious to update your
report, doing so will ensure you get accurate insight into your competitors at all times.
Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis
Learning your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will make you a better marketer.
If you don’t know the competition you’re up against, you can’t beat them. Using competitive
analysis can boost your marketing strategy and allow you to capture your target audience
faster.
Competitive analysis must lead to action, which means following up on your findings
with clear business goals and a strong business plan. Once you do your competitive analysis,
you can use the templates below to put your plan into action.
What is an SEO competitor analysis?
SEO competitor analysis (sometimes referred to as competitive analysis) involves
researching your direct search competitors to understand their target keywords, content
strategy, backlink profile, and more, for the purpose of reverse engineering the most
successful elements of these tactics into your own SEO strategy. Instead of guessing which
keywords to target, content to create, or links to build, you can instead research your
competitors, analyze what's already working for them, and build upon that success.
An SEO competitor analysis can help you successfully answer questions like:
Who are my actual SEO competitors?
What keywords should I target?
What does the competitive landscape look like?
What topics should I cover?
Where can I find valuable links?
Imagine you operate a pet supply store, and you’re one of a few competing stores in
town. Your customers are happy, but you know they also visit other stores because they
can't buy everything in one place. So you go on a road trip to gather competitive
intelligence. You visit the other stores to understand the popular items they offer. By
offering these items yourself - or even superior ones - you help your customers make fewer
trips, and in turn, you gain more business, and eventually, brand advocates!
There are many ways to do a competitor analysis for SEO, but the fundamental process
works like this:
Identify your competitors
Analyze what's working for your competition (keywords, content, links, etc.)
Leverage this intelligence to improve your own SEO efforts
Consider this your starter guide. Here's what we'll cover:
1. How To Find Your True SEO Competitors
2. How To Conduct Competitor Keyword Analysis
3. How To Do A Competitor SERP Analysis
4. How To Analyze Your Competitors' Content
5. How To Perform a Competitor Backlink AnalysisA competitor link analysis - also
known as link gap analysis - works to identify websites and pages that are linking to your
competitors’ sites, but not to your site (yet!).
6. Links are essential for ranking. In fact, it's darn difficult to rank without links!
Conversely, good links are difficult to earn. So, we’ll use intelligence and data to determine
where we might find good links that are somewhat easier to obtain. But what are those
links?
7. The answer: sites that have already linked to your competitors, but haven't linked to
you.
8. In theory and practice, this strategy works! Why? Because websites that link to your
competitors have already demonstrated that they're interested in your topic. You’ve
researched your competitors’ keywords, you’ve analyzed their successful URLs, and you’ve
created superior, more valuable content for your audience. Now, you can show these
websites that your resource is significantly better than your competitors. This will give you a
better-than-average chance of earning a link as well, and therefore, increasing your
authority on the web.
