Keywords: Anybody know how to find which keywords your competitors are converting?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

I'm ranking on page 1 for some pretty good keywords, in NZ and 1 for australia, slowing making it up the ranks for USA, however I can see that my competitors only use PPC, is there anyway I can see which keywords they are targeting and getting the most from?

I'm now thinking perhaps I'm going for the wrong keywords:  I don't have any access to SEM rush, and gathered that was one way to find these.

Any ideas around this, or perhaps how to find which keywords I should be better targeting.

Cheers

[Stramark]

The keyword someone is converting on is the big question in any business. And it is also dependend on the vendor. If you are trying to sell high end stuff. Advertizing with "cheap" may be the converting keyword for your competitor, but not for you.

What you can do is extensive keyword research. Try to find a great number of keywords based on your knowledge from you business. use ubersuggest and keyword planner ( do not kick keywords out, you want many!)

Then run all these keywords against google organic and paid. Check for what keywords your competitors are paying. (us a tool like Advanced Webranking)

Always keep thinking for yourself! Some competitors might not have their campaign in order so they spend money on everything.

You could also put the keywords in the keyword planner and see how much is being paid suggested by the keyword planner.

But all this is still guestimation. The keyword planner is not that good and reliable. you will have to test for yourself using adwords. if your adwords budget is limited, limit it to a specific area and extrapolate the results to the rest of your countries.

[ClaytonJ]

As Stratmark has stated that is the million dollar question.

I use intuition and combine the following:-

On tools:-

The two primary tools I use are "Semrush" & "Similarweb" - I then cross check with various of the Moz tools. Combining the excel spread sheets of semrush & similarweb is fascinating and often provides significant keyword signals.

That said it is more than keywords it is their overall strategy if successful or above you needs to be understood.

Source Code:-

Review their source code - it is gold for finding how a company operates. ie If they use Optimizely they are probably getting traffic but not converting well. Hence focused on the user experience. So it maybe the same problem as yourself... non-conversion. If they are using Bounce Media - they have alot of money to be spent on paid but have no internal expertise and are are hoping volume will succeed. Lucky dip. So forget them.

Google:-

Most SEO companies spend their time bragging about a client or a success on their blog or website. They often give away insights - % numbers, in short gold for competitors or for to learn about a competitor. I often I find the best insights including keywords or areas of focus from combining source code and then reviewing the blogs or customer stories on the SEO companies websites.

Linked In

Find out who the Competitors Digital head, or Marketing head have in their connections - again often the people they join agencies or people within - then they detail in their profiles "their strategies". People are lazy and generally repetitive ie they use the strategy once and then repeat it with different companies. Once you know the strategy then it is easy to understand what they do to drive traffic. How they are going to chase it.

The Interview

This is my personal favorite (may get me moz blacklisted) - but just go in for an interview with your competitor - so if they offer up a job, send in a resume and go for the job. Then all I do is ask 100 questions... What is their most important keyword!  They will tell you...

Overall hard work, alot of fun. Relentless never give up until the competitor is crushed!  Any questions please feel free to ask...

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Justin

While it won't show you what is converting, check out SEMRush. It's a great tool that will show you what competitors are ranking for, the estimated traffic they are getting for that keyword, as well as the landing page.

The beauty with this tool is that you can research from both a SEO and paid perspective.

You can learn more about the features and tools here.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!