DEV Community: Sergey Aliokhin

How to Run a Competitive Analysis

Sergey Aliokhin — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 21:43:51 +0000

Any business project requires an in-depth competitor analysis. It helps figure out the main players in the market and how to win the competition.

However, sometimes business owners have issues with this process.

In this guide, you will find out how to run a competitive analysis from A to Z.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Explore your competitors first
It won't be hard for you to identify your direct competitors. Competitors are the companies that solve the same customer's problem with the help of more or less the same solution.

For instance, well-known music equipment companies Ibanez and MusicMan are competitors. Despite this fact, there are cases when similar businesses are not direct competitors. Compare a fitness center with a gym. And you will see the difference.

How to figure out competitors relevant to your business?

Pay attention to similar keywords!

To start, you will need to know one competitor at least. Also, it is necessary to use Site Explorer tool from Ahrefs. Put a competitor's website to Site Explorer and click the "Top competing domains" report by reviewing the "Organic competitors" tab. This report reveals other websites ranking for the same keywords.

For instance, there is a content design company called Canva. Your goal is to explore Canva alternatives using the method explained above:

Skim through the report and find your competitors right off the bat.

If you don't use Ahrefs, then Google can help you the same. Just type the search request "brand's name competitors":

Collect information about competitors
You need to collect information about competitors. It will help you with nuances around their business development.

Consider these positions:

Year founded
Venture capital investors (if any)
Number of employees/customers
Revenue

To find this information visit Yahoo Finance or Crunchbase. A number of employees you can find on the company's LinkedIn page.

Run a product and service analysis
To win the competition, you must learn from your competitors. Here are four aspects to draw your attention to:

Services and features (run a drive test of the competitor's toolbar)
Pricing (review the pricing page and see if there are any discounts offered)
Customer reviews (review customer reviews via review platforms)
Strengths/weaknesses (sum everything up and underline strengths/weaknesses the company has)

Finally, create a slide presentation that would illustrate the entire analysis you've run.

Analyze competitors' distribution channels
Basically, companies can sell their products "direct-to-consumers" (DTC) on their sites, door-to-door, or in retail stores. This way of distribution is used for selling digital products mostly.

However, there are more complex ways of distribution as well.

How to explore competitors' channels for distribution?

First and foremost, check out if it is possible to buy a product on the site directly. If not, go to Google to see whether you can buy their products from other retailers.

Apply communication strategies
At this stage, your goal is to find associations people have with competitors' brands - logos, mascots, brand colors, slogans, fonts, etc.

For instance, a world-famous McDonald's has a mascot Ronald McDonald - a clown that is the face of the brand.

Analyze your competitors in this direction. It will help you understand how you will be able to use an associative flow for your brand.

*Become a ghost shopper *
To realize how competitors' business works, you need to become a ghost shopper of their products.

Here are four things to do:

Experience a buying circle (purchase the product and go through the whole buying process)
Pay attention to the sales tactics (see if they offer any discounts, to buy more products, etc.)
Test customer service (check out how their customer service works)
Analyze an onboarding process and customer retention aspects (review how the customer onboarding process happens and what tactics they use for customer retention)

Afterwards, use a progress report template to finalize the overall competitive analysis.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that competitive analysis is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. Plus, you should revise it from time to time.

The main focus is to apply all findings into action.

If you think this post lacks some ideas, feel free to share them in the comments.

Everything You Need to Know About Search Intent

Sergey Aliokhin — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 14:45:18 +0000

People explore information on the web for a good reason. They don't waste their time hanging on Google randomly. Hence, there is always a search intent behind every search query.

Therefore, the best way to provide users with the information they need is to satisfy their search intent.

In this guide, you will find out everything about search intent.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Search Intent and SEO

It is a well-known fact that Google tries to offer the most relevant search results per user's query. In other words, your content should align with search intent.

How does it work?

For example, your company offers content design tools. You have just released a few more new one-pager templates. You might wonder what potential customers of your product may explore by exploring the "one-pager template" query online.

As you can see, people are curious about both - templates and educational content.

Hence, it makes sense to optimize your content for two types of search intent - informational and transactional.

Now, let's dig deeper into search intent optimization.

Search Intent Optimization

It has already been mentioned about search intent types. Basically, there are three of them:

Informational (when users want to learn about something)
Navigational (when users want to find certain websites)
Transaction (when users want to buy some product or service)

For example, a search query "best screen recorder" is an informational search request. The user wants to find out the best screen recorder first of all - not to buy it.

However, even if you know the exact search intent behind the query, you can't figure out what the users want for sure:

Either a blog post or video
List of the best options or review
etc.

To sum up, if you don't know what your target audience wants for a hundred percent, you won't be able to rank in the SERP. Plus, you won't be able to raise brand awareness.

And here are steps that will help you with identifying search intent.

Three "Cs" of search intent

Start with the identification of three "Cs" of search intent for your target keyword. The idea here is to make sure your content aligns with the intent. These "Cs" are:

Content type
Content format
Content angle

Let's review these "Cs" in detail.

1. Content type
Content type includes the following ones:

Written blog post
Recorded video content
Product page
Category page
Landing page

Go to Google and type your target search query. Pay attention to what type of content dominates in the SERP.

For example, check out the results for "best guitar tuner" and you will see - the majority of the posts are blog posts.

What does it mean in terms of creating content?

People are not interested in why certain guitar tuners are the best. They want to know how to choose the best one. It will help them make their final decision before buying the product.

2. Content format
As a rule, content format applies to blog posts. Here are main formats:

Listicles
Reviews
Comparisons
“How-to” guides
Step-by-step tutorials

Hence, consider content format when creating blog posts.

3. Content angle
The content angle is all about the posts' selling point uniqueness. In a nutshell, it provides insight into what searchers value when doing their search.

For example, you have updated your blog post that illustrates proposal templates for 2023. In this case, the exact date "2023" refers to the angle of this content. People want to get the freshest update regarding proposal templates.

Work on exploring subtopics

The only way to satisfy search intent is to cover a blog post topic in full. To do this, you will have to include subtopics that may pique the interest of your target audience.

How to find subtopics?

There is a two-step way for this process:

1. Review the top-ranking pages

If you review top-ranking pages, you will be able to see what your target audience expects from content.

For example, by reviewing top-ranking pages for the query "best guitar tuner", you will see the recommendations of the products. Also, this product belongs to different subcategories. It means people may have different needs for using tuners (guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, etc.)

Hence, it makes sense to include similar product categories in your blog posts.

2. Use a content gap analysis

A content gap analysis helps explore common subtopics by listing keyword rankings for the pages.

How does it work?

Go to Keywords Explorer tools from Ahrefs and type your target keyword first. Then, scroll down to the list of the results in the SERP. Choose a few top-ranking pages and open them in the content gap.

Afterwards, analyze the keywords and use some of them as subheadings.

To Sum Up
It would be fair to conclude that search intent is one of the most important ranking factors. If you don't provide users with the information they search for, you won't be able to rank on Google.

To succeed with search intent - give people want they want to read about!