Your competitors are showing you how to beat them at their own game. You just need to know where to look.
How do you create a landing page that beats your competition? Look at what they’re doing. After all, that’s what your buyers do.
By Sally Ofuonyebi
A competitor analysis can help you spot their strong points and weaknesses so you can improve your own conversion rates. These nine SEO and content marketing experts share their tips for evaluating what your competitors do to inform your company’s landing page development.
1. Brainstorm, research, and compare
Rebekah Edwards, CEO at SEO agency Clara, says her research process starts with the target customer: What would they be looking for? What things would they like to see?
“I'll Google terms that come to mind and proceed to analyze landing pages that are ranking on the SERP to see if I locate any that is close to what I'm looking for,” she says. Then, she uses Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool, which looks at the organic search traffic and link profile of any URL. “I reverse engineer the keywords most relevant to my own landing page. From there, I look to the top five pages ranking for those keywords – and that’s where the real competitor research begins,” Rebekah says.
Using a combination of Ahrefs and SimilarWeb, Rebekah looks at their:
She also runs her target keywords through Clearscope to generate latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords that her competitors use on their pages about a similar product/service. It includes an overall content grade based on ranking positions, relevant terms, search volume, page types, and top competitor content:
She says the most effective thing she does is look at the competitor landing pages side by side on both mobile and desktop and jot down her observations.
Look at competitor landing pages side by side on mobile and desktop, and jot down your observations.
2. Make sure you have the right audience
Christopher Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist at Trust Insights, shares his thoughts on how to create landing pages using competitor analysis in the video on this page.
Click to view Christopher Penn's video.
Among his advice is the success of landing pages depends on three things:
Note that the question about the creative is the last one. He says you should resist the temptation to leap into creative optimization until you’re sure you have the right audience and your offer is relevant to them.
To know those answers, do in-depth research into and with your audience – run focus groups, do surveys, and conduct one-on-one interviews. Then, scrutinize competitors’ landing pages and offers.
What are they offering? Discounts, or free shipping? What button colors do they use? What’s their customer experience like? What kinds of images do they use to support their content?
Next, use social analytics and landscape monitoring tools to monitor your audience's conversations about competitor brands. For e-commerce brands, check Amazon reviews; B2B marketers can check reviews on Capterra and G2, among others.
You also can use software like Google Marketing Platform’s Optimize to deliver engaging customer experiences through A/B testing and website personalization (see example in image).
3. Engage with your competitors
To get clearer on what your competitors are doing, you need to interact with them. Take note of both direct and indirect competitors – businesses that sell the same service as you and others who fulfill the same need or solve the same problem. On the Semrush dashboard, click Domain Overview to enter a domain name and see your competitors and related data:
Click on view details under Main Organic Competitors to see the list of your keyword competitors:
Claire Beveridge, freelance blog manager at ConvertKit, advises using Burner Mail – not your company’s – and taking their landing pages and subsequent onboarding experience for a spin. Note factors like:
Click Traffic Analytics on the Semrush dashboard to find the share of traffic top keyword competitors' pages receive, as well as breakdowns of the channels and countries where that traffic comes from. The example below shows traffic data for sites that rank for the keyphrase "subscription boxes."
Analyzing these elements should inform the creation of your landing pages to increase prospect engagement.
4. Research competitors’ keywords further
SEO consultant Nick LeRoy uses a pillar content approach to his landing pages. He says he’s a fan of Ahrefs and Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to determine seed keywords and identify which sites drive the most traffic based on the parent topics:
Based on this information, Nick compiles lists of critical keywords and topics to cover in a new piece of content – the pillar page.
He also encourages reviewing the results in Google search features, such as the People Also Ask section, to note related topics as well as the length of the content. The example below shows a few questions people ask in their queries about subscription boxes:
Don’t forget to include internal links in the content – a step missed by many marketers. “I do this to wrap up my pillar content,” Nick says. “Not only does internal linking help with getting your content discovered (and indexed), it also sends some much-needed internal link equity to this new page.” Brian Piper, director of content strategy at the University of Rochester, recommends using Semrush for keyword gap analysis to see keywords your competitors are ranking for. It can give you ideas for other terms to include on your landing pages. [Article continues on page 6]
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5. Observe commonalities in search rankings
Zoe Ashbridge, SEO strategist at Adriana Stein Marketing, usually uses an SEO angle in creating landing pages. “I want the page to rank for something specific – and rank well,” she says.
She looks up the top SERP results for her target keyword or cluster of keywords. Then, she looks for the common elements of the top-ranking content. For example, if videos appear as the top results (as shown in the image above, captured from a search on “subscription box”), Zoe would consider using a video on her landing page. By modeling your content after the top-ranking results, the landing page is more likely to rank higher in SERPs.
6. Take cues from competitors’ spending
Ad insights are a gold mine to up your landing page game. I love how Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Terkel, explains it: “Follow the money trail.”
Visit the landing pages your competitors pay to promote. If they are spending money to drive traffic to a landing page, it is likely converting, and the advertiser has spent time perfecting it. To identify these presumed high-converting landing pages, click on a few of the sponsored results on the SERP for your keyword(s) to find some commonalities worth repeating on your page.
To go deeper, use tools like Ahrefs and SpyFu to determine your top competitors in the paid ad space and evaluate their pages to get insights for yours. This graphic illustrates what SpyFu details in its most profitable ads and keywords results. It includes listings of keywords based on clicks per month, cost per click, coverage, and top ads based on the keyword.
A profitable ad identified through Spyfu.
7. Get insights from non-number data
Don’t just focus on quantitative analytics. Qualitative data also can be valuable. Shayla Price, content strategist and founder of PrimoStats, says: “I’ve used qualitative data – like customer support options, platform features, integrations, and plan comparisons – to build high-converting landing pages.”
She writes the copy to emphasize what her brand offers as it relates to what the customer needs. Sometimes, she visualizes the relationships and pinpoints gaps using a Venn diagram. But she still relies on quantitative data, too. “I measure the effectiveness of my copy by analyzing the bounce rate, time spent on the page, scroll rate, and conversion rate,” Shayla says.
8. Write a connection-focused message
Dom Kent, director of content marketing at Mio, interviews Oliver Meakings of Roast My Landing Page about tips that make a great landing page for marketing a product. Among their recommendations:
In this example, HubSpot uses its total customer numbers, including country locations, along with well-known brand names to establish credibility with landing-page visitors:
Use these quantitative and qualitative checklists I've summarized all the advice above as two checklists – a quantitative one and a qualitative one.
You will work most efficiently by tackling the quantitative list first. Analyze your competitors’ metrics – the numbers potentially affecting landing page traffic and sales. Claire, Rebekah, and Nick share this tracking list:
For a great landing page: Know your customer persona, collect customer feedback, write with empathy, and add social proof.
Now that you have the data to know which competitors’ landing pages are likely most successful, you can scrutinize the details of those pages. To simplify this qualitative competitor analysis, use this checklist from Claire and Rebekah:
Creating a landing page requires in-depth competitor analysis, qualitative data, valuable content, and a smooth user experience. With these tips and checklists, you can assess what your competitors are doing well and what you can do better or differently on your landing pages to drive traffic, catch audiences’ interests, and generates sales.CCO Note: No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools (from your company or ones you’ve used) in the comments.
Sally Ofuonyebi is an SEO content writer and strategist at Pennalife. She’s got zero chills for helping SaaS and B2B e-commerce brands get more visibility, leads, and brand authority through SEO content that connects and converts. Follow her on LinkedIn for more content marketing tips.
