Analyze competitor content

1. Identify your biggest competitors to compare data accurately.

Find the companies that offer the same products as you and operate in your same geographic location. Also identify companies that offer different products, but could satisfy a similar customer need or solve the same problem.

2. Take an inventory of your competitor's content to identify opportunities to outperform them.

Find out the level of content investment and format types their audience enjoys. Track findings on a spreadsheet. Examples of content include: Newsletter and emails: Subscribe to their newsletters and find out what they deem valuable to send to their customers and prospects. Blog articles: See different topics and keywords they’re using to attract visitors. Note the topics, length, style, tone, and keywords. White papers and ebooks: Evaluate these to identify key target topics and whether there are reviews and testimonials that show how the audience has received them. Videos: Analyze the quality of video, length, quality, and effects and find out how often they share videos. Podcasts and audio recordings: See how your competitor operates and their thoughts on different topics. Analyze language and whether it’s industry-specific or general. Webinars: Note the topics, frequency, and whether the webinars are recorded or live. Slides and PowerPoint presentations: Evaluate slides and presentations to determine product content and thought leadership. Infographics: Analyze the quality of design and data in the infographic. FAQs: Evaluate the questions that the competitor’s audience frequently asks and the solutions that the competitor offers.

3. Analyze how often your competitors are sharing and updating content, their extent of focus, and audience response. Assess engagement levels by checking comments, shares, and tags.

In your spreadsheet, input and track: Topics they’re discussing. Channels they’re using to share content, for example, Medium, YouTube, ebook downloads, or blogs. Quantity of content: Whether it’s 20 posts, 5 videos, 9 webinars, 1 presentation. Frequency of sharing: 3 posts a week, 1 ebook a month, infrequent, or 1 event a month. Quality of content: whether it’s low, medium, or high based on quality details like 500 words with <10 comments and 30+ shares or poor video quality with <40 views.

4. Evaluate your competitor's SEO structure to find the keywords that your competitors are using and create a list of keywords to target.

Also, find out how they place keywords in: The URL.  Title. H1 and H2 tags. Content. Internal and external links. Image alt text.

5. Tag and evaluate content topics, titles, and descriptions to surface content marketing gaps that will serve as opportunities for you.

Start with recently published content or go for the most popular channels and pieces. Tag each piece with a topic. Analyze trends by tracking the quality and quantity of content coverage by topic. This will create a map that shows how to set yourself apart and win with your content marketing.

6. Evaluate social media content to see what your competitors are posting on different platforms.

This is similar to the items that you tracked earlier in your spreadsheet, but now review content differences based on the platform. Assess: Type of content: text, video, infographic, or image. Frequency of posting: the number of times they’re posting in a week. Language and word choice: formal or informal. Time of day they post: morning, mid-day, evening, or night, or at specific times. Engagement: also based on time and day.

7. Use content analysis tools like SEMrush and BuzzSumo to monitor competitor content on different platforms.

SEMrush shows your rank, your competitors’ rank, SEO and content errors, and backlink quality. It also gives you insights into keywords. BuzzSumo shows your content performance, backlink quality, and brand mentions.

8. Compare your content performance and strategy with that of your competitors. Adjust content that doesn't meet the standard you want to set for your business.

Standards include quality, quantity, distribution, and frequency. For example, if they consistently publish long-form blog posts every week, you’ll know why they’re getting more quality leads than you. Then you’ll start writing longer blog posts and sharing them frequently to stay competitive.