Frequently Asked Questions on Search Marketing Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis should be an essential aspect of any search engine marketing campaign including pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. However, not many are aware of competitor analysis and are left with a number of questions about the topic.

Let us take a look at few of the frequently asked questions that we receive regularly.

1) What is search marketing competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis for search engine marketing is basically researching your competitors and finding out certain key essential data of their pay per click or SEO campaign. This data can be then used for your own marketing campaigns to get an advantage over your competitor. So if you research on your competitor’s Google Adwords campaign, you can get the full list of the keywords they are using, the ad text, cost per click, landing page URLs etc. For organic search, you can find out for which keywords your competitor’s are ranking in Google, where they get their backlinks etc.

2) How do I perform competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is performed using online tools. There are many such tools on the net and most will give you comprehensive information on your competitors.

3) How to choose competitors for research?

We have written an article on this topic that you can use as a guide. You can access the article by clicking here.

4) Are there any limitations on the number of competitor’s I can research?

The competitor analysis tools we use do not limit the number of competitor’s you can research for PPC (Google Ads). There is a limitation on organic search (SEO) competitor research as most tools would charge a fee per competitor beyond the allowance of your chosen package.

5) Is it expensive?

Competitor analysis for PPC is so cheap that you absolutely must use it for your search engine marketing campaigns. SERanking has a starting rate of US $7 per month that includes unlimited competitors. This is for PPC of course and for SEO there is a limit. Agencies can in fact take the highest all-inclusive package that even includes white label access for less than US $99 per month.

6) What are the prerequisites for performing competitor analysis for PPC and SEO.

You need to know your competitor’s website URL. That is the only prerequisite. Also for PPC research, it is obvious that your competitor needs to have an active Google Adwords campaign as otherwise you will not get any data.

7) What information can I get about my competitor’s search marketing campaigns?

You can get a number of key data from their campaign such as keywords used, cost paid per keyword, ad text, clicks per ad, cost per ad, landing page URLs, backlinks, search engine ranking etc.