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An Overview of the Best Competitive Analysis Tools

Carmen Martins10/28/2024

We explain to you why you should do a competitive analysis and which tools can support you in this.

Table of contents

What is a competitive analysis?
Which areas of your competition should you analyze?
How do I conduct a competitive analysis?
The best tools for a competitive analysis
Why a competitive analysis is worthwhile

The competition never sleeps. In order to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, it's worth taking a look at them. A competitive analysis supports you in this. With it, you can not only learn from your competitors but also develop approaches for your own strategy and build on them.

What SEO strategy is your competition pursuing? Is there a specific web technology that your competitors use? And where do they actually get their traffic from? You should ask yourself these and many other questions when you start a competitive analysis.

Why a competitive analysis makes sense and what it is made of, we explain to you in this article. We will also show you which areas of your competitors you should analyze and which tools are best suited for this.

What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is the targeted and regular evaluation of information about direct (competitors offering the same products) and indirect competitors (sell different products to the same industry). The areas relevant for a competitive analysis include key figures, product information, sales and marketing. The main focus is on working out the strengths and weaknesses of the competition in these areas in order to identify own competitive advantages.

Therefore, the goal of a competitive analysis should be to enable long-term decisions and to position yourself sustainably in the competitive environment. It also makes sense to look for interfaces with your competition that could, for example, allow for collaboration.

Which areas of your competition should you analyze?

The reasons for a competitive analysis are manifold. On the one hand, it supports you in founding a company or in introducing a new brand strategy, on the other hand, you can optimize your service or your pricing with the help of an analysis of your competitors.

Just as varied as the reasons for a competitive analysis are also the areas that you can analyze. Which ones you ultimately decide on depends on what the main goal of your competitive analysis is.

If you want to get more traffic to your website, then you should focus on this in the first step. This way, in the second step, you also know what information you need about your competition. We will now show you which areas are particularly important for the goal of generating more traffic:

SEO and web traffic: The SEO area is relevant for your competitive analysis in order to see which keywords your competitors rank for, how much organic traffic they get and which content performs best with them. In the area of web traffic, you should keep an eye on which channels your competitors have the highest traffic and how they differentiate themselves qualitatively in the KPIs visit duration, pages per visit or bounce rate. It is important that you do not limit yourself to a certain period of time, but regularly keep an eye on the SEO and web traffic areas.
Social Media: Social Media: You should also keep a close eye on your competition in the social media environment. Many companies invest time and effort in their social media, which makes it worthwhile to take a closer look. Use the opportunities in the field of social media, for example, to find out what is being said about your competitors and who is talking about them. You can also use this to your advantage and adjust your own posts if necessary. In addition, you should know which company channels communicate particularly well and poorly. Also take a look at the respective target group and how it communicates on the different channels.
PPC and paid advertising:Paid advertising campaigns are a fiercely contested market, where it is primarily about the price and the creative elements. In this area, for example, take a close look at how much money your competitors spend on PPC advertising. Find the profitable keywords that are based on your competitors' keywords. The insights gained from this are important if you want to improve your conversion rates and at the same time keep your expenses as low as possible.
Blog contents: Sometimes the success of your competitors also lies in the quality of their content. Therefore, in addition to keywords, in this area, you should look closely at how the contents on your competitors' websites are structured and which content management systems are used for this. A search for the respective hosting providers as well as analytics and tracking tools is also useful for a competitive analysis in this area.

Now you know what a competitive analysis can depend on and which areas you should take a closer look at. In the next step, we present you with a small guide and how you can analyze your competition step by step with it.

How do I conduct a competitive analysis?

You can create a competitive analysis in 5 steps. We present all the steps and explain what exactly they entail.

1. Define your goal

Your goal determines which aspects of the analysis you place the greatest value on and where the focus later lies in the evaluation. For this reason, it is important that you already consider in the first step where the journey of your competitive analysis should go. When defining your goal, also consider that there are different focuses for you as a founder in planning than for you as an already active entrepreneur. If your competitive analysis is about determining your market position on the market, then you probably already know the criteria that are particularly important.

2. Identify your competition

In the second step, think about which competitors you want to focus on in your competitive analysis. For example, create a list of the most important direct and indirect competitors. If you are not sure, you can also take a look at search engines, social media or trade journals. Test reports are also suitable at this point. The following criteria serve as orientation for the search for potential competitors:

Analysis of general company data
Product and price strategy
Communication strategy
Sales strategy

3. Collect information about competitors

The basis is created – you know your specific goal of the competitive analysis and you know which competitors you want to look at more closely now. Now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty, because you want to gather all the important information for your analysis. Besides the information research in specialist literature or social media, software solutions are also suitable for competitive analysis. Which ones these can be and how you can work with them, we will introduce you to in a later step.

4. Collecting important insights

In the next step, you gather all the data collected together and prepare it for your competitive analysis. The principle applies here: The more information you collect on the individual criteria, the better you can also derive a final evaluation. In doing so, you should focus on strengths and weaknesses. For this purpose, the SWOT analysis is also useful, which looks more closely at the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. From all the information gathered and the insights gained from it, you can now derive your strategies and measures that you need to take. Now you can set new priorities or maybe completely abandon certain areas.

5. Create a rating

Even the best competitive analysis brings no progress if there are no consequences also. In the last step, think carefully about which measure you can take to strengthen your position against the competition. After creating the competitive analysis, you can create a basis for which measures you should take in relation to product, price, distribution and customer communication.

The best tools for a competitive analysis

Various tools are suitable for collecting important information about your competitors. For example, they support you in finding out with which keywords the competition advertises and if your competitors' website has changed. Which tool is the right one for your competitive analysis should depend on your goal.

While some tools specialize in a certain niche, there are others that analyze several areas in your competitive online marketing strategy. They offer you an overview and can show potential ways for growth:

XOVI: The XOVI Suite consists of several tools, each of which fulfills a specific function in search engine marketing. With the keyword tool, for example, you can research search terms for which your website or that of competitors ranks in search results. A monitoring enables daily reports on these rankings. The onpage analysis tool makes you aware of technical and content errors on your own site and helps with their correction. Based on the knowledge gained, you have the opportunity to take measures to overtake your competitors. Starting with content optimization, through targeted placement of Google Ads, to cooperation with affiliate partners. Information about theXOVI pricescan be found on OMR Reviews.

SimilarWeb Pro: The Marketing Intelligence Solution offers quite extensive research possibilities. For domains, for example, you can display the traffic and engagement history, define the target group and break down from which other pages or advertising networks your site's visitors often come from. Information on theSimilarWeb pricescan be found on OMR Reviews.

Source: SimilarWeb

On OMR Reviews you will find an overview of the tools XOVI and SimilarWeb Pro. With the help of verified reviews and experiences, you can select the suitable competitive analysis tool for you.

If you want to dig deeper into the areas SEO, Social Media, paid advertising and content marketing and want to take a closer look at your competition here, you should check out the following tools:

SEO and web traffic

Sistrix: Based on the data of a large keyword pool, Sistrix forms a central metric for SEO comparability of different domains. In addition, you can analyze domains very deeply with the SEO tool, whether at the domain, host, directory or URL level. In addition to the core function SEO, Sistrix also offers the modules Optimizer, Links, Ads, Social and Marketplace. Information about the Sistrix prices can be found on OMR Reviews.

A look at the Sistrix dashboard (Source: Sistrix).

Ahrefs: Ahrefs bills itself as a complete SEO toolbox and brings with it five different functions. With 'Site Audit' you can analyze your own page. Ahrefs also delivers recommendations for optimization using the Health Score. The 'Site Explorer' allows you to do a competitor analysis by gaining insights into organic traffic and backlink profiles of websites. With the 'Keyword Explorer', you can also determine the traffic potential of keywords, the 'Content Explorer' finds successful content in individual niches and the 'Rank Tracker' sends automatic reports about ranking changes of your own website and those of competitors. Information about the Ahrefs prices can be found on OMR Reviews.
SpyFu: With the keyword feature of Spyfu, you can check which keywords your competitors rank for and to what extent this overlaps with their keyword focus. A good basis to improve your SEO work and optimize your content work. Information about the SpyFu prices can be found on OMR Reviews.

Not every search engine optimizer in every company has the same importance for the same tools. Even when selecting the SEO tools for your competitive analysis you should focus on specific areas; this can be e.g. internationalization, content or technology.

Social Media

Brandwatch: This tool supports you in the search for mentions of your competitors on social media. With the Facebook and Twitter channels of Brandwatch Analytics, you can monitor your competitors' social media results. The tool also gives you the opportunity to track conversations around your industry and thus analyze changes in share of voice, the sentiment of each brand. A summary of all sentiment analysis tools and on the brandwatch prices can be found on OMR Reviews.
Swat.io: With Swat.io, too, you are always up to date on what others are saying about your competitors on social networks. This works, among other things, by setting relevant keywords, for example the name of your brand or your company and that of your competitors. This way, you can quickly keep an eye on your competition. Information about the prices of Swat.io can be found on OMR Reviews.

Even beyond the competitor analysis, social media tools support you in building reach and brand awareness. The social media tools with the highest reviews we have summarized on our platform OMR Reviews.

PPC and paid advertising

: The tool identifies your competitors in the PPC field and shows their monthly budget and the entire AdWords strategy. Information about the iSpionage pricescan be found on OMR Reviews.
WhatRunsWhere: Just like with iSpionage, the tool WhatRunsWhere lets you know which of your competitors are advertising and what their ads look like. You can also trace how effective these ads are. Information about the prices of WhatRunsWhere can be found on OMR Reviews.

Content Discovery Tools

BuzzSumo: With this free tool, you can search for content by keyword or your competitor's URL. With filters like publication date, content type or social media pages, you can further refine your search. BuzzSumo also has a trend section for various industries. Information about the BuzzSumo prices can be found on OMR Reviews.
Feedly: With the Feedly tool, you have the option to set up the pages you want to follow. You can segment by general industry trends, customers and competitors. Pages can be quickly added to the feed via a browser setting. Information about the Feedly prices can be found on OMR Reviews.

Why a competitive analysis is worthwhile

Anyone who wants to successfully digitally align a company - regardless of size or target group - cannot avoid a competitive analysis. It forms an important basis for your work and lays the foundation for your marketing strategy.

In order to achieve successful results, it is worth, at the beginning of your competitive analysis, to define a specific goal that you keep in mind during the entire evaluation phase. Just as varied as the reasons for a competitive analysis are also the areas that you can analyze. Tools offer a great support for this. So you can see, for example, which SEO strategy your competition is pursuing or where they are getting their traffic from.

With a competitive analysis, you gain an overview of the work and strategic direction of your competitors. You can benefit from the knowledge gained by optimizing and adapting your own orientation. This always keeps you one step ahead of your competition.

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Author

Carmen Martins

Carmen ist Content Marketing Managerin bei OMR Reviews. Zuvor hat sie Content-Themen für einen Lebensmittelgroßhändler verantwortet sowie einen MA in Public Relations absolviert.

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