1. Dissect Competitor SEO Strategy
In a world full of shady marketing and SEO tactics, it can be easy to get pulled to the Dark Side. Fortunately, you can scratch that itch by spying on the competition without crossing any ethical lines.
Many SEO tools, like SEMrush or Raven Tools allow you to dig into your competition’s SEO strategy.
Not only can you see their traffic numbers and rankings, but identify where their backlinks are coming from and how their content is performing across platforms.
Backlink Profile
One of the sneakiest ways to spy on your competitors is to use SEO tools to see their backlink profile. Here, you can see what websites their backlinks are coming from, the authority of these sites, the anchor text, and much more.
Then, you can lay out a game plan for reaching out to those same sites to generate links to your own website. No need to scour the web for industry domains – you can generate a list of opportunities in a matter of seconds.
Keyword Opportunities
Generating a list of keyword opportunities can get more difficult the longer you are in the SEO game. You may have hit a wall and aren’t sure what pieces of content to build out next.
With SEO tools, you can see which new and existing keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can then add these terms to your own list, use the tools to identify related keywords, and even consider expanding to new markets.
SEO tools like SEMrush are capable of generating thousands of keyword ideas at once. Never be at a loss for blog post ideas or new web pages ever again.
2. Save Time and Money on Manual SEO Audits
Comprehensive SEO audits deliver a wealth of knowledge when it comes to identifying website issues. Unfortunately, in-depth audits often time loads of time and money to generate by hand.
SEO tools can cut this time and cost in half while delivering the same (or better) quality of results.
Screaming Frog is a fantastic, free crawling tool that identifies loads of potential issues with your site, such as:
Orphaned pages.
Missing page titles.
Missing meta descriptions.
Broken links.
Poor page depth.
Page server errors.
And more.
Other tools, like SEMrush and Majestic, automate this process completely, pulling a range of information into an easy-to-read report. You can generate these reports for yourself or your clients for as little as $100 per month.
These reports are a roadmap for what needs to be fixed on the website – from on-page SEO to content to links to load speed. Working from an SEO audit is the surest way to build a rock-solid SEO foundation for your site.