How to do Competitor Analysis for Affiliate Marketing

How to do Competitor Analysis for Affiliate Marketing

Competitive analysis goes way beyond a quick look at the first page of Google results.

Conducting an in-depth analysis of your competitors can help you to identify areas for growth, find keyword opportunities, build backlinks, and more.

According to a 2020 survey conducted by the research firm Crayon, 70% of business leaders state that competitive intelligence is “Important” or “Absolutely Critical” to the success of their company:

Learning which methods are most effective for your competitors and make the biggest impact on your audience helps you to focus on the areas that will generate the best return on your efforts and drive the most affiliate sales.

What is Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is the process of identifying your top competitors and researching the strengths and weaknesses of their marketing strategy.

By analyzing your competitors, you can gain insights into their strategy to inform and improve your affiliate marketing and promotional efforts.

It helps you to understand what your opponents are doing well, what you can incorporate into your strategy, and if there are any overlooked areas that you can capitalize on.

Tools to use for Competitor Analysis

There are a bunch of tools you can use to help you conduct a competitor analysis.

Some tools are free to use, but competitive analysis is a task where paid tools are really useful.

All-in-one tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs enable you to access information much faster than jumping between different free tools and adding data to a spreadsheet.

In no particular order, here’s a rundown of the best tools for affiliate marketing competitor analysis.

How to Identify Your Top Competitors

Your top competitors are the websites promoting similar affiliate products and competing for your target keywords in the SERP.

You want to appear on the first page of search results for your target keywords, so Google is the ideal place to find your top competitors.

Here’s how to identify your top competitors in four simple steps:

Step 1: Download MozBar

Before you head over to Google and search for blogs and websites in your niche, you’ll need to download a free chrome extension.

MozBar is a free tool that enables you to see the domain authority of websites in Google search results.

It’s an excellent tool for determining the strength of your competitors.

Domain Authority is a search engine ranking metric that estimates how well a website will rank in search engine results on a scale of 1 to 100…

...The higher the domain authority, the more likely the site is to rank high in search results.

Head over to Moz and create a free account.

After you’ve signed up, click on “Free SEO Tools” in the top menu:

Select MozBar from the list of free tools:

And click “Download MozBar Free”.

Step 2: Search for Websites in Your Niche

Once you’ve downloaded MozBar, use the Chrome browser and head to Google to search for blogs in your niche.

For example, If you’re in the yoga niche, search for “yoga blog.”

This should provide you with a bunch of yoga niche websites.

Always click through to check the website’s relevance.

If you have already researched affiliate products and keywords in your niche, you can search for your target keywords to find more competitor websites.

Step 3: Create a List of High Domain Authority Competitors

Using MozBar, you can see the domain authority of the websites in the search results.

Make a list of relevant niche websites with the highest domain authority.

If you’re going to rank in the top spots for your niche, you’ll need to outrank these websites or identify the keyword opportunities they have overlooked.

Step 4: Use Curated Lists

You can also see that Google returns some curated lists of yoga blogs.

These websites have given you a helping hand by compiling a list of your competitors.

You can find more curated lists by searching for terms like:

“Best yoga blogs”

“Yoga blog list”

“Top yoga blogs”

Using this strategy, you should have a solid list of competitor websites with high domain authority.

Identify your Competitors’ Top Pages and Keywords

Now you have a list of competitor websites in your niche, the next step is to identify their top pages and keywords.

These are the keywords and content that are driving traffic and generating sales for your competitors.

Here’s how you can use the free tool Ubersuggest to find the top pages and keywords of your competitors.

Keywords

Keyword competitive analysis enables you to see what's working for your competitors.

With this information, you can create an informed and data-driven keyword strategy for your website, improving on what your competitors are doing, and gaining an advantage in the search results

Step 1: Enter Your Competitors Domain Name

Armed with your list of competitor websites, head over to Ubersuggest and enter the domain name of the first website on your list.

Step 2: Navigate to the Keywords Section

From the results page, click on the “Keywords” option in the left-hand menu:

You’ll now be able to see a list of the keywords that your competitor is ranking for in search results.

For each keyword, you can see the Search Volume (VOL), where the website ranks in the search results for the keyword (POSITION), the estimated number of visitors (EST. VISITS), and the SEO Difficulty (SD).

This is excellent information for informing your keyword strategy.

To find keyword opportunities, look for long-tail keywords that are:

• Three words or longer
• An SEO Difficulty of less than 45
• A Search Volume of 500 or more

These are the keyword opportunities that receive a significant search volume and that you have the best chance of outranking your competitor for.

Step 3: Create a List of Keyword Opportunities

Work your way through the list of your competitor’s keywords, clicking the check the box next to the keywords that have a high enough search volume and achievable SEO Difficulty.

Once you’ve made your way through the list and check boxed keyword opportunities, you can export your keyword list to CSV and create a keyword list for your content strategy.

Top Pages

Analyzing your competitor’s top pages helps you understand the type of content that performs well with your target audience…

...And the estimated traffic and social engagement you can expect if you publish content that is even better than your competitors’.

You can use Ubersuggest to see the top pages of your competitors.

After entering the domain name of your competitor, click on the Top Pages option in the left-hand menu:

This will return a list of your competitors top pages that are sorted according to the traffic they receive:

You can see the estimated number of visits per month (EST. VISITS), the number of backlinks, and the social media engagement the page has received on Facebook and Pinterest.

This information gives you an idea of the maximum reach you can expect to achieve…

...And the types of content that resonate most with your target audience.

Take a close look at the pages that receive the most traffic and engagement…

...And the top pages that promote affiliate products.

For example, the page below is a “best of” article for yoga mats:

Once you’ve analyzed your competitor’s top-performing pages, think about how you can create content on the same topic that is better and more valuable to your audience.

Study Your Competitors’ Top Links and Relationships

The vast majority of sites that rank on the first page of the SERP have hundreds of backlinks.

By studying where your competitors get backlinks and the relationships they have with other websites and influencers in your niche, you can create an informed link building strategy.

You don’t want to be swamped with data, so it’s a good idea to limit your backlinks research to your top two competitors to start.

Here’s how to find your competitors’ top links and relationships in four steps:

Step 1: Head over to Moz Link Explorer

Moz Link Explorer is a great free tool for analyzing your competitor’s backlinks.

Head over to Moz and click on “Free SEO Tools.”

From the menu on the next page, click on “Research with Link Explorer.”

Click on the “Inbound Links” option in the left-hand menu.

Enter the URL of your competitor into the search bar and click “Analyze.”

Step 2: Create a List of Backlink Opportunities

Now you can see a list of backlinks for your competitor’s website.

For your link building strategy, you want to focus on the links from websites with the highest Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA).

These top links offer the most SEO value.

Step 3: Identify the Domains That Link Multiple Times

When you’re analyzing your competitor’s backlinks, you might notice websites that link to your competitor multiple times.

These are the websites that you want to establish a relationship with.

They regularly link out to sites in your niche.

To find these websites, you want to click on “Linking Domains” in the left-hand menu.

And then click on the link type menu and select “Follow.”

You can now see the different domains that link to your competitor’s website.

Work your way through the list of linking domains, clicking on the “more info” dropdown arrow to see the number of times the website links to your competitor.

Step 4: Create a List of Backlink Opportunities

When you find a site that links multiple times from several different blog posts, add the website to your list of backlink opportunities.

You can reach out to these websites and replicate the strategy your competitor used to get backlinks.

Later in the article, we’ll show you how you can use this list to build your backlink profile.

Research and Analyze your Competitors’ Marketing Strategies & Top Traffic Channels

SimilarWeb is a great free tool for analyzing your competitor’s strategy and top traffic channels.

It provides detailed information on a website’s marketing channels, and it’s free to use.

Here’s how to use SimilarWeb to analyze your competitor’s marketing strategy.

Head over to SimilarWeb and enter your competitor’s domain name.

Let’s say you’re in the mattress niche, and use Mattress Advisor as an example competitor:

Scroll down, and you’ll be able to see an overview of their monthly traffic:

You can see the number of visits, bounce rate, and the average time people spend on the site.

SimilarWeb also shows you which countries your competitor generates its traffic:

Scroll down further, and you can see which channels the website gets its traffic from:

You can also see the top referring domains and top destination sites - where people go after clicking away for the site.

There’s a breakdown of the traffic that your competitor generates from search engines…

...You can see the percentage of organic and paid traffic, and your competitor’s top organic and paid keywords.

You can also see the social media networks that are referring traffic to your competitor’s website.

This shows you the social media platforms your competitor is using, but you can gain further insight by visiting each platform and checking out their profile.

This will show you the type of content they are publishing, how often they post, and the engagement their posts receive.

How to Use This Information on Your Competitor

Using this data, you can gain insights into your competitor’s marketing strategy.

Let’s use Mattress Advisor as an example.

SEO and Paid Search

The majority of Mattress Advisor’s traffic comes organically from search engines.

They also generate significant traffic from paid search…

...Finding out which keywords they are bidding on in Google Ads is another area that needs analyzing.

Backlinks and Referrals

They generate around 2% percent of their traffic from referrals, with one linking domain responsible for over 50% of referral traffic.

Researching how they achieved those backlinks and trying to replicate them should be a priority.

For destination sites, we can see that 50% of their traffic goes to a single retailer…

...If you hadn’t already joined the affiliate program, you should consider it as a potential merchant for affiliate promotion.

Social Media

The social media strategy is based on two platforms: Facebook and YouTube.

After checking their Facebook page, you can see which types of content they are publishing to generate engagement and drive traffic to their website.

They use video marketing to promote their affiliate products, with over 180 videos on YouTube and over 2,000 subscribers.

Performing a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis helps you to get a detailed overview of the competitors in your niche and identify opportunities to grow your business.

What is a SWOT analysis?

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

A SWOT analysis is a framework for gaining insight into your competitors, your website, and your niche to improve your business and marketing strategy.

Step by Step SWOT Analysis

Step 1: List Your Strengths

The first stage of SWOT analysis is to look at your strengths.

If you’re ranking in the top spots for your targeted keywords or seeing good audience engagement on social media, that’s a strength.

What advantages do you have over your competitors?

Step 2: List Your Weaknesses

After you’ve determined your strengths, take a critical look at your business and your website.

Create a list of your weaknesses.

If your content is performing poorly in search results or your backlink profile is much weaker than your competitors, that’s a weakness.

What are your competitors doing well (content, social media, PPC, etc.)?

Step 3: Identify Opportunities

The next step is to determine the opportunities in your niche.

Opportunities covers everything that you could do to drive more traffic to your website and increase your affiliate sales.

Are there keyword opportunities that your competitor has overlooked?

Is there a shortage of social media communities and groups in your niche?

Step 4: Identify Threats

The last stage of the SWOT analysis is to determine the threats to your affiliate business.

This covers everything that could damage your chances of growing and generating sales.

Which areas do your competitors offer the biggest threat to your business?

Are there any new competitors steadily increasing their share of the SERP?

Is a competitor significantly increasing their number of followers on social media?

After you’ve conducted a SWOT analysis, you should have lots of insights that can be utilized to inform your strategy.

By conducting a structured analysis, you should be able to narrow in on opportunities and focus on the areas that matter most to your affiliate business.

Developing Content and SEO strategies (based on opportunities/content gaps)

So you’ve researched your competitors and conducted a SWOT analysis, but what can you do with that information?

Here’s three simple ways you can utilize competitive analysis information to improve your affiliate marketing performance.

1. Steal You Competitors’ Backlinks

You should have a list of sites that link back to your competitor’s website.

Here’s how you can get a backlink to your website by using the same techniques as your competitors.

Let’s say your competitor has a backlink from an online forum like Quora.

You can easily replicate what your competitor did and get a backlink for yourself.

Head over to Quora and find a discussion that is related to your niche.

Instead of spamming the forum with your link, write a detailed answer that contains useful information, and include a link to a related page on your website as an additional resource.

That’s it!

This is an easy way to leverage your competitor’s backlink strategy to get links for your website.

Work your way through your competitor’s backlinks and visit each site to see how your competitor acquired the backlink.

The key advantage of this strategy is that you are capitalizing on your competitor’s work…

...They do the leg work, and you utilize their approach to build your backlink profile.

Guest posting is one of the most effective link building strategies.

When you write a guest post for a website, they will usually reward you with a backlink in your bio.

For example, here’s our CEO Simon Slade’s bio section for his guest post on Success.com:

If your competitor has contributed to an authority website in your niche, you can replicate their strategy and reach out to the site owner and ask if you can submit a guest post.

You can use the same technique to get a backlink for your site.

When you are building links to your website, you must offer value to your audience.

• Don’t spam forums and online communities with links to your website.
• Focus on creating useful replies and content, and including the link to your site as an additional helpful resource.
• Publish helpful guest posts on websites that are relevant to your niche.

You’ll be helping people interested in your niche, enhancing your reputation, and getting a free backlink.

2. Content Gaps

Content gaps are the topics and keywords that your competitors are ranking for, and that you can target in your content.

This is where paid tools are really useful.

SEMRush and Ahrefs both offer keyword gap analysis…

...These tools enable you to compare your website to your competitors and highlight any keywords and content topics that you are lacking.

If you don’t have the budget for a paid tool, you can also manually use Ubersuggest and an Excel spreadsheet.

Export a list of all the keywords your competitor is ranking for, and delete all the keywords that you already cover in your content.

The keywords that are left are the areas where you have a content gap.

Once you’ve identified keyword gaps, analyze the content your competitors have published on the topic.

To outrank your competitors in the search results, you need to create content that is better and more valuable to your audience.

• When was the content published/updated?
• How detailed is the content?
• Is the content easy to read?
• Is the content visually appealing and engaging?

By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s content, you can create something better and more shareable.

Before you click publish, you’ll know that your content is better than anything else out there.

3. Social Media

Just because your competitor is on social media, it doesn’t mean that you should dedicate your time and resources to the same platform.

When you analyze your competitor’s social media channels, you need to focus on two key areas: activity and engagement.

• How often is your competitor posting and updating their social media channels?
• What type of content is generating likes, comments, and clicks?
• Which type of content gets the most engagement? Is it funny, informative, shocking, or serious?
• Which format generates the most likes and comments? Is it video content, text, or images?

When you know what’s working for your competitors, you can create content that you know that your audience will find appealing and engage with.

Analyzing your competitors also helps you to determine if there is an opportunity for growth.

If your competitors aren’t very active, but still generate lots of engagement, there’s an excellent opportunity to grow a significant social media following.

When there’s little engagement, and your competitors aren’t very active, there’s an opportunity to fill the gap on social media…

...You can become the market leader, even with a small audience.

If your competitor is very active and generates decent engagement, it shows you there is an audience for your content, but you’ll need to dedicate more resources to compete.

When there are lots of active competitors and minimal engagement, it might not be worth your time and effort trying to build an audience on social media.

Conclusion

As you can see, competitive analysis isn’t a quick and straightforward process…

...But the benefits to your affiliate business can be huge.

It can help you identify opportunities you’ve overlooked, boost your ranking in search results, and carve out an audience in your niche.

If you want to rank on the first page of Google and drive free organic traffic, you need to outperform your competitors.

Use the insights you gain from competitor analysis to inform your strategy and focus on the areas where you can make the most impact.