Tracking Your Competitor’s Advertising and SEO: The Ultimate Guide

Competition is a healthy part of business. But did you know that 19% of small businesses fail because the competition is too fierce? As a business owner, you have two options: let the competition overtake you or advance over your competitors.

If you choose the second option, then there’s a lot of work you must do. Monitoring your competitor’s advertising and marketing tactics is a great first place to start.

You’ll learn which SEO and advertising tactics they’re using, so you can bring in the same leads that your competitors are attracting. And if you prove that you’re the better brand, you may bring in even more leads than the competition.

But how do you track your competitor’s SEO and advertising efforts?

Track Competitor's Advertising Results

Tracking your competitor’s advertising campaigns is a bit challenging. But with the right methods and tools, you can stay a step ahead of your competitors.

Use the Right Tools

There are many competitor advertising tracking tools out there. You can use these tools to track your competitor’s website traffic and how much of that traffic comes from competitor Google ads. You can also track certain advertising categories, such as the PPC keywords your competitors are using.

There are many tools on the market, but you’ll benefit the most when you use a tool that tracks both your competitor’s organic and inorganic marketing performance.

As an alternative, you can also simply use Google. Just type in your competitor’s name in a search query or type in a PPC keyword in your niche. See what results appear.

You can use these results to gauge what keywords your competitors are using, what meta descriptions they’re writing, what landing page they’re using, and more. Use this data to improve your strategy.

Track Their Social Media Advertising

Google isn’t the only place where brands advertise. More businesses are spending their advertising dollars on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram.

Social media advertising is also beneficial because it’s diverse. You can advertise different forms of media such as a photo, video, and more. You can also advertise your brand, your products, and other factors that can attract an audience.

Do you run a competitor analysis on their social media advertising efforts? Start by seeing exactly what they advertise. Start by visiting their social media pages and gauging what kind of content they post and identify their most successful posts.

You can even analyze your competitor’s demographics to see if you share the same audience. You may need to use special tools, but you can gauge demographics by looking at who’s interacting with their posts.

Facebook also makes this research easy. If a competitor’s ad appears on your Facebook feed, click the three dots at the top right, and select “Why am I seeing this?” Facebook will provide information about the target audience, such as location and age.

You can use this data to target the same audience as your competitors.

Retargeting Ads

The best advertising strategy targets every lead at different levels of the sales funnel.

You’ll want to attract leads who never heard of your brand as well as leads who were previously on your website. You can also discover how your competitors advertise to leads and if they’re using different advertising strategies, such as retargeting.

Retargeting advertising keeps your brand at the forefront of a lead, even after they leave your website. And there’s an easy way to see if your competitors are using this strategy.

First, access your competitor’s website. Scroll down and click through different pages. You should even fill out a form or add products to your shopping bag (but don’t submit the forms or buy the products). Spend at least a few minutes on the website so their bots can easily identify your activity.

Then, leave the website. Go onto other websites, such as your favourite blog. See if your competitor’s ads appear on the web page.

If you don’t see your competitor’s ads, you can have a huge advantage over them by investing in retargeting ads. If the ads appear, find a way to improve your strategy.

Track Competitor's SEO Results

In addition to advertising, you’ll also want to one-up your competitors in search engine results. If they’re outranking you, there are ways you can dominate search engine results.

Identify Your Main SEO Rivals

Before you run an SEO competitive analysis, you should know who your rivals are. These aren’t always major corporations or other huge influencers. Your main SEO rivals could be outside of your niche, such as blogs. This is especially true if you own a restaurant or a store.

When you conduct keyword and content research, find the websites at the top 10 results for certain search queries. Document those websites. You can also enter queries into a competitor analysis tool.

If you fit into different niches or you produce different types of content, you’ll want to identify competitors in all of these factors. It’s also recommended you find those who rank for “position zero” as well as identifying companies appearing in local packs (if you’re focusing on local SEO).

Evaluate Their Domain Strength

There are many ways to analyze your competitor performance and SEO strength. Some common examples include:

• Domain authority
• Indexing in search engines
• Domain country and age
• Backlink data
• Catalogue listings
• Traffic volumes
• Alexa rank
• Social signals

Why is this important? Even if you rank for the same keywords as your competitors, a website with better domain strength will still dominate you in search engine results.

When you identify the different factors that makeup domain strength, you should also identify where you fall behind.

You also have another option — focus on the websites with weak SEO strength. This way, you can improve your domain strength and can use different SEO tactics to advance over these competitors.

Rank for Their Keywords

Keywords are the cornerstone of every successful SEO strategy. You should focus on the keywords your competitors rank for as well as the ones they’re not ranking for. Using a diverse set of keywords, especially long-tail and short-tail keywords.

Optimize your content for these keywords and continue revising your keyword list.

Backlink Profiles

Another essential aspect of successful SEO rankings is gaining enough backlinks. You can see where your competitor’s backlinks are coming from and how you can gain those high-quality backlinks. Competitor monitoring tools can provide this information.

On-Page Optimization and Content

SEO goes beyond the search engine itself. In order to be successful in search engine results, Google needs to crawl your website and pick up keywords, links, and more. That’s why monitoring your competitor’s on-page performance and content is another effective tactic.

First, identify how they’re using their keywords. Does the keyword appear regularly in the content? Or do they only use the keyword sparingly, such as in the title? 

Next, you’ll want to see what different types of content they’re producing. Do they only create written content, or are they also using video content and more?

Other important content factors to look for include topic relevance, depth of details, and word count or video length.

You’ll also want to take a look at their metadata and headlines. You can do this by using browser extensions or by pasting the blog URL into a search query.

Other SEO tactics, such as internal linking, lead to SEO success and continue engaging an audience.

Take a look at all of these factors and discover how you can improve your content marketing tactics. You should also see which competitors aren’t using these strategies and aim to dominate their content.

If They Combine SEO and Social Media

Optimizing your social media marketing efforts for SEO will improve your search engine presence and increase your website traffic.

Focus on your competitor’s organic social media activity. This includes how often they post, which platforms they’re using and which ones they aren’t using, what types of content get the most engagement, and how or if they communicate with their followers.

Site Structure and User Experience

Google will also look at your website to see how well they should rank you. Certain aspects, such as outdated web design and slow loading speed, will reduce your search engine performance.

Test how your website site structure, design, and user experience compare to your competitors. Does their website load faster than yours? Do they have responsive design? If you notice issues with your website, it may be time for a redesign.

What if your website works fine? It’s still recommended you optimize your sitemap so Google can still crawl your website.

In addition, if your competitor’s websites are lacking, you can have a huge advantage over them.

Easily Monitor Your Competitor’s Advertising and SEO

The right digital marketing strategy can enhance your leads and increase your sales. While there are many digital marketing strategies you can try, all businesses should be tracking their competitor’s advertising and SEO efforts.

In order to properly track your competitor’s digital marketing success, you’ll need the right tools. Take a look at our competition monitoring and SEO performance tool.