Beating the Competition with Competitive Analysis (Nik Ranger with Jason Barnard)

Sitting in CitizenM in Shoreditch, we start talking about pizza parties. Then onto horses - should we run like a blinkered horse, and concentrate on what we are doing and focus on the finish line? Or should we look left and right at our competitors? Nik argues the latter, plus think about context and perhaps we should open our horizons by exchanging with other people. We should now be taking into account the rich elements and perhaps look at the opportunities to rank on those and leapfrog the competition (coming back yet again to the explanation Gary Illyes gave me). That means having a very good look at your competitors' content strategy, but also prioritising the pages you are aiming to rank, especially when you are working on a tight budget. We get carried away with mentions of tools: Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Accuranker, Majestic, Sitebulb. Then get back on track. It turns out that when you have budget, you can perhaps be a blinkered horse. If you have limited resources, you need to pick your battles. SEMrush is great for competitor analysis and perfect for picking your battles.