How to Use a Competitor Analysis To Increase Your Blogs Popularity?

Search engine optimization does not happen in a vacuum. Much like in a traditional business setting, you need to take your competition into consideration when evaluating ways you can improve your blog and get more traffic. This article will give you some tips and tricks for how to perform a SWOT analysis, use the information to drive visitors to your blog, and get yourself on that coveted first page—maybe even in the top spot—on the search results.

Perform a SWOT Analysis on Your Own Blog

Before you start diving into what your competitors are doing, make sure you have taken an objective look at your own blog. A SWOT analysis (evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) will give you a solid understanding of your blog’s baseline status.
Strengths
What do people like about your blog? Which content is getting the most engagement or longest read time? What are the most popular pages or articles?
Weaknesses
Which pages or articles don’t have any activity? Are there any sections that contain errors or inaccurate information? Is everything presented in a readable format?
Opportunities
What kinds of content do your followers want to see more of? Is there a subject that you could expand more on? Is there a related subject you haven’t addressed?
Threats
Is there a lack of new information about your blog’s subject? New regulations? Is there anything that may color public opinion of your blog?
Ask people whose opinions you respect and trust for some input on the answers to these questions, and take a look at this list of SWOT questions from SCORE to see if there are other questions you could adapt for your blog’s SWOT analysis.
Items in your SWOT analysis may change as you see what others are doing. For example you may notice another blog taking advantage of an opportunity you didn’t see before. That’s okay. You can always revise your SWOT later, but it is important to have that initial impression before your competition colors your view.

Determine Who Your Competitors Are

There may be a bazillion other blogs on the same subject matter that your blog covers, but they are not all direct competitors. Let’s say you run a Southern recipes blog geared toward families, for example. Your direct competitors are not going to be all Southern recipes blogs, and they also will not be all family cooking blogs. Narrow it down to blogs that target the same audiences and offer the same kind of content in order to save yourself a lot of headache.
You also want to make sure you are not comparing yourself to blogs that are not on the same scale as yours. If you are just getting started, you cannot compare your blog to Paula Deen’s blog. Someday, maybe. But for now, stick to blogs that are more comparable to your own in status. Otherwise it is like trying to compare a small independent grocer to Walmart.

What Kind of Content Do They Use?

Evaluate how often your competition posts, the quality of their posts, the accuracy and the readability. Is their writing clear and concise? Does it contain spelling or grammatical errors? Do they use a lot of infographics, videos, or other unconventional formats that seem to be working for them? Is there a format their blog is missing? How are they making use of keywords? Are there any that you may have missed in your strategy?
Use this information to find ways you can fill in the gaps that their blog leaves. Maybe you could start creating more listicles, how-tos, or even video content. Use their content to inspire ways to make your content better and more comprehensive than theirs. This is one way your SWOT analysis will come in handy because it will help you figure out what you already do better than the competition, which leads to opportunities.

Find Out Who Links to Your Competitors

Comprehensive tools like ahrefs can be used to do a deep dive into evaluating your competitors, and you can use them to find out valuable information like who links to your competitor’s content and where those links can be found. This information can help you figure out which sites to approach to link to your content as well. You can approach different sites that are similar, or the same site to offer them better or complementary content.

Do A SWOT Analysis on Your Competitors

A SWOT analysis is a great way to really understand all the ways you can stand out from the competition. Out of their weaknesses, what are your strengths? What do they do well that you would like to emulate? Where are there opportunities to define your blog as the authority? Where might they pull attention away from your blog?
Evaluating your competition in this way gives you a wealth of insight into your own blog. Putting everything into a framework like this will help you recognize opportunities to expand your audience and improve your content, boosting your blog in the search engine rankings, and driving more traffic to your site.