Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management involves assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and probable competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. It helps you gauge how to curb competitors and refine your strategy. Conducting a SWOT analysis is important because you’ll build strategies for how to expand into a new market. And, new age competitor tools can ease this whole process for you.
Identifying your competitors provides several benefits:
- You can identify the benchmarks you need to improve.
- Besides tracking your competitors’ moves, you can expect them, too.
- You can better understand your limitations or deficiencies that can cost you potential sales.
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the compact competitor analysis tools that is suitable for improving online visibility and discovering marketing perceptions. The tools and reports can help marketers that work in the following services: Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media Marketing, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, Public Relations, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, Campaign Management.
| Feature | Analyze Long Tail Keywords using Keyword Magic Tool. Optimize Your Existing Blog Posts with On-Page SEO Checker Optimize Your Site’s Technical SEO with Site Audit Monitor Your Brand Outreach using Brand Monitoring Tool Find New Link Building Opportunities with Link Building Tool. |
| Pros | Local position tracking Keyword research Site audits Opportunities based on competitors |
| Cons | Doesn’t come with an inbuilt SERP analysis feature. White-label reports are only available in their highest plans. Bulk Keyword difficulty scores can be a bit unreliable. |
| Free Plan | 7-day free trial |
| Staring Price | $99.95/month |
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a website that provides web analytics services for businesses. The company offers its customers information on their clients’ and competitors’ website traffic volumes, referral sources which include keyword analysis and demographics, and website “stickiness”. SimilarWeb is used for estimation of the total amount of traffic different websites are getting. It allows you to see competitors’ top congestion sources, divided into different categories, including referring sites, social traffic, and top search keywords.
SimilarWeb is a website that provides web analytics services for businesses. It extrapolates data from a panel of web users who allow the monitoring of their internet activity, combined with direct observations for a subset of internet properties, such as websites’ traffic statistics.
| Features | Complete competitor website traffic analysis Website data: visits, geography, keywords, referrals, etc Engagement metrics: time on site, bounce rate, popular pages See traffic share by channel (search, direct, display, etc.) See traffic share by device: mobile and desktop traffic. |
| Pros | Global data for users outside the US. It has a rich free version Excellent user interface. Displays a global and useful general overview The extensive data, including visits, traffic sources, audience metrics, search data, social media, geo-distribution, mobile apps, and more. It provides organic keywords Can export reports (only in PDF in the free version). |
| Cons | It sets the estimate of the traffic to full months only and this is not possible to set specific date ranges (in the free version). It has approximations only desktop traffic without mobile and tablets. The number of unique visitors is not available With smaller websites, Traffic estimation should be treated carefully. |
| Free Plan | 1 month of mobile data, 3 months of web traffic data |
| Staring Price | $79/ month |
SpyFu
SpyFu exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors. Search for any domain and see every place they’ve shown up on Google: every keyword they’ve bought on AdWords, every organic rank, and every ad variation.
SpyFu allows us to get insights into the terms used by competitors and helps us build a planned budget for paid search spend for new clients. It also now gives us insights into how our SEO efforts are faring. The information on the hyperlinks of competitors helps to discover places we should add to our client’s backlink profiles. This tool is an important part of our arsenal. I have been using it since the early days and am impressed with how the tool has matured.
| Feature | Unlimited Banklink Results. Data Exports. In-Depth SEO Reports. Backlinks Exports. AdWords Advisor Reports. Domain Searches.Paid Keywords. |
| Pros | Free feature Accurate data Provide competitive organic search data. Allows you to identify organic keywords for future content creation. |
| Cons | The paid portion may seem a bit steep. The free version is very limited with what you’re able to see. Impact of brand terms. Levels of impressions – local, national, global. Exporting of competitor ad copy. |
| Free Plan | 30-day trial |
| Staring Price | $39 |
BuzzSumo
Buzzsumo is a powerful online competitor analysis tools that allows any user to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. It can take hours to scan all the various social sites to find out what people are talking about and what their concerns and needs. Buzzsumo gathers information on what topics are gaining the most attention. It analyzes where certain topics are being discussed and how much attention these topics are getting.
| Feature | Delivering Content Insights Find & Understand Influencers Competitor Analysis & Comparisons Content Alerts Content Curation View All Social Networks Advanced Filtering & Data Export |
| Pros | Identifying competitor content in real-time Backlink insights for content marketing Facebook Analyzer Hashtag search capabilities Real-time data and analysis |
| Cons | User Interface Customer Service. Competitor advertising benchmark analysis More robust SEO tools. |
| Free Plan | Offers free trial |
| Staring Price | $99 |
BuiltWith
BuiltWith is a lead generation software that allows users to perform advanced filtering on the lead lists. These lists are generated by accessing data from leads across the world. It is a sales intelligence software that enables its users to predict future leads and generate instant pre-defined prospect lists. It also provides an insight into the existing leads and enables users to categorize them based on spending, locations, and the technologies used. The lead lists generated help improve campaign management strategies and boost conversions.
| Feature | The software provides information on market share and country based analytics for all web technologies. BuiltWith helps users by enabling them to cover the entire market. It provides data information about top traffic sites, paid websites, potentials, and more. The software helps us in providing timely reports and notifications to its users when they are interested in any website. API Access BuiltWith has advanced features to help its users in lead generation, market analysis, and sales intelligence. |
| Pros | The tool lets you develop completely detailed marketing-lead lists. Weekly, the product crawls and updates its data on billions of commercial pages. Learning to use BuiltWith is easy |
| Cons | It does not include data mapping. BuiltWith only integrates with three other business software products. |
| Free Plan | Available |
| Staring Price | $295/month |
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one tool used by the SEO and Digital Marketing industry. The tool’s purpose is linking profile analysis. With its help, you can gather all vital information about backlinks and measure the website parameters and the quality of links. Ahrefs simply rocks your SEO and reveals tons of marketing opportunities in a few clicks! Ahrefs is my favorite tool to find outstanding content ideas with a lot of traffic and business potential.
Ahrefs’ Site Explorer combines three powerful SEO tools in one interface:
- Organic traffic research – See what keywords your competitors are ranking for and which pages bring the most search engine traffic.
- Backlink checker – See which websites link to your competitors’ sites and gauge the quality of their backlink profiles.
- Paid traffic research – Learn whether your competitors are doing paid search advertising and where they funnel their paid traffic.
| Feature | Do keyword research for search engines See ‘clicks’ data Get total search traffic estimations See backlink growth or decline over time. Monitor outbound links Get keyword ranking alerts Analyze internal backlinks |
| Pros | Backlink analysis Link prospecting Competitive analysis |
| Cons | Keyword analysis Content analysis Technical insights. Visualization of organic keywords drill-down Site audit feature is weak |
| Free Plan | Start Trial $7 |
| Staring Price | $99/month |
Alexa
Alexa is an Amazon company. Founded in 1996, Alexa has a rich history of providing deep analytical insights to compare and optimize businesses on the web.No matter when you launched your site, a competitive analysis will help you be certain you’re speaking the language your audience understands. This is essential in content marketing.
Alexa is useful for three categories of online entrepreneurs:
- Digital marketers: If you’re a digital marketer, Alexa gives you in-depth insights to optimize for users. It also provides tools to benchmark against your competition, helping understand the overall competitive landscape you are entering.
- Site owners and publishers: You need accurate site metrics, such as monthly page views, monthly unique visits, time on site, bounce rate, and more. When you’re armed with accurate site metrics, you’ll be able to develop a content strategy that helps you thrive, even in this competitive age with a smart media presence on the right social channel.
- Content strategists: These merchants occupy a very important position because they’re involved in research, idea generation, content creation distribution, and management.
| Feature | Audience Overlap Tool Top Sites Search Website Traffic Statistics On-Page SEO Checker Site Comparisons Keyword Difficulty Tool |
| Pros | Real-time analytics Page ranking Quality check-up SEO, web traffic analytics, trends, website popularity, visitor engagement. Page ranking and webpage standards. |
| Cons | Data delivery Dashboard Time zone mismatch with UTC. Ad campaigns. Keyword tags suggestions. |
| Free Plan | 30 day’s free trial |
| Staring Price | $299/month |
Ispionage
This platform primarily focuses on competitor research regarding AdWords campaigns and keywords. You have the power to find profitable keywords by viewing statistics on the PPC keywords your competitors are bidding on. You can also see the volume of PPC keywords they are bidding on, the average position they show each ad in, the click volume from AdWords each month, and the monthly Pay Per Click budget for every competitor you research. iSpionage uses a proprietary Keywords Effectiveness Index that helps you find profitable keywords that have the highest search volume, while also assessing cost per keyword, and adds those high-performing keywords to your campaign.
You can also use iSpionage to gain a comprehensive list of keywords your competitors are bidding on in AdWords. The extensive list shows you specific ad copy, average rank for each ad, number of days each ad has been showing, and first and last seen date for each ad.
| Features | Benchmarking Competing Product Analysis Keyword Tracking Trend Analysis Website Monitoring |
| Pros | It offers full visibility of campaigns, funnels, and landing pages. You can configure a campaign watch for specific competitors and get full weekly reports. iSpionage allows creating keyword alerts as soon as they appear. It doesn’t require downloading additional software to start using it. |
| Cons | iSpionage is limited to the USA, Canada, and England markets. It is more useful for professional marketers as its functionalities and graphics require a little more professional knowledge to get the best of the reports. Free trial time might not be enough to try all its functionalities. |
| Free Plan | Available. |
| Staring Price | $59/month |
Link Explorer
Link Explorer is one of the best free challenging competitor analysis tools by digital marketing titan, Moz. It has replaced the now-unused Open Site Explorer tool. The Top Ranking Keywords feature displays popular competitor keywords and their monthly volume. Every keyword has a difficulty score showing how easy or hard it is to outrank your competitor.
| Features | Great tool for assessing a website’s top pages in terms of inbound links. Great whiteboard. Transcription is great |
| Pros | Estimating Page Authority and Site Authority Listing Linking Domains and Pages Gives you a quick overview of your client’s backlink health. Easy to compare your website’s backlink profile with competitors. It helps to Determine additional link opportunities that help to grow inbound links to your site. |
| Cons | Lack of immediate export of data. They need advanced reports for managing larger websites which come at the cost of a subscription to Moz Pro. |
| Free Plan | N/A |
| Staring Price | $49/month |
WooRank
WooRank is an SEO tool that helps its users increase traffic, generate leads, and boost sales. This is a cloud-based SEO tool, providing higher search engine rank, lead generation, competitor analysis tools tracking, and website reviewing. Useful for marketers in companies of all sizes, it helps them gain online ranking progress in a short time.
There is also a backlink analysis tool, providing data about the number of backlinks leading to the client’s website, along with backlink scoring.
| Features | Syncing Google Analytics Syncing Google Search Console Mobile Optimization Detection Automatic website review Dashboard with technical data |
| Pros | traffic light systemsite crawlingcompetitor analysis |
| Cons | When you want to download the same report twice, it counts as two different downloads. Analysis of the results is a bit difficult |
| Free Plan | Available |
| Staring Price | $59.06/month |
Final verdict
Competitive analysis is a crucial component of fine-tuning your marketing strategy. By using the right set of tools, you can run your analysis quickly and spend more time focusing on your efforts. If you want to create a successful organic traffic pipeline that frequently generates traffic, brand visibility, and helps to increase revenue, then these competitor analysis tools will be useful. This research list of competitor analysis tools has everything you need to perfect your marketing campaign. Use your competitors’ success to increase your web traffic. These tools put a lot of useful information about your competitors within reach that you can turn into insights to drive your marketing efforts.
Related Posts
- Boost Your Website With The Best SEO Audit Tools
- Free Online Document Translator – DocTranslator
- How to Value and Purchase an Online Business
Vijay Sood is a seasoned digital marketer with a passion for driving online growth and innovation. With a robust background in developing and executing comprehensive digital strategies, Vijay excels in leveraging SEO, content marketing, and social media to boost brand visibility and engagement. His expertise lies in transforming data-driven insights into actionable marketing campaigns, helping businesses achieve their digital objectives.