There’s a huge difference between organic traffic and non-organic traffic. If you’re looking to monetize your site, it’s so important to be ranking organically. We all know how hard it is to get those first few spots in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Not only do you need quality content, but you also need to outrank your competitors. One way to rank is by doing keyword research and an on-page optimization audit.

Step One: Keyword Research

The first thing you should do when researching your competition is to find their websites and keywords. This may seem like a no-brainer but it’s important not just because it will give you a feel for who they are as a company, but also so that you can find out what keywords they’re targeting—keywords that could be ranking above yours if you aren’t paying attention. The easiest way to do this is by using a tool like ahrefs.com, which lets you see keywords your competitors are ranking for on the SERP.

Here is an example of what you can do with ahrefs in your keyword research. Let’s say we’re trying to rank for the term, smart deadbolt. You can see there are some keywords that have a lot of search volume but are not being targeted by our competitors. Searching for specific terms and long-tail versions of your keyword like, smart deadbolt lock with camera on Google will show us a list of websites that are ranking for that term. From there, you can pull a list of organic keywords they’re ranking for on ahrefs or a similar SEO tool. This technique will provide you with a list of potential target keywords.

While you’re performing your competitive research– keep an eye on content length and optimizations your competitors are making.

Step Two: Competitive Analysis

Once you’ve done the research, it’s time to compare what you find with your own keywords and see where you could include new keywords to rank for. This keyword gap analysis can help you target and rank for new keywords. It can also give you a better idea of how much content your page should have on it.

Step Three: Content Analysis

After comparing your keywords with those of your competitors, the next part is figuring out why their keywords are ranking higher than yours. The reasons could be as follows: website age, site speed, better-targeted content, and backlinks (among others).

Step Four: On-Page Optimizations

Once you have this information, you can use it as a foundation for your own organic traffic. After all, if you aren’t ranking, you won’t get any traffic. Some ideas for improving your ranking include: Adding more relevant keywords to the meta title and meta description of your pages, optimizing your on-page SEO by writing high-quality content that people want to read, publishing fresh new posts on a regular basis (at least once a week), using active internal linking to make it easy for Google to crawl your website, making sure there is a good user experience by avoiding disruptive ads and toolbars, and building backlinks.

This article is an in-depth guide to how you can research your competition and crush them for good. Here, you’ll learn how to find their websites and keywords so that you can determine why they are ranking higher than yours on the search engine result page (SERPs). You’ll also get ideas for increasing your own organic traffic by using these findings as a foundation. Which of these SEO strategies have you used or plan on implementing? Let us know!