Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is growing in importance for any business operating online. The reason? SEO is one of the main ways people find your brand online – using SEO writing amongst other tactics – so where you rank is crucial.

After all, the number one spot on Google gets a 27 percent click-through rate compared to only a 0.63 percent CTR for Google’s second page according to Backlinko.

An SEO competitive analysis (as an add-on to a full digital marketing competitive analysis) will allow you to see what your competitors are doing with SEO and how you compare to them.

It will highlight the strengths and weaknesses so you can create a strategy that helps you stay ahead of them in the rankings (Google and otherwise). There are five key steps you carry out in a competitive analysis:

• Identify your competitors
• Analyze their SEO strategy
• Analyze their keywords
• Analyze their on-page optimization
• Analyze their backlinks

So let’s dive in and see how to do competitive analysis in SEO.