6 Ways To Conduct SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis In 2023

“Keep your friends close, and enemies closer”

Sun Tzu.

We don’t think he had any idea that this concept can also be applied to SaaS SEO. 

Competitor Analysis when it comes to SaaS SEO, holds great importance, as it’s the best way to fill the gaps that your competitors are creating, and prove to your target audience why you’re the best for them. 

SaaS is considered the most important technology in business success and by 2024 SaaS will be an industry of over $168 billion. Seeing this growth rate of SaaS, it’s important to keep an eye on your competitors, if you want to leave a mark. 

Chances are your SaaS is not as unique as you might think. And if your product is not unique and already has established competitors in the market, then SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis can help you gain customers and signups. 

How? 

How SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis helps?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is done to help your target audience find you with the help of organic content. You optimize your website, blogs, and separate pages so that you can rank for certain keywords. 

But, how do you rank for keywords, such as “live chat”, when giants like hubspot, zendesk and intercom are already ruling the space?  

Simple. You conduct a competitive analysis. You dig through each of these websites, check out their content, and SEO strategies, try to find out what’s missing, and then fill the gap with your content. 

Sounds easy right? 

But why should you conduct an SEO competitor analysis? Let me give you three strong reasons why. 

Why you should conduct a Competitor Analysis?

“SaaS brands have to know who their competitors are and what they rank for. Working with a tool that shows you all of this information will give you insight into what pages your competitors have focused on, what keywords they’re targeting, and how they’re formulating their content to rank. You have to know what you’re up against before you can create a strategy that will make you competitive.”  

Nathan Blair, Marketing specialist for Nozzle.io

By conducting a competitor analysis, you get one step ahead of your competitors. 

Your competitors have already published hundreds of pieces of content, and they know what is working for them. Doing competitor research will help you analyze what can work for you as well, and how you can make it better. 

Keyword Research, Trend analysis, and Competition levels for targeted keywords can help you understand the topics that are working in the market, and how you can tap into the research with your own unique twist!

Doing competitor research doesn’t mean that you need to steal your competitor’s content. It means taking inspiration from them, analyzing what’s working/not working for them, and how you can take advantage of the gaps they’re creating.

“It is essential to analyze your competitors to devise a plan to outrank them. The analysis should include keyword analysis, backlink analysis, keyword gap analysis, internal link analysis, and content analysis.”

Augustin A, Senior SEO Analyst at SyndicationPro.

6 ways to conduct a SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis 

If you want to refresh your current SEO strategy, create a new one from scratch, or just keep your competitor at bay, then these 6 tips will help you get started with your efforts. 

It’s time to wear your Sherlock Hat. 

1. Discover your competitors

The first step in conducting competitor research is actually knowing who your competitors are. You can find out about your competitors using- 

• Google Search Bar or Search Engines to find your competitors with keywords that you use or they use. 
• SaaS review websites like Crunchbase, G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius.

For example,- You can go to the Google Search bar and type in project management tools. The drop-down of the sites ranking for that search term can be your competitors. 

Keep a track of all these websites, and their links in an excel sheet, so that you can do further research. Try to find out 7 competitors using search engines. 

2. Identify competitors’ primary keywords

Once you have a list of 7 websites, you need to analyze their main keywords. You can do this with the help of Keyword Research tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Ubersuggest, etc. 

“For our client’s SEO campaigns, we always start by using a variety of tools, including SEO darlings Semrush and Moz, to export complete lists of all website content that competitors have created. We use Excel formulas to segment the lists by media type (press release, webinar, blog, whitepaper, checklist, etc). Then we look to see what content has been most successful for each company.”

Ryan Draving, Co-Owner and Head of Strategy

Using these keyword research tools, you can do a keyword gap analysis. This will help you identify all the keywords your competitors are ranking for, getting the most traffic from, and how you can use these keywords to rank higher. 

Keyword Research is a very important step in the SEO process. Make sure you take out the team and identify the keywords that bring in more traffic, and leads. 

3. Find sites linking to your competitors

Backlinks are an important part of competitor analysis, and this is something we the team at SaaSLinko thrive in. 

Having relevant, useful, and high authority backlinks can take your SEO game to the next level. While conducting a backlink analysis, you need to search for all the websites that link to your competitors and not you. 

Your job is to make a list of all these websites, and then pitch them with your content and a link-building opportunity. You can use tools like:

• Moz Link Explorer
• Ahrefs Site Explorer
• SEMRush Backlink Gap Tool

“First, you identify your top competitors. Then, you use a tool like Ahrefs to find the backlinks that they have. Finally, you contact the websites that are linking to your competitors and try to get them to link to you as well. If you can pull this off, then you’ll see a big boost in your search engine rankings.” Jamie, Director of Straight Up Search

Using these tools will give you an overview of the type of content your competitors are creating to get the backlinks, and how they are linking to. Once you have this data ready you can include these backlinking opportunities in your spreadsheet for future use. 

Ahrefs has a link intersect feature, it can help you find the list of websites which are linked to multiple competitors but not your website. 

Saaslinko Pro Tip: If any websites are linked to multiple competitors of yours then there is a high chance that they will link it to you as well.

4. Decode your competitor’s content marketing strategy

“Any good SEO strategy starts with keyword research. But it’s not enough to just find out which keywords are most popular- you also need to determine which keywords your content is missing. That’s where content gap analysis comes in. This involves comparing your content to that of your competitors to see what’s missing.  It might just help you uncover some valuable keywords that you’ve been missing out on.” Jamie, Director of Straight Up Search

Content is key to all your SEO efforts. Nothing will bear tangible and long-term results for your SaaS if you don’t create content that connects and converts your readers into leads, and then into sales. 

Content is the bridge that connects the gap between turning a visitor into a lead/sale. If your content is not valuable, informative, or useful to the reader, then he/she won’t convert into a lead even if you’re ranking #1. 

To gather data from your competitor’s content marketing strategy, you need to check out the content on their, –

• Blog
• Social Media Handles
• Podcasts, Videos, etc. 

You need to understand their content creation, and distribution processes to decode their strategy. Conduct a SWOT Analysis to understand your competitor’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You can do the same for your website as well. 

Their weakness and threats are your opportunity to turn them into your strength and opportunity. You need to figure out why their content is converting so well, and how yours can do better. 

5. Improve your User Experience

Google considers easily navigable websites as a ranking factor. Your website user experience matters a lot when it comes to making the visitor stay, convert, and bring more traffic. 

If your website’s UX/UI is not good, if your website is not easy to navigate, then visitors will leave your site without checking out your content or products. You will end up losing lots of opportunities due to the same reason. 

While researching your competitor’s content, take a look at how they’re structuring their website and their accessibility level through their pages. This will help you improve your website, and increase user experience, making you rank higher on SERPs. 

6. Spy on their Social Media Channels 

Social Media is a great channel to understand how your competitor’s customers are interacting, and what kind of content they’re engaging with. Keep track of how often they’re posting, reasons for posting, and social media strategy. 

You need to understand how much traffic each share, reshare or promotion of their content on social media gets them. This will help you create a strategy to boost traffic through social media when you understand their audience’s preferences.

To perform a Social Media Audit, you can use tools like:

• HootSuite
• Later
• BuzzSumo 

What to Include in your SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis 

If you’re wondering what your Competitor analysis strategy should include, then here’s a list for you. Refer to this list anytime you want to conduct a competitor analysis. 

• Keyword Analysis 
• Backlink Analysis
• Keyword Gap Analysis
• Internal Link Analysis 
• Content Analysis
• UX/UI Comparison 

My 2 Cents

These 6 SaaS SEO Competitor analysis techniques will help you create a game plan that will outrank your competitors, and will help you stand out in your industry. We would like to give up some more tips. 

Adapt your strategy

Based on the above six ways, you need to apart your SEO strategy, not change it. Each and every SaaS is different, and there’s no one size fits all strategy. You need to conduct competitor research, and create your own unique strategy, to get the best results. 

Measure the results and Repeat the process

Now you just need to measure your result, see what works for you, and what doesn’t and then repeat the process.

We hope that this blog helped you with your competitor analysis. Sign up for the SaaSLinko newsletter to get valuable industry insights delivered right to your inbox.