Better Rankings by Exploiting Untapped Image Compression Techniques

Whenever we talk about SEO and the idea of optimization, some of the first things that come to our mind are content, backlinks or keywords. This is not wrong, but it isn’t exhausting the possibilities of SEO either. Especially since there are plenty of factors that weigh in a page rank that are not purely backlink or content-driven. So it should not have come as too much of a surprise when Google announced that page load speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches. Of course, one factor out of more than 200, but one that is still worth considering.

 

 

1. Website Speed as a Ranking Factor
2. Reducing the Image File Size Using the Lossy and Lossless Compression Techniques
3. Case Study – Image Compression Tools Tested to the Limit
   1. How the Image Optimization Test Was Performed
   2. Top 6 Metrics Tested for Finding the Best Image Compression Tool

 

1. Website Speed as a Ranking factor

 

Site speed, according to Google, “reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests”  and for all intents and purposes serves both the user and the site owner. Users get an enhanced experience, site owners are more likely to get reduced operation costs and… well, more users, who stay on the website longer.

 

Google thinks the same, as indicated by the very fact that it provides us with tools to check up on our site speed and suggests solutions for sluggish pages. There is the PageSpeed module in the Google Developers section and a Page Speed Insights for making a speed audit for every website.

 

Even Yahoo has a developer module for page speed improvement, called Yslow. The slew of freely available tools is certainly meant to wear off some of the concerns that only big sites can benefit from this change. In fact, chances are smaller sites have the upper hand here in terms of flexibility and adjusting. Some questions and concerns remain though, the most important being:

What is and how exactly does Google measure “site speed?”

 

For instance, the difference between “document complete” and “fully rendered” time when loading a page was mentioned. The former means that while not all the elements on a page are showing, you can start clicking and navigating. The latter means that everything is clearly visible on the page, even background stuff like ads and images. Even though it is difficult to pinpoint specifically and with certainty which aspect of speed directly helps your rankings, working on your site loading speed, in general, is bound, at the very least, to enhance your users’ experience. So, for instance, having a “document complete” time which is faster than the “fully rendered time” could help.

 

2. Reducing the Image File Size Using the Lossy and Lossless Compression Techniques

 

Images can play a major role in the difference between “document complete” and “fully rendered site” loading times, especially for mobile sites.

One solution is to simply delay loading images. Let everything else load first and then only at the end start loading images. This ensures that your site is functional long before you get to the bandwidth-chugging portions of the page. As with everything else nowadays, there are lots of plugins that can help you. On WordPress, you can try Advanced Lazy Load or Smush. But if you need to do that, maybe the problem is simply that your images are too big and they slow down your site speed anyway. So why not compress them to begin with?

 

 

We used two techniques for image compression for our case study:

• lossless compression, which means the image quality remains largely the same. 
• lossy compression, which means some loss of fidelity may occur, though in general, it may be imperceptible.

 

Brian Jackson, Director of Inbound Marketing of Kinsta, explained each compression method:

 

Lossy image compression refers to compression in which some of the data from the original file (JPEG) is lost. The process is irreversible, once you convert to lossy, you can’t go back. And the more you compress it, the more degradation occurs.   Lossless image compression refers to compression in which the image is reduced without any quality loss. Usually, this is done by removing unnecessary metadata from JPEG and PNG files. RAW, BMP, GIF, and PNG are all lossless image formats.
	BRIAN JACKSON
	Dir. of Inbound Marketing Kinsta

 

You can see below the representation of both reduced files using these two techniques. 

 

 

To be more exact on this, the correct term is perceptually lossless. A human can’t tell between a JPEG optimized version and the Original photo. JPEG is a lossy format. PNG is lossless. 

 

3. Case Study – Image Compression Tools Tested to the Limit

 

We went out and researched some of the best image compression tools out there which use the lossless and lossy techniques for image compression. After we identified them, we made a list of the most relevant tools that would be up to the job:

 

• JPEGMini
• Kraken Image Optimizer
• Puny PNG
• Tiny PNG
• Google’s PageSpeed Module

 

I hope it’s useless to mention that this analysis is unbiased and none of the mentioned tools offered to take us out for a beer or promised any goods in exchange. So we are going to test those 4+1 tools on the same artifact and see if we can notice any difference in loading speed results.

 

To make the analysis more encompassing we added a 5th element to the comparison (a 5th dimension, if you will), which is slightly different from the other 4: Google’s PageSpeed. Unlike the other image compression tools we have included in our research, Pagespeed isn’t really a compression tool as much as an optimization tool that works holistically through a series of custom filters which are executed when the HTTP server serves the website assets.

 

What gets it a spot in our test is the fact that it “dynamically optimizes images by removing unused meta-data from each file, resizing the images to specified dimensions, and re-encoding images to be served in the most efficient format available to the user.” Sounds pretty nifty, right? We’ll see if the boast stands at the end of the day.

 

3.1 How the Image Optimization Test Was Performed

 

The test had to be the same for all and give these tools a run for their money, so we decided on optimizing our blog’s entire image data (galery), which rounded up at 3,824 images. This was done on a test version of the site and it has not gone live yet. It was designed for testing purposes only. Most of the services we used to compress the images have their own API and some example scripts but for our test, we’ve built our own scripts which send a request for each image.

 

Some services have a “batch upload” feature, but for consistency, we’ve sent a single image per request since we cannot do a “batch upload” on all servers. We don’t want to lade you with too many technical details. Yet, a few comments on the process are in order. Where an API was not available, the images were processed with the service provided by that particular software.

The first comment is that JPEGMini was the only tool that was a downloadable software, the rest being hosted online. The second is that all of the tools have APIs, except for JPEG Mini. Last but not least, for Pagespeed we used the Nginx module.

 

3.2 Top 6 Metrics Tested for Finding the Best Image Compression Tool

 

We measured several metrics, which we could split into two categories:

• Image compression related metrics.
• Page load speed related metrics.

 

For the first category, we only had results for the 4 image compression tools, since Pagespeed is a bit of a different type of tool, as discussed earlier. It is worth noticing that not all tools had the same workload:

• TinyPNG only compressed both PNG and JPEG format files.
• JPEGMini only compressed the JPEG format files.
• Kraken compresses both PNG and JPEG format files.
• Puny PNG compresses both PNG, JPEG and GIF format files.

 

The metrics in both categories, however, were calculated relative to the actual work and not to absolute standards. And here they are:

 

1. Metric 1 – Conversion Time

 

We ran tests for each tool to see which one of them manages to convert the image faster and our winner was JPEGMini.

 

Let’s start with the conversion time, measured in minutes. Since the number of conversions wasn’t the same for all tools (in fact, it was slightly different in each case), it makes more sense to look at the number of conversions per minute. The detached leader is JPEGMini, with roughly 113 conversions per minute, or close to 2 conversions per second. The other 3 tools trail significantly behind, with little difference between them, by comparison. TinyPNG and Kraken are at 30, respectively 21 conversions per minute, while PunyPNG is utterly unimpressive at merely 11 compressions per minute.

 

2. Metric 2 – Compression Power

 

Next, let’s look at compression power. This, again, is a metric resulting from the relation between two different measurements: the compressed size of the output relative to the original size of the input. The winner, by a margin, is TinyPNG, with a 2.78 compression ratio, with the other three being at less than half the rate (1.19 for Kraken and 1.3 for JPEGMini), or at best, just slightly better than half the rate (1.53 for PunyPNG). So far the format specific tools seem to fare much better than the format general ones.

 

3. Metric 3 – Pages with Mainly PNG Images

 

And now for the real test: does any of this impact the time to load the page? For PNG related pages, the time after compression is best improved with TinyPNG (5.29 seconds) or Pagespeed (5.44 seconds). The difference between the two is by and large negligible. Kraken and PunyPNG, however, are significantly lower (with basically no difference at all between them, however: 7.47 and 7.45 seconds respectively).

 

The latter loading times are more than double than if the web pages used no images and closer to the load speed if there were no compression at all (8.56 seconds). The sizes of images loaded on the web pages are, as expected, in line with the loading times. The average size is 8 MB for Pagespeed and 8.2 MB for TinyPNG, practically half the size of images obtained from Kraken (15.9 MB) or PunyPNG (15.7 MB). For comparison, the average size of the PNG images on a loaded page is 19.5 MB, not much bigger than for the compressed results for Kraken or PunyPNG.

 

4. Metric 4 – Pages with Mainly JPEG Images

 

What about JPEG image format? It’s another win for Pagespeed and the format-specific tool. This time, however, the result variation is nowhere near as dramatic as in the case of the PNG files. In fact, the times to load the page are really close:

• 3.24 seconds for Pagespeed
• 3.45 seconds for JPEGMini
• 3.53 seconds for Kraken
• 3.55 seconds for PunyPNG.
• 3.77 seconds for the Original Images
• 3.03 seconds with No Images

 

Hardly noticeable, isn’t it? Add to that the fact that all of these values are still not that much different from the page load time when there are no images on the page (3.03 seconds) or even when all the images on the page are at their original size (3.77 seconds). As you would expect, the difference in the average size of images loaded on page is similarly unremarkable.

 

Pagespeed gets the best compression, at 3.4 MB, with JPEGMini following closely at 3.9 MB. Kraken and PunyPNG are both above the 4 MB mark, with 4.3 MB and 4.4 MB respectively. While the first two values are significantly different than the average size of the page with uncompressed JPEG images on it (4.9 MB), they are nowhere near the size of the page with no JPEGs on it (1.2 MB).

 

Let’s do a quick recap on the JPEG and PNG compression.

 

Best JPEG Compression (Best is First)

1. PageSpeed
2. JPEGMini
3. Kraken
4. PunyPNG

 

Best PNG compression (Best is First)

1. PageSpeed
2. TinyPNG
3. PunyPNG
4. Kraken

 

The best JPEG compression is done by PageSpeed, then JPEGMini , followed by Kraken and PunyPNG. When it comes to PNG files, Pagespeed leads the way, tied with Tiny PNG, followed by PunyPNG and Kraken. Barring Pagespeed, the better tools seemed to be the ones that are geared for specific image formats (JPEGMini and TinyPNG), with the all-around tools doing poorer in terms of results.

 

5. Metric 5 – Bulk Conversion Speed 

 

 

Total Conversion Times by Tool

• JPEGmini – 20 minutes / 2275 images converted
• TinyPNG – 60 minutes / 1460 images converted
• Kraken – 197 minutes / 3824 images converted
• PunyPNG – 328 minutes / 3722 images converted
• Pagespeed – On the Fly Conversion / no initial conversion time

 

Images Converted per Minute by Tool

• JPEGmini – 113 images/minute
• TinyPNG – 24 images/minute
• Kraken – 19 images/minute
• PunnyPNG 11 images/minute
• Pagespeed – On the Fly Conversion

 

 

In terms of bulk conversion speed there are some aspects that need to be mentioned. First of all, PageSpeed executes the conversion instantly, on the fly, and JPEGMini is a downloadable software. So, there are some technical differences between these two tools and the others, which might make the comparison between them a bit harder. At the same time, JPEGMini and PageSpeed’s way of functioning regarding this matter is their competitive advantage so we need to give the credits to Pagespeed and JPEGMini for being the fastest.

 

PageSpeed seems to be the best as it makes the conversion instantaneously and JPEGMini is the next best thing, but it is limited to JPEG files. TinyPNG and Kraken are tied up in terms of speed (both not very impressive), with the former only being useful for PNG files. PunyPNG, while good for all image file formats, has the least impressive bulk compression speed of all five tools.

 

The conversion speed indicator is important to take into account when deciding on the tool if you want to use it on web pages that rely extensively on images. If your website’s total count of images is comparable or higher than ours, it might be worth going for PageSpeed or JPEGMini as they have the best results in terms of total conversion times and images converted per minutes.

 

6. Metric 6 – Conversion Process Easiness

 

 

Figures and numbers are highly important but we all know that is not all about them. A software must provide great results but must also be easy to use, intuitive and simple to understand. After all, a software’s success is given by the end user. For instance, PageSpeed is a great product and can be the detached leader in many chapters but is definitely not the most user-friendly product.

 

If you are not a computer literate and you don’t know how to install and configure the requested Apache or Nginx modules, then no matter how good the results are, PageSpeed might not be for you. In addition, you will need to have the rights to alter web server configurations in order to install the PageSpeed module (it won’t work for shared hosting). Unless you want to turn to a tech expert, the use of this tool will make you feel inadequate and will, paradoxically, make things look harder.

 

JPEGMini, Punny PNG, Kraken or TinyPNG, on the other hand, have an easy to use interface and don’t require high technical skills. From the easiness of conversion point of view, these tools are made simple, helpful and really meet the user’s needs.

 

Deciding on the Winner 

 

Deciding on a winner is hard, yet necessary in order to conclude our in-depth query. Before doing so, let’s take a look at the tools’ overall presentation and take a sneak peek at what they have to offer.

 

 

The distinction of the best all-around image compression tool when taking into account all the results goes to PageSpeed: it’s either tied for the lead, or the leading tool in terms of both file size and time it takes to load the page for both JPEG and PNG image file formats and none of the other four tools manage to do so consistently (it shares the distinction with two separate tools: TinyPNG for PNG files and JPEGMini for JPEG files).

 

 

So how much does PageSpeed actually help you? Well, the best way to measure this is by looking at the time you save by compression per load on tested page. For PNG, you get from 8.56 seconds (with the uncompressed files) to 5.44 seconds for a page to load. This means the page loads at a 36.45% faster rate. For JPEG files, we got from a loading time of 3.77 seconds (for uncompressed images) to a 3.24 seconds loading time, meaning pages load at a 14.06% faster rate. Less impressive than for PNGs, but still noteworthy.

 

Think of it this way: every time a user lands on one of your pages, their experience is up to 36.45% faster and better. After all, the life of the web surfer is improved with every second one is looking at relevant information rather than at a blinking hourglass. The one thing to keep in mind with Pagespeed is that there is some loss of image quality with its compression, but it is so small that it shouldn’t be a serious drawback for most websites (i.e., unless high image quality is what you’re actually going for, in which case maybe image compression is not really the best way to optimize speed on your website).

 

This is the fully complete metrics table data compared.

 

 

And the Winner is …

 

 

Looking back at all the graphs and figures it is not hard to say that PageSpeed stands out from the rest of the tools. In a world where the user doesn’t have the patience to wait more than 10 seconds before a page loads, Page Speed can be seen as one of the webmaster’s best friends. PageSpeed Modules are open-source server modules that optimize your site automatically. It is definitely not the average webmaster’s tool as it requires high technical skills in order to use it.

 

All in all, from our research it results that PageSpeed gives the best-added value to a website optimization process overall being, maybe, the best option in what concerns a page’s loading time.

 

Conclusion

 

A site’s speed clearly plays an important role in user experience and in the Google Algorithm. People from the SEO industry are making a big investment in content and that is great. Yet, what’s the point of all the struggle if it takes too long to load? Knowing the tools that can help you optimize your site’s speed and make your life as a webmaster a bit better might really come at hand. To summarize the result of our research, we can say that PageSpeed seems like a very helpful tool.

 

PageSpeed is a free to use tool that can be used on Apache and Nginx Servers and allows you do to all of your changes on the fly. It also has a cache so it won’t put too much burden on the server. If you do not have access to a server configuration, we would recommend using the JPEGMini for JPEG compression and TinyPng for PNGs. You could simply decide on only one format to use and go with the one you choose, since that would make things simpler for you and allow you to use the most efficient tool.

 

And don’t forget the Lazy Loading technique ;). All these together will make your site “lighter” and “faster”!

 

Note: This blog post is an improved version of an older one we had.

The post Better Rankings by Exploiting Untapped Image Compression Techniques appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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5 Keyword Research Tips That Will Blow Your Mind

The trick with ranking is not to force it. When everybody’s trying to rank for the same keywords, there’s not much room for long-term development. This is where you can improve and find keywords semantically related to your niche, but not necessarily used by your competitors.

 

It’s in Google’s best interest to suggest semantic results, as closely related to the search query as possible. This should be in your best interest, too. But what happens when your industry’s a crowded market share where every digital marketing campaign is survival of the fittest at its best?

 

 

There are lots of recommendations, tips, and alternatives to paid tools. We thought of 5 fresh and unique tips to find the right keywords for SEO. Anxious to get started? 

 

1. Get Keyword Suggestions Using Free Stock Image Sites
2. Generate Keyword Ideas Using Offline Magazines
3. More Keywords Suggestions from Amazon
4. Answer the Public
5. The Wikipedia Database

 

Before we get started on finding lots of keyword opportunities, there’s just one more thing. Take a second to understand how much search engines have evolved. When you type ‘Halloween costume Batman’ on Google, it won’t distinctly show you results of Halloween costumes in general and Batman related content. Now, it looks beyond your words and shows you whatever is most relevant for you, in this case understanding that it’s a Batman costume you’re looking for.

 

 

This is why approximately 70% of the search results have derived from the words typed when searching, according to studies made by Google itself – because the search engine is beginning to understand your intention more than the words you’re expressing it with. It’s true that results can vary depending on your previous searches, your location, and other variables, but browsing in Incognito mode can change this, if you’re looking for more ‘objective’ results.

 

1. Get Keyword Suggestions Using Free Stock Image Sites

 

At this point, it’s clear therefore that the key is to look in new places for relevant keywords. Depending on your niche, it may be a great start to look for pictures. Now, Googlebot can understand by itself very accurately the content of a picture using Automatic Object Detection in Images.

 

 

On top of that, we are encouraged to add ALT description to every image we have on our websites in terms of SEO purposes. Reversing this principle, we’ll notice that looking for keywords on picture descriptions is an easy, effective way to generate new ideas.

For that matter, photo sites are a great source of inspiration, particularly if your niche has enough graphic applications as to find useful photo related keywords. For instance, if you’re looking for dog food, you’ll be shown both branded and non-commercial descriptions of dog food, as they are characterized in the photo captions.

There are various sites where you’ll find access to online pictures that are not protected by copyrights, and you should find the most suitable ones for your industry. You’ll see that the sites are of an impressive versatility, which means that the search patterns differ, along with the suggested keywords and the images you’ll find. Here are some great sources of inspiration:

 

1.1 Pixabay

 

Pixabay has a lot of great value since it has over 1.6 million photos, and you can split your search by category. This way, it’s easier to find out how searches differ from one category to another.

 

 

The nice part of this “keyword research tool” is the multiple choices for language support, which allows you to search for keyword ideas in your own language. You don’t have to translate them by yourself. 

 

 

Pixabay is more of a community than a conglomerate of pictures, and it can work as a niched, micro social-media-site with followers, messages and all the perks. I find it important to have a constant source of copyright-free images for current usage, and Pixabay seems to solve two problems at once: free photos and brand new keywords from their descriptions. 

 

 

Also, being a community-based website, it is free to use and your contribution should consist of uploading photos on your behalf. This social payment isn’t, however, compulsory, and you can use the site regardless of your personal portfolio. I would suggest uploading images whenever it’s possible, but it is a matter of personal choice.

 

We typed “dog” into the search box and one of the search keywords – “silhouette” – it isn’t your generic keyword when it comes to dog-related content, neither is it one of the most popularly encountered. Despite this, it’s a suitable word to be integrated into your articles, and the search engine will associate it with your topic without any problems.

 

1.2 Shutterstock

 

Shutterstock is a paid service. The pictures here do have copyright, but this is an additional sign of quality. People who pay this service to be given relevant photos are tech-oriented people, who work in online industries and value precision. Therefore, the keywords you’ll find generated from previous searches and from photo descriptions are both specific in nature and refreshing for your niche.

 

 

The subscribers will target keywords that are most relevant in order to be shown the proper photos. It’s the paid subscription and the reputation for reliability that makes this a viable source for taking a fresh look at the most fitting keywords in your niche.

The autocomplete suggestions will be relevant and refreshing, although not always very niched. But in the context of semantic focus from the search engines, being relevant trumps being specific – if the autofill suggests previous searches on a word, this can be easily integrated semantically on our topic.

 

 

1.3 Stockvault

 

Stockvault is a free micro search engine for photos and it’s great for searches of highly popular industries, and not very specific niches since it’s used by people from different environments. It has probably one of the most complete category lists which makes it very easy to search and see accurate keyword results. 

 

 

And because they’re so versatile, it’s best to search for a word in a category, and then see the description of the pictures returned as results. Also, you can see how they differ depending on the category you choose (for instance, men vs. women). The returned results, as well as the autofill suggestions, will differ depending on the previous searching behavior on that particular category. 

 

For example, if you search for coffee and click on an image, you’ll see the category and lots of tags that can be used as semantic keywords in your content creation process. Stockvault offers valuable contextual keywords and backgrounds for every search term and every picture you find. It can be an intelligent Adwords Keyword Planner alternative. 

 

This is, therefore, the cornucopia of differential approach for distinct targets. If you’re looking for keywords for distinct approaches between several target groups, this site does the job pretty well.

 

1.4 Freedigitalphotos

 

Freedigitalphotos is another reliable source when looking for popular keyword ideas. Despite being free, there’s nothing cheap about it. You’ll always have plenty of search results, each of which has a caption text, which you’ll find more than useful since it doesn’t require manually going through all the results.

 

 

You can set up your search by an advanced set of parameters, thus influencing the results. One other very interesting feature is the ability to exclude keywords from your returned searches. If, for instance, you want to search “Coca-Cola“ but not “Pepsi Cola“, you can always use the ‘Exclude Keywords’ filter. In this particular case, “Pepsi Cola” would categorize as a negative keyword. 

 

 

2. Generate Keyword Ideas Using Offline Magazines

 

Start reading magazines. See which keywords are used by those in your industry in content marketing – as the general style is so different from online to print, you’ll get plenty of ideas that you’ve been ignoring because of SEO assumptions.

 

When working online, it’s crucial to keep a fresh mind. And if you want different results in rankings than your competitors, maybe you should look where they don’t, too. As we’ve documented before, magazines are a divergent resource with unique content, that could generate great keywords for your business.

 

 

I’ll only cover the most important reason – magazines are a perfect resource for someone preoccupied of words. After all, they provide what we hope for the web to become one day in terms of content: articles that attract through subject and writing, without being obsessed with keywords and rankings. And perhaps this is what we should all turn towards to keep a fresh mind.

 

There are hyper-targeted niches in the magazine market. If your industry allows it (and chances are, if you’re reading this post, it does!), take a look in the niche magazines. The intent for great content on a magazine is exceedingly higher since the investment is thousands of dollars and the editors don’t afford to make mistakes, while a blog is much easier to manage, promote and reinvent every time an article chops of the numbers of the audience.

 

3. More Keywords Suggestions from Amazon

 

Another alternative to Google Keywords Planner is Amazon. It is the Google of selling. Its power consists of being so huge, that it’s impossible not to find what you’re looking for, from beauty products to books and video games. It’s also where you can find out what people search for, to a very specific extent.

 

 

Because of all its categories, there are two kinds of insight: one from the different search suggestions you’ll get for the same word in distinct categories and one from the category and its suggestions that you’re offered when searching for a product.

 

 

Because Amazon is such a valuable source, you can consult third parties for advanced results for what are people searching for. Merchantwords, for instance, is a highly professional paid service that puts the Amazon search database in perspective.

 

 

“Apple“ is one of the most popular Amazon searches. Being able to organize the results after highest/lowest montly search volume or by category order allows us to examine the specific parts that we find most relevant for our online business. Depending on how trending your results are, using this tool can help you find keywords more than just once, by identifying the trending topics the exact ways they’re being searched on the site.

 

4. Answer the Public

 

Writing perennial articles isn’t easy, particularly when evergreen content seems to have additional requirements for making a good impression and not looking like junk. It takes vision to maintain relevance over time. Answerthepublic can be used as a keyword research tool very easy. It is a site that suggests questions people would ask on a different topic or keyword that you insert, which you can materialize in new keywords or – why not? – in new content ideas.

 

 

The homepage of this site is a very impatient man, in a sweater, who seems eager to hear you answering a question that is of elevated interest for a larger public. There’s also a number of popular countries from which you can select, and the results differ from each local trending search. 

 

 

The results are formulated as popular questions, comparisons,  popular phrases containing the keyword, and they’re followed by alphabetical suggestions of the desired topics. You can download the whole keyword data into a .csv.

 

 

5. The Wikipedia Database

 

Wikipedia is a source of keyword research in multiple languages, especially since it covers a lot of topics. Because the articles here are information-centric and not keyword-centric, you may find a reinvigorating perspective on the textual approach.

 

 

Of course, the encyclopedia is unbiased (or it should be), and most of the articles aren’t necessarily written in a very creative way. But by not abiding to the general rules of online writings, the result will be similar to the one produced by reading niche magazines – only in a different writing style.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Whenever the competition is too high, you risk tilting at windmills. This happens because you, as well as your competitors, are trying hard to rank for the same keywords, suggested by (roughly) the same sources. I always search incognito whenever there’s something I want to take a fresh look at. Because, smart as they are, search engines memorize my history and suggest answers related to my previous queries. The same kind of story happens here – you’ll get to run in circles pretty soon.

 

Using the same keywords as your competitors when writing in your niche often turns the common words into the ground zero in SERPS. On the other hand, there are plenty of creative ways of keeping a fresh perspective on your work. Looking for answers (or questions?) where nobody else does makes the difference between a trendsetter and the next in line. Plus, finding unique keywords research tools can help you give a boost to your SEO strategy.

 

Note: This blog post is an improved version of an older one we had. We considered this article to be valuable for those interested in outranking their competitors and the information needed a refresh because the online market is evolving very quickly.

The post 5 Keyword Research Tips That Will Blow Your Mind appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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8 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert

If you’re a content writer, you have a blog or work for a company, you might have struggled with this question before: How do I find good blog topic ideas? There might have been situations when you didn’t have any ideas and you had to write something just to keep your users engaged.

 

For everyone that has stumbled on this, I understand you. I know what you’re feeling. And you’re not alone. For somebody who writes on a daily basis, you need to be like a factory of fantastic ideas and give valuable information to the audience, because they need it. They are looking for guidance in every possible way.

 

 

Most of you have to become factory ideas overnight, but there are solutions for you during the day. That’s why we thought about the following effortless ways and platforms to find topic ideas:

 

1. Look for Q&As on Quora
2. Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas
3. Get Inspired Using Pinterest
4. Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo
5. Check Google News for Current Events
6. Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn
7. Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups and Reddit Communities
8. See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

 

Finding the right content topic is essential, but the way you write it is also important. Good content writers will always be in demand, just like Joel Klettke points out.

 

“We don’t need to hire a writer. We’ve got formulas and a template!” pic.twitter.com/HREhKHCimw

— Joel K (@JoelKlettke) September 18, 2018

 

1. Look for Q&As on Quora

 

Quora is an abundance of information and continuous resource for content writers, users, noobies and people wanting to find specific answers to their problems. The information is organized and edited by users, which makes it easy to understand the user behavior.

 

Besides all the ideas, you get the advantage of seeing what language and vocabulary people use, the way of writing and asking questions. And after you got some inspiration, you can write the article. Then you can answer questions by pointing people to your article.

 

 

Quora is a great space for keyword research and headings/titles inspiration. For example, if we use the screenshot below and we want to write about keyword cannibalization, we can see if most people use a focus keyword such as – avoid keyword cannibalization or the question type such as – what is keyword cannibalization.  

 

The site is divided into topics, which makes it easy to search for ideas and get insights on what people are looking for. There is an entire community on Quora where a lot of people and experts on every subject you can imagine are actively contributing with knowledge.

 

If you are focused on a specific topic, use the newly launched Spaces and follow the community that interests you.

 

 

Besides all the ideas we’ve talked about, there are other things Quora is good at. Only by using a few clicks you can:

• find what people are looking for. Search for general keywords on Quora and see questions regarding your topic.
• get updates on trending topics right on the homepage.

 

 

• read sourced research from experts and get their permission to quote them in your new article.
• find every influencer that you can contact for outreach.

 

 

2. Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

 

Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss an opportunity to talk about something that has great traction and create a massive, evergreen blog post that will get a good social media score and links 3 years after you’ve written it?

 

We’ve previously talked about the advantages of using a social monitoring tool, such as BrandMentions, that gives insights based on what finds online. You can spy on your competitors to see what are they writing, what type of content gets more engagement. And based on the response they get from the audience, you can see the topics of interest and try to create a better piece of content than theirs.

 

You can monitor fresh topical content related to your business and create better content in your niche. You just have to search for a topic and the tool will show you the results.

 

 

Whenever your brand is being brought up on the web, a marketing opportunity is rising and that applies to your competitors as well. If you know what people are talking about them and find their strengths and weaknesses, you’ll know what to offer to the audience and steal them from your competition.

 

Using a social monitoring tool such as BrandMentions helps you manage the mentions and go right on the spot by offering live support. You can find what people are saying about a specific brand and not necessarily to it, because there might be lots of untracked brand mentions, without any direct link to the brand.

 

For example, people might talk on social media but not place the @ before the name of the brand. And we must remember that it’s not only influencers in your industry who mention brands on the web, but there are also lots of other people that are consumers.

 

 

3. Get Inspired Using Pinterest

 

Another free way to find content marketing ideas is using Pinterest. The motto of the platform describes it very well: Discover recipes, style home ideas, inspiration and other ideas to try. So inspiration is at its place on Pinterest.

 

If you’ve never used Pinterest until now, then you did miss on lots of great opportunities. The social media content you get here, might not be found on the other social channels. You can use Pinterest to:

• get free ideas for blog posts.
• create content that your audience actually wants.
• find keywords you should use in your blog post to help with SEO on Pinterest.

 

The process is very simple and very intuitive for beginners. You just have to search for a keyword, such as blog:

 

 

Then look in the search suggestions box for other keywords that are used for searches and get topic ideas and headings that intrigue the user. Look at the most popular keyword suggestions, such as marketing (blog marketing), for beginners (blog for beginners), ideas (blog ideas), tips (blog tips) and so on.

 

That means there are a lot of new bloggers looking to learn about blogging or bloggers that are in the marketing field and search for ideas and so on.

 

 

Getting those recommended keywords means that those are what your audience is searching for. Use those keywords into your titles tags and description.

 

If you decide to use Pinterest, then those keywords should be into your pin description and heading to boost your Pinterest “SEO rankings”. So that when people are searching for those keywords, your post gets a higher chance of being on the top. That’s how easy it is to get creative content marketing ideas using Pinterest.

 

4. Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

 

BuzzSumo can help you generate new content ideas and see what the audience craves. You can search for popular topics and see results based on total engagement, evergreen score, number of links and other more. You have lots of filters available to go into a deeper analysis and get more accurate results based on your needs.

 

 

For example, we searched for video marketing and we wanted to see the pages with the highest engagement.

 

 

Another great thing about this tool is that you can get some ideas of keywords based on the results you get. If we look at the search we’ve made for video marketing, we can see that video and SEO, or video marketing tips, or video marketing statistics are valid recommendations we could use in our content.

 

5. Check Google News for Current Events

 

Google News can fit very well in your content strategy to see what is trending in digital marketing and other industries. It is the easiest way to look for current events and news in your industry. An interesting news piece relevant to your query can be used to write a quick, creative and even controversial content.

 

You can search for anything regarding digital marketing or business, technology, entertainment, science, sports and many more. Or search for things you might be interested in, based on what you find in other categories and get directions from there.

 

 

If you want awareness and have a relevant audience then finding a news hook for your pieces could be the solution. You have the possibility to select the language and the country and get more personalized results, which afterward can be saved in your account.  

 

 

6. Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

 

LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that you could use to connect with experts and people that write valuable information. You can comment and create connections and, most important of all, you can get inspired by what they are writing and talking about on LinkedIn.

 

You can find the posts they make and the questions they ask by scrolling on the homepage:

 

 

You can go deeper and look at their published articles. LinkedIn Pulse is the platform owned by LinkedIn where influencers write their articles. 

 

 

If you get an idea and write about it, then you can contact the influencer and let them now that you quoted them in one of your articles and they can check the blog post once its published. After that, you can ask them for a share or you can share their post by tagging them.

 

It will create a snowball effect and you can get more people to share your content afterward and get new contacts that you can ask for their ideas in your next piece of contact. For example, you can create a blog post asking a single question to industry influencers where you could quote their answer. And then repeat the sharing process to build a strong online presence. It works very well as a growth hacking technique, too.

 

LinkedIn is a great source of inspiration. And it makes it easy to get exposure for yourself and your business if you decide to share your articles there.

 

7. Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups and Reddit Communities

 

Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers and get new content ideas. Facebook Groups is an underrated asset. It a strong base for an active community. You can see new trending topic discussion, recommendations, tips, new insights from business owners and specialists.

 

 

You can use communities in case you have any doubts about a specific topic. Let’s say, for example, that you heard lots of times that multiple links coming from one and the same domain are considered to have lower value, so unique linking domains are typically a more reliable metric than link count. And you’d like to know if anybody experienced a situation when this statement isn’t true and get some examples that you could use in your article (of course, after asking for permission).

 

Or you can ask for tips on client retention and see what comments and answer you get and use them in creating a new piece of article. The combinations are endless. You just need to be on the right community, where people comment and are active.

 

There are lots of content types that work differently on every social platform, so make sure you get ideas and adapt the message to the type of audience you target.

 

 

8. See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

 

I usually use Zest for finding new blog post ideas. Right after you enter the page, you’ll see each article in a box format which includes the title, the cover attached and a short description.

 

 

The friendly design works very well to skim through the content and makes it very easy to share and save it in your account for future inspiration.  

 

 

There are other ways than scrolling to search for content on Zest. You can apply specific tags and get the articles that are related.

 

 

Other options for filtering results are by the type of content (audio, video), shares, clicks or latest posts.

 

 

There are lots of experts that share their articles here. You can follow people and get instant notifications. It is very easy to use and easy to share content, as well. This comes in hand if you want to amplify your content and give it a boost after publishing.

 

 

If you haven’t used it before, you should definitely start now because it is a gold mine.

 

Don’t miss all the Zest from the content marketing juice. Your content needs all the zest and personality you can get.

 

Conclusion

 

As a farewell message and recommendation after all these tips, I shall leave you with one that can complement the other ideas and it could help you be a better content creator. Grow the skill of becoming content savvy, which means developing the ability to see valuable content everywhere. The content creation process can be hard, but there are lots of ways to make it easier.

 

Whether you’re in the bus/metro/car and see a commercial ad, or somebody reading an interesting book (look at the title), reading posts on social media, listening to the radio or podcasts, watching a video/movie, reading something online or skimming through the news, you must see content inspiration everywhere. This way you’ll never run out of blog post ideas again.

The post 8 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Building a Culture of Measurement: PR Week Breakfast Briefing

Search for ‘how to measure PR campaigns’ and you’ll be hit with 172,000,000 results and hundreds of articles on the topic. It’s clearly something we need to tackle once and for all. As the PR industry works towards building more robust measurement plans and reporting, PR Week ran a well-timed event on the topic of […]

The post Building a Culture of Measurement: PR Week Breakfast Briefing appeared first on Builtvisible.

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Fireside chat with Builtvisible’s Managing Director

How does an award-winning agency handle the challenging and changing nature of the digital marketing landscape? What it’s like managing a growing team and evolving product offering whilst remaining true to your founding roots? Geoff Griffiths, Builtvisible’s Managing Director, sat down with Luca Senatore of Genie Goals to discuss where the industry is heading, offer […]

The post Fireside chat with<br /> Builtvisible’s Managing Director appeared first on Builtvisible.

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27 Unique Techniques on How to Effectively Spy On Your Competitors

It’s almost impossible to come up with a digital marketing strategy to spy on your competitors without consistent information regarding the trends in the niche. And, if you think that it’s only what works that matters, you may not get too far.

 

In order to develop a way to leverage customers’ and influencers’ behavior to your advantage, you’ll have to make yourself comfortable in the office chair and start to seriously monitor the entire niche. That’s the wonder of a free market – it has made it compulsory to weigh everything on the scale of competitive advantage.

 

 

However, it’s impossible to know what unique feature of your brand will make prospects convert unless you’re up to date with everybody else’s special ingredient. Moreover, there are also a series of tactics and free ways that aren’t brand specific and can boost your image regardless of your business name. Let’s browse them all for a complete competitive research.

 

I. Identify Missed Opportunities

 

1. Websites’ History – The Way It Used to Be
2. Spot Your Competitors’ Evergreen Content
3. Get Email Notifications When Your Competitors Rankings Change
4. Link Reclamation – Recover 404 Pages Link Juice

 

II. Find & Track Your Competitors’ Weaknesses

 

5. Track Your Competitors’ Social Mentions
6. Research and Track Fresh Web Mentions
7. Track Competitors’ New Links
8. How to Take Advantage of Your Competitors’ Google Penalty Risk

 

III. Comprehend Your Competitors’ Strategies

 

9. Competitor Content Strategy Analysis to Boost Your Content Marketing Campaigns
10. Content Marketing – Track the Social Evolution of Your Competitors’ Content
11. Content Marketing – Monitor Fresh Topical Content in Your Niche & Create Better Content
12. Track the Speed of Your Competitor’s Website to Improve Your Rankings
13. Competitive Intelligence – Spy on the Technologies Used on Your Competitors’ Sites
14. Check Your Competitors’ Link Velocity Trend to Understand Their Business Evolution
15. Spy on Your Competitors Traffic Trend & Learn How Good They Really Are
16. Check Your Competitor’s Traffic Sources
17. Track Your Competitors’ PPC Campaigns
18. Track Your Competitors’ Organic Keywords
19. Monitor Your Competitor’s Site Indexation
20. Track Your Competitors’ A/B Testing on Prices to Learn What Works Best for Them
21. Stay Ahead of the Game by Tracking Your Competitors’ Facebook Pages
22. Track Your Competitors’ Twitter Followers to Learn their Follower Growth Strategies
23. Track Your Competitors Youtube Views & Subscribers
24. Study the Historical SEO Visibility of Your Competitors & Understand Their Growth Trends

 

IV. Beat Your Competitors at Their Own Game

 

25. Dominate Your Niche by Running In-Depth SEO Visibility Audits
26. Identify Link Building & Growth Strategies Using Advanced Backlink Fingerprinting Techniques
27. Advanced Content Marketing Full Niche Audit Strategy

 

Identify Missed Opportunities

 

1. Websites’ History – The Way It Used to Be

 

The Wayback Machine is a virtual space dedicated to archiving the web content and presenting it the way it used to look at different moments in the past. This ambitious project isn’t only a good deed for the online community, but it also has its practical purposes. You can analyze the previous design, map, content and structure of your competitors’ sites, along with the moments the major changes happened.

 

 

When you have access to how a site used to look in terms of history and the changes that were performed on, it’s easier to identify the types of improvements that your competitors thought were most relevant to their business. Unlike exclusively having access to the actual interface of a site, monitoring its step by step evolution puts the overall marketing efforts of your competitors into perspective.

 

2. Spot Your Competitors’ Evergreen Content

 

Evergreen content is a goldmine for any content marketer, regardless of the domain. See what kind of content works in the niche. Shareability is a matter of sustainable effort, and timeless articles are your best friend on this journey.

 

You can discover your competitors’ top pages. It’s highly beneficial to monitor the ideas that make outstanding content after you’ve understood what makes people endlessly share a piece of content, even if you’re not going to use the skyscraper technique, originally named by Brian Dean.

 

For example, if you have 4 competitors, the first step is documenting what kind of posts seemed to work on their pages in terms of social media engagement to create similarly successful content yourself. You can always start brainstorming from what you see them doing, having all the premises to create excellent articles yourself.

 

We are using Social Visibility to monitoring the competition and get insights on what type of content works best for them and what social platform gets more traction. You can look at the pages with the highest shares increase to identify competitors’ evergreen content. 

 

 

We looked at the data for the last 3 months to get the pages that are truly valuable. If you want to see evergreen content, we need to check the data for a longer period.

 

3. Get Email Notifications When Your Competitors Rankings Change

 

Triggering alerts to be notified on the spot when relevant tracking changes happen for keywords of your choice and your competitors’ can give you a sense of propriety in terms of what works in the niche as keyword-centric content. Of course, the alerts can be set on whichever keyword, for any changes that you wish to monitor.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Stephen Hawking

 

Of course, when saying keywords we actually refer to idea-specific articles, documented in-depth and relevant in the industry; the keywords are simply the instrument for measuring content efficacy.

 

Using an alert system can ease up a lot of work. In cogntiveSEO campaigns, you can create new alerts and get email notifications on any keyword rank fluctuation. For example, you can get a mail the moment your site or your competitor rankings drop for at least 3 positions in Google.

 

 

While it goes without saying that your strategy should be based on clear marketing objectives, knowing when to adjust them as to correspond to the trend is as imperative as having a plan in the first place. Consequently, you can choose to set alerts on cognitiveSEO tool for other areas that interest you as well, such as link building and changes on your backlink profile.

 

4. Link Reclamation – Recover 404 Pages Link Juice

 

There are all kinds of talks about opportunities you’re missing when not monitoring your competitors. Here’s one of the best examples. There are sites, in certain industries, whose products and services are the best part of a market share pie chart.

Monitor the broken pages of your competitors and contact the influencers. Link to their content and be a good Samaritan. This is a great chance of networking success and a link building opportunity. You know the saying – Sharing is caring. 

 

Site Explorer is a great help in this case. You can find there broken pages in real time. 

 

 

Of course, whenever it’s possible, you can also present good quality, topically related content of your own for them to easily recover from the mistake. Needless to say, monitoring broken pages of your own is a great asset in terms of preventing these unfortunate situations and Link Reclamation is an instrumental tool for your needs.

 

Most of the times, it doesn’t make a difference if you’re the owner of an internationally popular site or the one of a small, local business. The bottom line is that you’re as susceptible to lose valuable link juice anyway, just as you can see in the example above. However authoritative and reputable, from sites like Microsoft’s to the fresh start-up you’ve funded, you can’t afford to lose important links.

 

II. Find & Track Your Competitors’ Weaknesses

 

5. Track Your Competitors’ Social Mentions

 

Tracking what’s being said about you on social media is paramount. Approximately half of the people engaging on social media expect to get an answer in less than an hour. Being prompt means being dedicated and this is how loyalty is triggered. Of course, the nature of competitive advantages makes it impossible for you to offer the best there is in your niche on social media without constant monitoring your competitors’ social media activity.

 

 

Moreover, monitoring the mentions of your competitors also allows you to respond to all kinds of questions addressed to them, in case they’re not as prompt.

Try being as impartial and objective as possible. Under no circumstance should you advertise your product while at it, just let your implication speak for itself.

This way, the prospects interested in the niche will get the idea that you’re serious and devoted to your mission. Although this sounds like a long shot, it actually converts if you use it wisely.

 

6. Research and Track Fresh Web Mentions

 

Same rules apply for web mentions. Whenever your brand is being brought up on the web, a marketing opportunity is rising – whether the mention is positive or negative, you should manage it on the spot using BrandMentions.

 

 

As far as your competitors are concerned, demystifying their online appearances gives you valuable insight into their content marketing strategies.

Generate top of mind awareness by implementing useful points for your own company’s objectives.

 

Of course, it’s not only influencers who mention brands on the web – many of the people are actually consumers. This is a great chance for you to better understand consumer behavior in an environment they consider familiar and which, as a matter of consequence, stimulates their honesty. Also, a mine gold opportunity is represented by finding unlinked brand mentions. Finding these link opportunities isn’t a ride in the park. It requires perseverance, attention, thinking outside-the-box, and also the right analysis tools.

 

Moreover, if you’d like to monitor the fresh web mentions for different keywords, you can always create an alert and be notified via mail on the most recent updates. You can turn this into a huge outreach opportunity.

 

7. Track Competitors’ New Links

 

Being instantly notified whenever you and your competitors have new links increases the chances of your marketing efforts to be doubled by great strategic insight with cognitiveSEO alerts.

 

 

Knowing what kind of content influencers are interested in mentioning on their posts allows you to develop a functional strategy that can always be updated according to the trend.

 

8. How to Take Advantage of Your Competitors’ Google Penalty Risk

 

The Unnatural Link Detection tool is used to constantly monitor the profile naturalness of the sites – both yours and your competitors’.

Besides helping in detecting whenever you’re in danger of being penalized by the search engine, this tool is also useful to show you what’s working in the industry. You can either prevent or recover from penalties, and monitor your competitors’ strategies to know how they’re performing. Identifying their mistakes on time helps you avoid them in your approach.

 

Below you can see an example of a website that received lots of unnatural links and it’s at risk of getting penalized, if it hasn’t been already. 

 

Different approaches, although sometimes very similar, may end in totally different results in terms of SERPs – keeping an eye on the numbers constantly provides you with practical insights on the trends.

 

Knowing the exact distribution of ok/suspect/unnatural links is especially useful when monitoring the spikes and tendencies. See what is that your competitors are doing right (or wrong) and monitor their practices so that you’ll debunk their strategies and borrow what’s advantageous.

 

III. Comprehend Your Competitors’ Strategies

 

9. Competitor Content Strategy Analysis to Boost Your Content Marketing Campaigns

 

I love that feeling when you enter a blog and notice that one piece of content has a particularly spectacular performance. Discovering the most efficient social media channel can give you an idea where your audience is. Also, you can find out what your next blog post should look like, with the Social Visibility module mentioned in the second strategy of this list. 

 

But observing the overall picture of what works and what doesn’t in terms of social media shareability allows you to understand three important things:

• what readers are most interested in, which means they are willing to come back for more if you happen to give them actionable information two or three times in a row;
• what readers think their network may be interested in, which is an opportunity for you to exponentially grow on social media, supposing they know their contacts’ preferences;
• what content marketing development ideas you can borrow from your competitors and implement on your own site, including the general style of the articles in question.

 

 

 

10. Content Marketing – Track the Social Evolution of Your Competitors’ Content

 

Besides having a good standing point for an overview, it can also come in handy to look at some pieces of content contextually. You don’t have to be a mammoth in the industry to realize that there’s no easy way to outline the success or failure of your campaigns.

We all get that at some point, usually when it’s frustrating how your very in-depth approach has 5 Facebook shares and your competitors’ superficial article of less than 1500 words won the Internet. Context matters.

 

 

Spotting the VIPs of the latest reads grants you knowledge on the volatile trend – which, admittedly isn’t very easy to get.

 

11. Content Marketing – Monitor Fresh Topical Content in Your Niche & Create Better Content

 

Aside from monitoring web mentions on different keywords, you can also track new topical content – not because you wouldn’t have the greatest ideas for successful articles, but because BrandMentions provides you with fresh data.

 

It would be a shame to miss an opportunity to treat something extensively and create a massive, evergreen blog post that will still get a good social media score and links 3 years after you’ve written it.

 

 

This topical comprehension can be used in crafting a creative road map that’s also going to be successful, following the latest trends.

 

12. Track the Speed of Your Competitor’s Website to Improve Your Rankings

 

Web Design is of uttermost relevance in user experience and it always has the last word when it’s a draw between two similar services (in terms of speed). But let’s not forget practicality. Technical data, such as the load time and the speed index are more important when it comes to building the loyalty of your website visitors. PageSpeed Insights is a great tool when monitoring a site’s performance.

 

 

Your site is eye candy, the users won’t be tempted to close it, which would explain a good bounce rate, for instance. But when it comes to the entire experience, as a process, the website speed has a decisive role.

 

13. Competitive Intelligence – Spy on the Technologies Used on Your Competitors’ Sites

 

There are tracking platforms that allow you to see what’s behind popular, successful sites in your industry. Finding out what’s different can answer a dramatic lot of questions regarding the user experience and the functionality of the web page.

 

 

You’d like to always be in touch with what’s bringing success around you because this is suspicious when it comes to building business intelligence. Use BuiltWith to monitor your competition in this matter. It offers insights on internet technologies which include analytics, advertising, hosting, CMS and many more. Plus, it shows you the internet technology usage changes on a weekly basis.

Unmasking the strategies of your competitors you can merge different tips into a better formula that would best answer the needs of your audience.

 

14. Check Your Competitors’ Link Velocity Trend to Understand Their Business Evolution

 

As relevant as knowing new mentions in order to build a sustainable strategy, keeping in touch with the new referring domains of your competitors’ content detects fresh opportunities for your content marketing strategy.

 

The Site Explorer helps you gain a clear image of your link profile, in seconds, so that you can create further content that’s topically related and more in-depth, then trying to get in touch with editors on the sites that have the best authority. Knowing what editors from which sites are willing to share topics from your niche also frames your content approach and increases your chances for high-quality links. It is also a great competitor analysis tool because it allows you to do the same investigation as for your website. 

 

 

Link Building helps you boost your image in terms of SERPs, which is why having a monthly situation of your referring domains is beneficial in terms of monitoring your overall performance as well as debunking competitors’ SEO strategies. This last use of finding fresh referring domains linking to your competitors is spotting uncovered opportunities, maybe getting new ideas of influencers to reach out to.

Moreover, this can transform your online marketing efforts of getting links – instead of making aimless steps towards no-name sites and get maybe dozens of links, you can get a few ones from high authority, great performance domains.

 

15. Spy on Your Competitors Traffic Trend & Learn How Good They Really Are

 

Traffic growth itself is a gold mine, as you can use it to compare the content to the traffic performance and analyze your competitors. Get a better understanding and the best practices of topics that could work in your industry.

 

Aside from this, being able to compare performances gives a solid reality check, positioning your performance objectively, while also indirectly giving you insight on the strategies that best convert. Alexa helps you monitor your rankings and audience while also displaying a trend tendency compared to the global position.

 

16. Check Your Competitor’s Traffic Sources

 

There’s more than just readers and shares that make a site popular. If we’ve already established that contextualized information matters most, then where the traffic comes from is crucial when you’re trying to understand which strategic moves you should keep developing.

For instance, if bloggers in your industry seem to share a lot of topically related content and be open about tips and practices, you’re going to want to approach them. This would bring you a positive engagement rate on the web as well as social media.

But if you see that your competitors are cited in the press quite often and seem to make PR efforts to be as visible there, thus being cited by high authority sources and having a satisfactory ranking situation, maybe you’d like to try that as well.

 

 

Of course, this gives you competitive intelligence as it debunks what the competition is doing. If they’ve got lots of readers coming straight from the in-mail newsletter, maybe you should get some inspiration from there. SimilarWeb is a similar tool to spy on your competition but it can be used as a complementary resource when it comes to connecting the general performance of a site with its traffic sources such as direct referrals, search, social, mail and display networks.

 

17. Track Your Competitors’ PPC Campaigns

 

Unravel the PPC strategy of the niche influencers to gain keyword-specific insights. It depends entirely on you how you decide to use that; either to copy that strategy for your own PPC or, depending on your position, to create a suitable strategy.

 

There are lots of tools for spying your competitors’ rankings. SpyFu is an example, that gives you the most profitable keywords and ads for paid and organic search. You can keep track of your competitors’ keywords. Below you can see a screenshot from the tool. You can get a list of all organic and paid keywords from your competitors. Besides that, there is an interesting feature called Google AdWords History which shows every ad campaign for all the keywords tracked plus information about costs.  

 

 

For instance, if you’re not ranking well, maybe you should try to move towards more popular keywords. If you’re already ranking top in your industry, perhaps it’s better to avoid association that would produce cannibalization, avoiding certain keywords that may steal your thunder.

 

18. Track Your Competitors’ Organic Keywords

 

Unlike paid keywords, organic ranking speaks for itself about the content and link building strategy of your competition. Identifying keywords and competitors separately helps you monitor the way each of them evolves in the niche.

 

It’s essential not to try creating promotion tactics without consulting the market and have a good overview of their performance and reasons so that you can leverage them to your advantage. Site Explorer shows you the top 20 keywords ranking in SERP. 

 

 

19. Monitor Your Competitor’s Site Indexation

 

Monitoring the way your site is indexed allows you to understand which content helps most and improve both your on-page and your off-page endeavors in order to gain popularity in SERPs.

 

 

Of course, you’ll also know which pages are indexed and which not. Search for your site on Google and see how many results you’re returned. This may not seem clear enough until compared with your competitors’ performance, using the same method. While page indexing follows complex algorithms, including a site map, bookmarks and offsite content, spying on your competitors’ strategies can help you perform better.

 

For instance, blog content is crawled more often than a static website. Maybe seeing your competitor writing a blog post about their new feature on the site and linking to it will give you the idea to do the same in order to help the crawler easily find your content.

About Us and Contact pages start being more comprehensive and more customer-centric, as the search engines find it relevant to provide useful information to their users, therefore influencing the way your site is being crawled and indexed.

 

20. Track Your Competitors’ A/B Testing on Prices to Learn What Works Best for Them

 

Being a detective doesn’t always require a pipe, an old school hat and a long, dark coat. It mostly takes common sense and dedication towards your objectives. Of course, this and not rushing to a conclusion. I’ve mentioned before that we should be reluctant to hurried conclusions, as they may be the result of superficial analyses.

Instead, monitor all the aspects of your competition’s business and you can gain business intelligence and benchmark your results.

 

 

 

For instance, knowing competitors’ online prices allows you to get a good image of what a convenient pricing policy from your site should look like. Have they increased their prices? Maybe it’s time you made a discount to the following 100 customers. Be agile!

 

Using a dedicated crawler may help you be more specific and thorough when it comes to finding the most recent and exhaustive web pages. While using the search engine’s crawler can bring you great insight, when it comes to specific niches, it’s better to be more detail-oriented in your approach.

 

21. Stay Ahead of the Game by Tracking Your Competitors’ Facebook Pages

 

Insight on the social media progress can help you monetize your content marketing investment.

 

From posting at the right hours to only sharing interesting content that engages your audience, everything you want to know about Facebook performance lies in tracking Facebook pages whenever you think their strategies may divulge something of crafting successful businesses.

 

Pages to Watch by Facebook is an opportunity for businesses that have a page with more than 100 likes to analyze a ton of great suggested pages in their industry. It is a good practice for strengthening any social media strategy and get content ideas from direct competitors. 

 

 

Additionally, you can compare different Facebook performances of your competition and match them a sum of reasons for which their visibility progress looks a certain way.

 

You can get compared statistics on the pages’ performance in a time interval of your choice. Their rate of success can be associated with the posts they shared in that time frame. Correlating these two sets of data can give you fresh ideas for strategic promotion.

 

22. Track Your Competitors’ Twitter Followers to Learn Their Follower Growth Strategies

 

As relevant as monitoring the Facebook pages of your competitors can be monitoring the Twitter performance – of course, this can vary from an industry to another and from a geographic area to another.

 

Klear – Social Analytics tracks the fan base growth on Twitter and other social networks over time for brands and profiles, both for you and your competitors. You can use it to keep track of your social media performance during a time frame.

 

 

Depending on your niche, you might even weigh a site’s Twitter performance more than the one on Facebook, as in some niches it seems to be preferred for industry networking. From a marketing point of view, it’s there where most of the juicy conversations happen.

 

 

23. Track Your Competitors Youtube Views & Subscribers

 

As we’ve addressed the potential issues of different platforms, it’s quite necessary to talk about Youtube.

 

Whether you’ve got a channel through which you’re giving away great tutorials or your entire business is centered on Youtube, you should be up to date with your competition’s performance. Take a look at your competitor’s daily evolution and better understand the reasons behind their success – and maybe get an impulse to implement them yourself.

 

 

ChannelMeter provides you with YouTube analytics on different types of performance, from cumulative views to the number of subscribers and the daily evolution of a channel. Comparing channel performances gives you pragmatic insight on what goes best in your niche.

 

24. Study the Historical SEO Visibility of Your Competitors & Understand Their Growth Trends

 

What’s most useful about this widget is that we most often know what the former strategies of our competitors used to be.

Associating a performance level to their tactics may help you understand what worked and what not and, of course, establish which factors were temporary and which permanent.

After this, trying out some complementary steps that would work with your ongoing plans could help us boost our visibility and results.

 

 

The Search Visibility metric measures the performance of a site during the last two years, which makes it a very powerful chart if you’re tempted to debunk your competitors’ ups and downs, along with their strategies.

 

The results of this chart make a wonder when paired with the Wayback Machine, overlapping the content, link building and digital marketing strategies used by your competitors with the associated results.

 

IV. Beat Your Competitors at Their Own Game

 

25. Dominate Your Niche by Running In-depth SEO Visibility Audits

 

It’s not advised to make content marketing strategies at the expense of context, regardless of how individual you wish your brand to be seen as. It’s always best to know how every competitor in the niche is performing to have a consistent viewpoint.

 

 

As you can see above in the comparison of the sites in the niche of tires in the UK, unmasking the performance of your direct and indirect competitors helps building solid and pragmatic strategies to boost web performance.

It’s impossible to be top-line when you haven’t demystified the links and ties that dictate who the influencers are.

 

26. Identify Link Building & Growth Strategies Using Advanced Backlink Fingerprinting Techniques

 

The mechanism of ranking relies, among many other factors, on being able to identify what works in terms of link building – a natural profile with social media shares and good authority doesn’t grow on trees.

 

 

That is why looking over the fence allows you to see which eccentric and unconventional strategies are used, depending on the marketing objectives. As mentioned above, being linked by blogs usually comes with a higher social media engagement rate, which you can later analyze in our InBound Link Analysis module.

 

Clearly, there’s no universal rule, nor is there a recipe, just a bunch of approaches that work better than others.

 

27. Advanced Content Marketing Full Niche Audit Strategy

Relativity works in physics, love and copywriting equally.

 

Your social media premise should always be flexible, to the extent where content is almost exclusively delivered to correspond to the readers’ interest, the top hours when they’re most active and, of course, identifying patterns.

 

 

However, it’s not impossible to outline generic tendencies and try to leverage them to your advantage.

 

Conclusion

 

There’s no easy way to spy on your competition and it’s not as easy as math – because, unlike math, a pattern is never objectively defined when it comes to social media trends. It’s empirically observed and compared to a ton of criteria that spin the wheel of your audience.

 

What’s your source of inspiration when it comes to getting insights from your competitors?

 

Note: This article is an improved version of an older one we had. We considered this article to be valuable for those interested in outranking their competitors and the information needed a refresh because the online market is evolving very quickly. 

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