5 Ways You Can Improve Your Business - Analysing Your Competitors' Web Traffic

You've probably already got Google Analytics and other valuable tools set up to track things like the volume of traffic on your site, which queries bring people to your business, and which blog posts perform the best, but what about your competition?

No business ever operates in a vacuum, so as much as you can — and should — gather data about your web traffic, conversion rates, and social media performance, you shouldn't ignore what's happening around you.

You can learn many valuable things when you analyze website traffic for your competition. These insights can help you refine your product development, market positioning, audience segmentation, marketing strategy, and more.

Here are five ways to use competitor web traffic analysis to boost your business performance.

1. Sharpen your position in the market

Seek out businesses that are your closest competition, and check their traffic volumes, conversion rates, or any other KPI that you're striving to improve. Use these as benchmarks to identify your position within the market and then track the progress of your new marketing campaigns, sales messaging, and so forth.

See how various aspects of competitor sites are performing in relation to yours. If their site is outperforming yours in one or more KPIs, look for the factors that give them the edge. Don't just pat yourself on the back if it's the other way around. Work out which are your winning features and double down on them.

With competitor web traffic analysis, you can refine your USP, tweak your positioning, and establish greater brand recognition. Compare the language, images, and value terms they use to describe their business with the ones you use for yours. If you can't see much difference between them, nor will potential customers, so take it as a sign that you need to do more to differentiate yourself.

2. Identify the most popular content types

Analyzing web traffic across several competitors, not just one, gives you insight into the types of content that perform best for your target audience.

For example, do visitors prefer short blog posts or long ebooks and white papers? Do they respond well to gated content, or does it put them off? Is there a preference for certain media types, like video, podcasts, or text-only?

With these insights, you can adapt your content marketing strategies. With guidance from your competitors' experiences and your own, you can make better decisions about which mix of content types, lengths, and styles is most effective for your target audience.

3. Refine your product

There are many routes to the information you need about customers' pain points and motivations, and your competition's web traffic data shouldn't go overlooked. Investigate their website search data to see which products visitors look for the most often and whether or not they find what they're looking for. A gap in the market allows you to fill it.

Search for the product pages that are visited the most often. If they have a high conversion rate, you'll know that these have the features that prospects desire, and you should include them in your solution. On the other hand, product pages with a high bounce rate are missing something that customers need. Maybe you can tweak your product in response.

Don't overlook the pricing page. The pages visitors check out after the pricing page can help you understand how they view your competitors' pricing and how they value their product so that you can adjust your own pricing rules accordingly.

4. Look for inspiration for new blog posts

Sometimes it can be tough to come up with great material for blog posts or videos, but ironically, your competitors can help.

Explore their top-performing blog posts to see which have the most shares, likes, and comments, look for topics you haven't thought of and issues you can address with a fresh approach.

Among the best things to look for are blog posts with many visitors but a high bounce rate. This tells you that the topic attracts a lot of interest among your target audience, but the post itself is poorly written or doesn't deliver enough value, so you can capitalize on their interest.

5. Seek out top influencers

As well as guiding you to successful topics, content types, and messaging, your competitors can also help you with content distribution.

Examine which links, sites, and channels drive the most traffic to their best-performing web pages and who shares the most of your competitors' content.

This helps reveal which influencers you could target with your content or affiliate links and guide you to the most valuable channels and platforms for your social media marketing.

Competitor analysis can be your key to success.

Using competitor analysis tools to scan and assess your rivals' web traffic patterns gives you an edge that you can use to power business success. By helping you discover the best content types, topics, and distribution channels, tweak your product positioning, and find your weak points to strengthen and strong points to double down on, your competitors can be your greatest gift.