It’s safe to say that in order to succeed today a business needs to stand out online. The internet age is here to stay, and your business needs to incorporate this fact into how it runs. Even if you think that your business has nothing to do with the internet, most of your clients and customers will find you through the net.
Ask yourself, ‘how many times do I use google each day?’ Most people’s first step in looking for a product or service is to open a google page. Whether they are looking for something for dinner or a mattress to sleep on, the majority of people will type what they are looking for into google before they do anything else. Your business needs to be on these search results and the higher up the list the better.
Many people will only look at the first page of results, maybe the second, and stop there. If your business is not on these pages, you will be missing out on a lot of possible clients. You may offer the best services, the best prices, or a superior product but none of that will matter if none of your potential customers can see it.
What is Competitive Content Analysis?
This is why your business needs Competitive Content Analysis. This form of analysis requires you to research your direct and indirect competition and learn what it is that they are doing right. Obviously, you need to be looking at businesses that are appearing further up the search results list then yours. You need to know what they are doing differently and how it is affecting their rankings on search results.
If you are successfully able to take what you learn and use it for your website, your business can rise through the ranks and hopefully get on the all-important first page of google. You should be able to see the benefits that this has for your business straight away. More eyes on your site will turn into more customers or clients for you. What you offer as a business will matter all the more now that people can see your website.
Direct and Indirect competition
Before you can compare your business to your competitors you need to know who that competition is. First you have your direct competitors. This group is pretty self-explanatory, they offer a service or product that directly competes with yours. The second group, your indirect competition, provide something that fills the same need or want as your business while not providing the exact same product or service as you.
The following example should help explain it all.
You own a restaurant that specialises in roast beef dinners. A possible customer is looking to find a restaurant that makes roast beef for dinner tonight. Clearly this is a customer that is looking for a business precisely like yours.
They type ‘roast beef for dinner’ into google or maybe even just ‘roast beef’. The results that they will get back will most likely include businesses like yours as well as recipes and possibly the ever-present Wikipedia page. Your direct competition will be the other restaurants, they can offer this hypothetical searcher the same thing that you can. Your indirect competition will be the sites that offer recipes. What they offer is different from your business but could still fulfil your customers' wants. Even more important for us here is that they will appear on the search results, possibly pushing you down the list.
What Should You Be Researching?
Before you start your research, you need to get into the minds of your clients. What needs does your business fulfil? What search terms would they use if they were trying to fulfil those needs? Once you know this you can start by searching those terms and find where your business lands on the results. Then you want to find what sites are on the first page of these results. Again, this is where you want your site to be.
Once you have these sites you can begin to compare your site to them. What do they do differently? Does their site have more copy? Does it use your search term more often in that copy? With this information in hand, you can start to adapt your online strategy to better meet the current landscape of the business world.
The Importance of being ‘Up to date’
Current is the important word here. Competitive Content Analysis needs to be done on a regular basis. New businesses are starting every day that have the potential to unseat your business from its place on a search results page so you need to have the latest information to make sure that your business’s website gets all the traffic that it can.
Just as it's important to have up to date information on where your site sits on search results pages you also need to have up to date information on your business’s value. Our expert valuers are able to perform full business valuations on your business for any reason that you might need.