You've looked at your competitors' websites. Of course you have. Everyone does it, usually when someone in a board meeting says "have you seen what [rival company] are doing?" and suddenly there's a flurry of panicked Googling. But here's the thing: most people look at a competitor's website the way they look at a house from the street. They notice the paint colour, maybe the front door, and they move on. They completely miss the foundations, the plumbing, the electrics, and the extension round the back that tells you the owners are planning to stay for a long time.
Your competitors' websites are practically shouting their strategy at you, and most companies aren't paying attention. Not because the information is hidden (it really isn't), but because they don't know what to look for, or they get distracted by stuff that doesn't matter.
We wrote a post a while back about how to interrogate your competitors' websites, and it's still a solid starting point. But this post goes further. We want to talk about what most companies get wrong when they do competitive analysis, what signals actually tell you something useful, and how to turn what you find into decisions you can act on.
The problem with how most people do competitor analysis
Let's get this out of the way first. Most competitive analysis we see is terrible. Not because the people doing it aren't smart, but because they're looking at the wrong things.
The typical approach goes something like this: someone pulls up three or four competitor websites, has a scroll through, makes some notes about what looks nice and what doesn't, maybe screenshots a few pages, and puts it all into a PowerPoint with the heading "Competitive Landscape." It gets presented in a meeting, everyone nods, and then nothing changes.
The reason nothing changes is that "their website looks nicer than ours" isn't actionable intelligence. Neither is "they've got a video on their homepage" or "their colour scheme is more modern." These are aesthetic observations, and while aesthetics matter (we'd never say they don't), they tell you almost nothing about whether a competitor is actually winning business online.
What you want to know is: what are they doing that's working? Where are they investing? What do they think their customers care about? And where have they left gaps you could fill? The answers to those questions are all sitting right there on their website, if you know how to read them.
Their tech stack tells you how serious they are
This might sound like a nerdy point, but bear with us. The technology a company chooses for their website tells you a lot about their ambitions and how much they're willing to invest in their digital presence.
You can usually figure out what platform a competitor is running on without any special tools. A quick look at the page source, or a free tool like BuiltWith or Wappalyzer, will tell you whether they're on WordPress, HubSpot, Drupal, a custom build, or something else entirely. And that choice says more than you might think.
A company running HubSpot CMS, for instance, is almost certainly investing in inbound marketing. They're probably running lead nurturing workflows, tracking contacts through a sales pipeline, and thinking about their website as a lead generation tool rather than a digital brochure. A company on a basic WordPress template with no marketing automation integration? They're probably still treating their website as something they update once a year and forget about.
Look at what marketing tools they're running too. Check for tracking pixels, chat widgets, analytics platforms, A/B testing scripts. A site loaded with Hotjar, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot tracking, and a chatbot is a machine that's been built to capture and convert visitors. That tells you your competitor is spending real money on digital, and they're probably getting results from it.
What their content strategy reveals about their priorities
Content is where competitor analysis gets really interesting, because content takes effort. Nobody publishes a 2,000-word guide to something unless they think it's going to bring them business. So when a competitor is consistently publishing content about a particular topic, they're showing you exactly where they think the opportunity is.
Look at their blog (if they have one) and ask yourself some pointed questions. How often are they publishing? What topics keep coming up? Are they writing for people at the top of the funnel (awareness stage, broad topics) or further down (comparison guides, pricing pages, case studies)? Are they targeting the same audience as you, or have they spotted a segment you've overlooked?
If you're not sure how content marketing strategy works in a B2B context, our checklist for creating a B2B content marketing strategy breaks the whole thing down. But what this really tells you is that your competitors' content calendars are essentially their marketing strategy laid bare.
Pay particular attention to the content that's getting traction. You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to see which pages on a competitor's site are pulling in organic traffic. If their guide to "choosing a subsea inspection provider" is ranking well and bringing in hundreds of visitors a month, that's a signal. It tells you there's demand for that topic, that Google thinks their content is good enough to rank, and that you should probably be writing something better on the same subject.
Keyword targeting is a window into their sales strategy
This is closely related to content, but it's worth pulling out separately because keyword targeting reveals something specific: what your competitors think their customers are searching for.
Again, tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or even a bit of manual Googling will show you which keywords a competitor's site is ranking for. And the patterns are telling. If a competitor who you've always thought of as a generalist is suddenly ranking for very specific, niche keywords, they're probably pivoting their business towards that niche. If they're targeting lots of "how to" and "what is" keywords, they're playing a long game with educational content. If they're going after "best [service] in [location]" keywords, they're after quick wins with commercial intent.
One of the most useful things you can do is look at the keywords where your competitors rank and you don't. Those gaps represent opportunities. If our guide to finding the right keywords taught you anything, it's that keyword research isn't about guessing what people search for, it's about finding out what people are actually typing into Google and then meeting them there. Your competitors' rankings are real-world data on what's working.
Site structure tells you what they value most
This one gets overlooked constantly, and it's one of the most revealing signals of all. The way a company structures their website, what goes in the main navigation, what gets a dedicated landing page, what's buried three clicks deep, tells you exactly what they think is important.
If a competitor has "Industries" in their top navigation with dedicated pages for oil and gas, renewable energy, and marine, they're telling you they've structured their business around vertical markets. If they've got individual service pages for every sub-service they offer, they're almost certainly doing SEO and trying to rank for specific service-related searches. If their homepage leads with case studies and testimonials rather than service descriptions, they've decided that proof of results matters more than explaining what they do.
Look at what's in their footer too. Footer links are often a good indicator of what a company considers important for SEO, because footer links appear on every page of the site and pass internal link equity. If they've stuffed their footer with links to location pages ("web design in Aberdeen", "web design in Edinburgh"), they're running a local SEO play.
The hierarchy matters too. Pages that sit directly off the root domain (yourcompetitor.com/service-name) are being given more weight than pages nested several levels deep. Where a company puts its pages in the URL structure tells you what they want Google to prioritise.
Their conversion approach shows how sophisticated their marketing is
Here's where you can really separate the companies that are just "doing a website" from the ones that are using their website as a genuine business development tool.
Look at how a competitor tries to convert visitors. Is it just a "Contact Us" form on one page, or have they built a proper conversion path? Are there calls to action throughout the site? Do they offer downloadable content (guides, whitepapers, checklists) in exchange for contact details? Have they got different offers for different stages of the buyer's journey?
A company with a single contact form is basically saying "we'll wait for people who are ready to buy right now." A company with gated content, email nurturing sequences, and progressively detailed CTAs is saying "we understand that our sales cycle is long and we're going to build relationships with prospects over time." That's a fundamentally different level of marketing sophistication, and it tells you a lot about what you're up against.
If you want to understand how this works in practice, our post on how to build a lead generation website explains the mechanics of turning a website into something that actually generates business rather than just sitting there looking pretty.
What's just noise (and you should ignore)
We've talked about what matters. Let's talk about what doesn't, because this is where most people waste their time.
Design trends are mostly noise. Yes, a competitor might have a sleeker, more modern-looking website than you. But design trends change every couple of years, and a beautiful website that nobody finds on Google and that doesn't convert visitors into leads is just an expensive piece of digital art. We've seen plenty of gorgeous websites that generate absolutely zero business, and plenty of plain-looking sites that are lead-generating machines.
Social media follower counts are noise. A company with 10,000 LinkedIn followers might have bought most of them, or accumulated them over a decade of doing nothing useful. What matters is engagement (are real people actually interacting with their content?) and whether social is driving traffic to their site.
Awards and badges are noise. "Best Website 2024" awards are ten a penny, and most of them mean very little. Some are pay-to-enter, some judge purely on aesthetics, and almost none of them measure whether the website actually does its job of generating business.
Press releases are noise. A competitor announcing a new hire or a new office doesn't tell you anything about their digital strategy. It tells you they've got a PR person.
How to actually do this properly
Right, so you're convinced you should be looking at this stuff more carefully. Here's how we'd suggest approaching it.
Pick your top four or five competitors. Not just the ones you bump into in tenders, but the ones who show up when you search for the keywords you want to rank for. Those are your real competitors online, and they might be different from the companies you compete against in person.
For each one, document what you find across the areas we've covered: tech stack, content strategy, keyword targeting, site structure, and conversion approach. Don't just screenshot things, actually write down what you think it means. "They're publishing weekly blog posts about decommissioning" is an observation. "They're targeting the decommissioning market with educational content, which suggests they see growth there and are building authority" is an insight.
Then look for patterns. Where are multiple competitors investing? That probably tells you where the market is heading. Where is nobody investing? That might be an opportunity, or it might be a dead end, but it's worth investigating. And where are you clearly behind? Those are your priorities.
If you're new to SEO and some of this feels overwhelming, our plain English guide to SEO is a good place to get your bearings before you start poking around in competitor data.
The bit most companies skip
Here's the part that separates useful competitive analysis from the stuff that gathers dust in a shared drive: you have to actually do something with what you find.
That sounds obvious, but you'd be amazed how many companies go through this exercise, produce a lovely report, and then carry on exactly as before. The whole point of looking at what your competitors are doing is to make better decisions about what you should be doing. If their content strategy is working and yours isn't, change yours. If they've invested in marketing automation and you're still sending manual emails, it's time to have a conversation about tools. If they're ranking for keywords you've never even considered, get those keywords into your content plan.
Competitive analysis isn't a one-off exercise either. Websites change, strategies evolve, and the competitor who was doing nothing interesting six months ago might have just hired a marketing team and started publishing content every week. Set a reminder to revisit this every quarter, even if it's just a quick check to see what's changed.
Frequently asked questions
What tools do I need for competitor website analysis?
You can get a surprising amount of insight with free tools. BuiltWith and Wappalyzer will show you a competitor's tech stack. Google itself will show you what keywords they're ranking for if you search manually. For deeper keyword and traffic analysis, paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush are worth the investment, but they're not essential to get started. Your browser's "View Source" option is free and surprisingly revealing.
How often should I check what competitors are doing online?
We'd suggest a proper deep-dive once a quarter, with informal check-ins whenever you notice a competitor doing something new. Set up Google Alerts for your competitors' brand names so you hear about new content and announcements without having to go looking for them. The companies that do this well treat it as an ongoing habit, not a one-off project.
My competitor's website looks much better than mine. Should I redesign?
Not necessarily. A better-looking website doesn't mean a better-performing website. Before you spend money on a redesign, check whether their site is actually generating more traffic, ranking for more keywords, and converting more visitors. If your site is outperforming theirs on those metrics despite looking less polished, a redesign might actually make things worse if you lose what's working in the process. Focus on performance first, aesthetics second.
Is it worth looking at competitors outside my local market?
Absolutely. Some of the best insights come from companies in your industry but in different regions, because they might be doing things that haven't caught on in your market yet. If an engineering firm in Houston has a content strategy that's clearly generating leads, there's no reason you can't adapt that approach for the Aberdeen market. Good ideas don't respect geography.
What's the single most important thing to look at on a competitor's website?
Their content. It's the hardest thing to fake and the most expensive thing to produce, which means it's the most honest signal of where they're investing. A company might redesign their website on a whim, but nobody commits to a regular publishing schedule with well-researched, in-depth content unless they believe it's driving results. If a competitor is producing good content consistently, take them seriously.
If any of this has got you thinking about your own competitive position and you'd like a second pair of eyes, we're always happy to have a chat. No hard sell, no obligation, just a 15-minute conversation about what you're seeing and whether there's anything we can help with. Get in touch and we'll find a time that works.
