How to Conduct Digital Competitive Analysis? Stay One Step Ahead of Your Competitors

Competition in the digital marketplace is becoming increasingly fierce. Accurately analyzing your competitors’ strategies allows you to foresee opportunities and threats and stay one step ahead. In this guide, we define digital competitive analysis and present a step-by-step process you can apply.

What Is Digital Competitive Analysis?

Digital competitive analysis is the systematic examination and comparison of your competitors’ performance across SEO, content, social media, technology infrastructure, and pricing. The goal is to identify strengths and weaknesses to optimize your own strategy.

Step-by-Step Digital Competitive Analysis Process

1. Identify Competitors

Select competitors in your industry and target geography with similar size and product/service portfolios. The right comparison group increases the accuracy of your analysis.

• Example: An e-commerce site listed both local and national platforms with similar traffic volumes as competitors.

2. Data Collection

Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, and Google Alerts to gather competitors’ organic traffic, keyword rankings, and backlink profiles.

• Example: A SaaS firm analyzed the top 10 traffic-driving keywords on competitors’ product pages using Ahrefs.

3. SWOT Analysis

Identify each competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the digital context. This clarifies your strategic priorities.

• Example: A bank in the financial sector noted competitors’ weak mobile apps as an opportunity.

4. Review Performance Metrics

Compare key metrics:

• Organic & Paid Traffic: Mix and growth rate of organic vs. paid traffic
• Backlink Profile: Domain authority (DA) and number of backlinks
• Content Semantics: Freshness, depth of coverage, and user engagement
• Site Speed & UX: PageSpeed scores and mobile compatibility
• Social Media Engagement: Engagement rates and post frequency

• Example: A retail chain measured a competitor’s mobile site speed with PageSpeed and planned its own optimization strategy.

5. Pricing and Offer Analysis

Compare competitors’ product/service prices, subscription models, and promotional strategies along with their value propositions.

• Example: A SaaS platform developed a pricing flexibility strategy by tabulating competitors’ monthly and annual subscription packages.

6. Reporting and Action Plan

Prepare a report with short-, medium-, and long-term strategic recommendations based on the data. Clarify priority actions.

• Example: A fintech company included a “content update schedule” in its three-month action plan as specified in the report.

7. Continuity and Monitoring

Make the analysis routine by setting up competitive alerts (Google Alerts), periodic tool reports, and KPI tracking mechanisms.

• Example: A logistics firm began monitoring competitors’ backlink profiles monthly using SimilarWeb.

Strategic Recommendations

By regularizing your digital competitive analysis, you can stay ahead of your competitors. Our recommendations:

• Define critical metrics and set up dashboards.
• Turn competitors’ weaknesses into opportunities.
• Prioritize content and UX improvements.
• Periodically update pricing and promotional strategies.
• Automate the analysis process to save time.

Start your competitive analysis today and stay one step ahead!

• Gürkan Azlağ
• 28 July 2021, 23:13:04