How bloggers can find their competitor blogs? – First step to competitor analysis

Do you want to be a successful blogger? Do you want to  increase traffic to your blog? After all of your effort, you are not getting enough traffic to your website. It is because of your competitors who are taking your potential readers. They are being able to beat you for many of your main keywords. DAMN! Are they so cruel? But they can be horrible if you are not alert now and take necessary competitor analysis. But who are your competitors and how to find your competitor blogs?

Do you really know your competitors? Probably you are just following leaders or most popular blogs of your blogging niche. But they are actually not your competitors. Why so? I mean if both of you are blogging on same subject then why you can not consider them as your competitor? This question may come in your mind, RIGHT? Okay let me give you an example of your work place (considering you are working in an office). Suppose your promotion is due in next financial year. Then you are definitely competing with somebody who are also eligible for that promotion. But if he will get that promotion then you may loose that promotion.

In such scenario who may your competitor? Your boss or company’s CEO or your colleague who joined with you or maximum one or two years senior or junior person?  Certainly last one. Because you can get inspiration from your boss or CEO but you are actually competing with your same rank colleagues. You can only beat them if you work hard and prove yourself as an efficient employee.

Same thing happens in case of blogging. Leaders of your blogging niche are your inspiration, not your competitors. If you want to compete with them right from the beginning then you will not succeed. So know your actual competitor blogs, do competitor analysis and build your strategy in each phase of your blogging journey. It will help you to shorten each time frame and compete with your niche leaders very soon :).

okay now come to the point. Who are your competitors? How to find them? ANY GUESS?

NOPE? Then let’s find your competitors …..

1. Know your main keywords
2. Find a list of blogs which are focused on those keywords 
3. Gather information of those blogs in details
4. Find each of your competitor blogs

START your competitor analysis, beat them at each step and succeed.

Know your main keywords

You are writing keeping SEO issues in your mind then you certainly know your main keywords. If you do not know your main keywords then you are actually not owning your blog and not driving your blog with any goal rather your blog is driving you and you are just clueless. I do not think it is your case. But do not worry if still you are close to that situation because there are several tools to find out main organic keywords for any blog. Some of those tools are free and some of those tools are premium tools. If you do not want to pay a single penny for keyword research then you can use free tool.

There are a lot of free tools but I prefer to use SEMrush.com which is premium tool but you can still use free features. You can check main organic keywords (upto 5 keywords) for each target country by using this tool.

But I do not think that you need a tool to know YOUR KEYWORDS  🙂

Find a list of blogs which are focused on those keywords

Now you just need at-least 5-8 main keywords and your blog is those keywords oriented. So your next step will be find out some blogs which are also focused on those keywords and target audience of those blogs should be same as your target audience. Here you should concentrate on countries from where those blogs are getting maximum traffic.

This is very easy to find out but you need little patience to do.

First you just need to search on Google for each main keywords and maintain a list of atleast 20 blogs for each keyword. If possible then check till last page of Google SERPs. You can use some tools to extract information of SERPs or do it manually.

Gather information of those blogs in details

Now you have a long list of blogs of your niche. You can ignore multi niche blogs or  blogs which are not looking so professional or not updating since a long period. So you have a list of your current competitors and future competitors. Now gather some specific information regarding those blogs.

Check domain authority
Find Alexa rank
Check organic traffic by using SEMrush.com
Note number of backlinks to those sites
Domain age

Check domain authority

Check domain authority of each blog. It is a measure to know SERPs ranking potential of that blog. It includes backlinks to that domain and other metrics to calculate its domain authority.

You need to visit moz.com website, click on Free SEO Tool, then click on Open Site Explorer. After that type site URL and then search. Now you can see website traffic authority of that blog.

Find Alexa rank

Alexa.com is a popular website which offer an analytics tool to know website traffic statistics and its rank (global rank as well as country specific rank).

You have to open alexa.com website and click on website traffic statistic  under  competitive intelligence tool, or directly use this URL www.alexa.com/siteinfo/blog URL (replace blog URL with a specific blog URL).

Check organic traffic by using SEMrush.com

Organic traffic is a vital statistic to compare two websites. Though it is very very difficult to know actual organic traffic unless site owner himself share it. But still you can get an idea about organic traffic by using some tools.

SEMrush.com is most preferred tool. Though it is a premium tool but as said earlier you can get information regarding organic traffic of a site from its free feature. Note that information available from this tool.

Note number of backlinks to those blogs

Backlink is another key measure to understand strength of a site considering SEO point of view. Though quality of backlink always matters but it is another measure to understand its potential organic traffic.

Domain age

Search engines trust old domains. So if you compare two blogs where one domain is just two months old and another one is two years old. Then chances of getting higher rank on SERPs is more for two years old domain. Though you can say only this once if you ignore all other factors. 🙂 Because if somebody work hard and do right SEO then a new site can get higher rank.

But still it is better to know domain age. You have to visit smallseotools.com/domain-age-checker/  Check this site to check domain age of a site.

If you know any other link then please share with other readers by leaving a comment below.

Find each of your competitor blogs

Now you have all information and statistics to choose right competitor blogs for you.

If you are new blogger then select a blog with domain authority 20±2, otherwise choose blogs with DA more than 10 of  your DA. Considering blog with little higher will always give you scope of improvement and motivation to work harder but still achievable.

Alexa rank few years back was very important but today it is being insignificant. Because nowadays it is showing improper statistics and it is reported by many bloggers but still you can consider it to some extent.

Organic traffic statistics is very important to find competitor blogs for further competitor analysis. If you have any doubt or different tools are showing different data then you can consider number of backlinks (root domain link back to that blog) to choose right stat.

Domain age is important when you have a long list of competitor sites then use domain age to shorten list.

Also read
Best blog commenting guide to get backlinks from right blogs
How to build internal links?  (Is it critical for your food blog?)

Finding competitors is first task for your blog’s competitor analysis

This strategy is very useful and help you to find right competitor. So if you like it then please share this on social media to let others know.