5 Free Tools to Spy on Your Competitors
Let’s face it- the digital landscape and online competition can be downright brutal in 2022. Technology is ever evolving and you’re no longer just competing for the top spot on Google; you're also competing for your audience's attention at every digital touchpoint.
The only way to accurately determine how to outmatch your competition online is to first understand where they stand. Discover where they get their traffic, what SEO strategies they employ, how much money they spend on digital ads, and much more.
Companies that stand out online have a thorough understanding of what their competitors and market are doing, and are adaptable enough to change their marketing strategy.
The good news is that you have a plethora of tools at your disposal to figure out how to get a leg up on your competition. Here are our 5 favorite free tools to do this. Please note, some are free trials, but if you go in with a plan, the trial period will be long enough for you to conduct your competitor research.
SimilarWeb is a competitor research and analysis tool that is easy to use and provides an index of useful analytics. It allows you to compare website traffic and provides detailed data insights into both your own and your competitors' website traffic volume including monthly visits, page views, visit duration, and bounce rates.
Use the search box to learn about tour competitors’ global, country, and category rankings in an easy-to-read graph, then examine the sources of your own leads and compare them to those of your competitors.
Google Alerts is a free and easy-to-use service that will send reports directly to your inbox around search terms of your choosing, an because it is a Google service, you can be pretty sure it’ll find almost every instance where your competitors are mentioned. You can leverage these notifications to stay on top of information about your competitors, information about products, mentions of company executives, consumer activities, influencers and trends, competitor activities, and industry developments.
Keep tabs on your competitor’s brand with BuzzSumo, a cloud-based platform that helps you find the best engagement, content, and outreach opportunities on social media and search. BuzzSumo helps you discover new keywords, trending stories, customer questions, and content success, all while keeping track of what matters most to your brand- including information about your competitors.
You can see what was written about them- the good and the bad. You can also keep track of specific content published on your competitor’s website. BuzzSumo even allows you to see how your brand compares with others in the industry.
Analyze this data and ask yourself how you can capitalize on what others in your industry are doing.
SEMRush (Free Trial)
SEMrush specializes in comprehensive competitor data, providing features required for SEO and SEM strategies, covering everything from SEO to social media to paid traffic analysis and more. It can also provide data on competitors’ traffic sources, overall traffic sources, bounce rate, and other visitor engagement metrics. Knowing this data can help you attract and grow your audience online.
BuiltWith is a website analysis tool that allows you to search your comptitors’ URL to discover the technologies the company is utilizing- including frameworks, analytics tools, WordPress plugins, and even fonts.
Make the Most Out of Your Research
Analyze your actual competition direct to the source (websites and social accounts) and with these tools and others available to you. Get multiple sets of data from different sources to help you get the whole picture.
What type of images are they using?
Are they using verbiage that you haven’t thought of including?
How’s their online reputation? Do hey have reviews?
What are they doing for lead generation?
Are they utilizing a blog?
Do they have a chat feature on their website?
Is their site mobile friendly?
Do they have an SSL certificate installed?
What are their overall marketing strategy?
Determine what types of content perform best for their brand on social media.
With each of your competitors, make a list of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is called a SWOT analysis.
This data will provide a solid foundation for your strategy for moving forward. Put these tools and analytics to use to commit to a plan of action that corresponds to your findings!