Are you benchmarking your SEO? If not, you should be.
This simple exercise will show you which SEO tactics are working on your site and give you a benchmark for future years.
This benchmark will help you prioritize the information that matters and allow you to measure success over time.
Your benchmark will also show you exactly where your site stands compared to competitors. Knowing this information, as well as your standings, can help you make important marketing decisions for the future.
How to do an SEO Benchmarking
1. Define what is to be measured or evaluated
The first step in benchmarking SEO is determining success metrics. The more variables and factors investigated, the better the data and analysis. What should be in an SEO benchmarking report?
An investigation into keywords. Knowing the keywords used by competitors or well-ranked pages can help you choose better words for the web, find opportunities to position yourself through derived keywords, and find words that are hard to position, among other things.
Look at web traffic
It is very important to know how your competitors’ websites get traffic so that you can figure out how popular they are and compare that to how popular your site is.
This is a study of links
Knowing the links that point to your competitors’ websites lets you figure out how important they are and which sites you can get high-quality backlinks from.
Investigate what’s inside
A competitor analysis can give you a lot of useful information about how to improve your SEO. As an example, they write about different topics and use different structures and types of calls to action. They also use different anchor text in their links, as well as different lengths for their texts. These are just a few examples.
2. Analysis of our website
Examining and analyzing your website is another way to determine its search engine optimization. Comparing your SEO later is a critical step. It will help you figure out:
Strengths
Things that are done well so that they can be kept and used for a long time.
Weaknesses
These things are not good for the web and should be changed, added to, or improved.
Threats
The things that could put the position at risk (duplicate content, key stuffing, broken links, etc.).
Opportunities
Determine which processes or parts of the web can be used to improve web positioning (a specific URL with a lot of web traffic, for example).
3. Who are my competitors?
The main goal of SEO benchmarking is to look at competitor websites and compare them to your own, but it can also look at other websites that aren’t competitors but are doing well in terms of web positioning.
Before you start looking at websites, figure out which competitors are more interesting to look into. Better results can be achieved if you make a smart choice. The resources used in the process can also be better used (avoiding losses of time, effort, and even money).
4. SEO analysis of competitors
Tools must then be used to speed things up and make the process easier and faster. After you pick competitors for SEO benchmarking, these tools should be used to see how well they do (tools based on automation) and if it improves. You can make better decisions about where your website should be and what you should do next if you look at what your competitors do.
Positions of My Competitors vs. My Positions on Google
It’s important to compare the competitor’s website to their own to see how it works. Not only the main website address but also any other URLs with content similar or related to the main website address should be done this way.
When I search for certain words, but my competitor does, I don’t show up.
Another thing to look into about your competitors is what words they use and how they position themselves. This makes it easier to do a follow-up analysis and figure out which keywords you are competing for and which ones you aren’t.
5. Identify your competitor’s strategy
With so much data, it’s important to plan your SEO benchmarking process (use spreadsheets, databases, and the like).
With a careful look at all the available data, it will be possible to figure out what strategies and techniques other websites and topics use and which elements are more interesting to copy on the website to improve its ranking.
6. Keep checking your benchmarking periodically
If an SEO benchmarking process is only done once, it doesn’t work. The web, as well as strategies and tactics for being in a better position to compete, are always changing. Continuously measuring your SEO performance is the best way to keep up with the competition and stay where you are over time.
Final thoughts
Benchmarking is an important process that will show you where your website’s position stands in comparison to the competition. Benchmarking can help improve the website and future results if done regularly. It is very important to benchmark properly if you want to achieve business success due to its benefits. With benchmarking, you will be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your website, as well as how it relates to competitors.
This benchmarking process can also help you determine which search engine optimization strategies and techniques to use. In addition, benchmarking can show you what keywords your competition is targeting and how you can improve your website to get a better ranking.
With these benchmarking tips, it is possible to benchmark correctly and create a solid action plan that will help you achieve success. A benchmarking process, when done the right way, can significantly increase web traffic and profit while positioning your business at the top of search engine listings.
As you can see from the benchmarking process explained above, benchmarking is an effective way to maximize SEO efforts to get better traffic and search engine rankings.