There probably isn’t a guy out there who didn’t at one point or another as a kid wish someone would come up with X-Ray vision to sneak a peek at the cute girl he had a crush on. X-Ray vision (and flying) is probably one of Superman’s most enviable powers.
Well, fellow bloggers and people trying to make money blogging, today is your LUCKY day!
Thanks to SEMRush, you can literally pull back the curtain and spy on your competition. Take a peek under hood at what they’re ranking for, which brings you one step closer to outdoing them!
For those who missed it, check out my last post on SEMRush and how this valuable tool can help you form a laser focused plan for your blog: How To Use SEMRush To Refine Your Blog Targeting Plan.
Today I want to show you how you can very easily look at your competition, and what to do with this info. But before we get started, you might be asking yourself, “Why would I care about spying on another site in my niche?” Plain and simple, the best way to boost your site’s traffic is by taking over the top spots for search terms in the organic results. Beat out your competition and you will get significantly more traffic than their sites.
What’s more, looking at what your competitors are ranking well for can give you some great ideas about other things to focus on. Sometimes we just need a little thinking outside the box to take things to the next level.
Here’s how you can spy on your competition:
- Log into your SEMRush account.
- Enter the domain you want to spy on in the top Search bar.
- Click Search.
- On the left hand column, under Organic Research, click Positions.
That’s it. You’ll see results similar to this:
There are some other options under the Organic Research section. Play around with them to see other interesting info, but the Positions section will give you PLENTY to fill your time as you work on building up your site. One you may want to look at, though, is the Competitors link. That will show you the main competitors to the site you performed the original search on.
So what do you do with this info? Lots of things. Here are some initial questions to ask yourself:
- What keywords is the site ranking for that fit into my keyword profile? (In other words, is there low hanging fruit you should be going after?)
- What topic ideas can I gather from what my competition is doing?
- How is my competitor ranking well for the keywords? (Take a look at their site and see if you can deconstruct it. The provided URL in the results screen will give you a good start.)
- What are they ranking well for that might make a good topic for a niche site?
Those are just some off the top of my head. There’s so much that can be done with this SERP data checker , that you likely will never run out of things to try. If nothing else, having an understanding of what your competition is doing will make you a better blogging and ultimate help you make money blogging more quickly than others who choose to not take the time to do some research.
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