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Competitive research and analysis is a critical component of your SEO strategy. You may have an idea of who your busines competitors are, but your real SEO competitors are the ones who target the same keywords, speak to the same audience, and solve for the same consumer needs.
In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Lidia Infante walks you through two approaches to find out who those competitors are.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Fridays. My name is Lidia Infante, and I'm the Senior SEO Manager at Sanity.io. Today, we're going to be talking about how to find your real SEO competitors.
Competitor identification and competitor research is absolutely key to a good SEO strategy. And in order to nail it, you need to figure out who your competitors really are. So how do we know that someone is a competitor in search?
Essentially, they need to meet three criteria. They're targeting the same keywords as you, they're speaking to the same audience, and they solve for the same consumer need as you. That is, if your target audience goes with them, they have no more need for you.
There are essentially two approaches to identifying your competitors. You've got a top-down approach and you've got a bottom-up approach.
Top-down approach to competitive research
So let's begin with this one. The very first thing you are going to do is contact other departments. Depending on where you are and the type of vertical that you're working in, you're going to want to talk to sales, you're