Competitive research means really looking at how good a website is, for example. And by good I mean has it got lots of content? Does it rank really well for lots of search terms? How much is a company spending on paid search, Google ads, Google AdWords, things like that. And we can find all that out. And we're doing that to try and establish just how effective their digital presence is and to figure out whether they really are a competitor because, you know, a company might come to us and say, these are my competitors, but it's often not the case in a digital context, in a Google context that these people, they think are their competitors actually are the competitors.
I think a lot of the time, what it's really good for is giving you a kind of baseline that you have to exceed, right? It's like, this is who's currently ranking number one. This is what they're doing. How are you going to knock them off the top spot? And a lot of the time that is what we're talking about, right? It's like knocking off the top two competitors, right?
So we're back podcasting and the subject of this podcast. It's me and Alex who are doing this one. Alex.
Yeah. Uh, so we're talking about competitor research.
Competitor research.
The art and science of stealing other people's ideas.
Uh, you know, I mean, before we get into it, it is interesting just how much information you can find out about a company, um, a company's digital marketing activity, you know, you can use like the Facebook library to see all the adverts they're running. You can use tools like SEM that we use to, to see what they rank for and, and how much they're spending in paid search. You can do so much. And it always surprises people, doesn't it? When you, when you start with a potential client or a client and you fire these tools up and you and you start looking at their competitors and, you know, lots of things happen, lots of emotions. But one of the things is like, you know, wow, you know, you can see all that information. And that's, I guess, what makes digital quite different from traditional. And Julie's not in the office to shout at me and throw things at me and say, no, it isn't. So I can say that with impunity. It's all the same.
No.
All right. So expand on, you know, before we get into it, just expand on, you know, what we mean by, you know, competitor analysis, competitor research.
Right? So I guess this is kind of going through, like you say, and documenting what your competitors are doing online, right? What their strategy is, how much you said for PPC, how much they're spending, but also, you know, kind of what keywords they're going after, what content they're producing, how much time and effort they're spending making content. I mean, you know, in the, in the good old days, I guess you used to. I'm sure you've done the same trick where, you know.
Do, do do do do do do.
It was right after it was it were.
You know, when you used to be able to kind of right click view page source and look at people's meta keywords, right? And you could literally.
Oh, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, slow down.
Cowboy keywords. Explain.
So yeah, you have metadata on your web pages. Meta title is.
What does meta mean? Alex?
Uh, well, to do this to me, why do you enjoy it so much?
I mean, I always think meta is information about information. So the meta data on a web page is the information that gives a succinct piece of information describing what the web page is all about. Would that be fair? Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly it. Um, and then obviously, you know, nowadays you have meta title. So you're describing to Google or whatever search engine what the title of the page is. Um, meta description, which is just, you know, briefly what is the page about? And you used to have meta keywords, which is what keywords do you want the page to rank for? Um, obviously search engines had to start ignoring them pretty quickly because people used to abuse them.
Um, yeah. So basically the meta keywords were like, you know, the easiest example is how they were abused. So what people would do is they would put their competitors names into the meta keywords and try to say to Google, if somebody searches for Acme engineering, then sure, our web page instead. And they were kind of. Yeah. And, and that's one of the ways that they were abused. And that's why Google ignores them and has done for donkey's years.
But you used to be able to just look at them and instantly see what people were trying to rank for, which was, you know, nice. Yeah. Convenient. Yeah. Um, I guess nowadays it is like you say more kind of prosaic, more top level. You're looking at what kind of content they're producing, that kind of thing. Just to give you a steer on, I guess, what you should be doing if you want to steal some of their market share.
Okay, so competitor analysis, competitor research, um, means really looking at how, how good a website is, for example. And by good, I mean, has it got lots of content? Does it rank really well for lots of search terms. Notice how I said search terms and not keywords? Um, is it how much uh, is a company spending on paid search, Google ads, Google AdWords, things like that. And we can find all that out. And we're doing that to try and establish just how, um, effective their digital presence is and to figure out whether they really are a competitor because, you know, a company might come to us and say, these are my competitors, these are the people that I'm competing against. But that is really not rarely, but it's often not the case in a in a web, in a digital context, in a Google context that these people, they think are their competitors actually are the competitors. Would that be fair?
Right. Yeah. And I think you see this especially kind of with, with our client base being kind of B2B, people get it in their heads that they know their competitors, right? They're, they're the people that they vie with in, you know, pitches to other companies and that kind of thing. But online, that can be very different because the people who are actually ranking for keywords is all you really care about. It doesn't matter if they're the best at the job or whatever. All that really matters is their their people are seeing them and they're not seeing you.
Yeah. And that's why quite often when we're with clients doing this competitor analysis, because we do a lot of it in isolation to the client, we gather information and, and then we go off and do this research. But sometimes we'll do some online research with the client and the client will say, well, oh, I've never heard of them. And, you know, it's kind of quite a surprise that they and they don't really, they haven't really recognised them as a competitor.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Okay. And also, just to kind of circle back to what you were saying before, I think another big advantage of doing this kind of research is often that it tells you whether or not you can realistically compete for certain search terms or, you know, in certain kind of, um, I'm going to say auctions, you're going to throw something at me. But, you know, with pay per click advertising, when you're kind of bidding on keywords, um, it lets you know whether or not it's really worth your time and energy going after those search terms, or if you're just being massively outspent by somebody else.
Right, right. So you might.
Say.
Good. Yeah. For example, you might carry out a Google search and on, you know, the top ten, the top twenty positions are being dominated by household names, for example. So you think, okay, Mr. small business owner, if you want to appear in Google, when people search for whatever it is, then you're going to have to outsmart out, content out, optimise out, spend, um, these household names. So guess what? Let's not try and do that. Let's, let's be clever. Let's do something else.
Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. And sometimes you'll see search terms and you know, the the competition who are ranking first will have literally hundreds of pages of content on their website about that search term. And you just look at it and you think, actually, do you know what? That's not where you want to spend your time and money and energy. Really? Yeah.
So that's right. So I mean, one way that this can manifest itself, then the whole research competitor research, is it? You know, if a competitor sorry, if a customer comes along and says, these are my competitors and I want you guys to help me, you know, get more attention, get get more attention online than they are. And so we can go away and we can do competitor research, and we can figure loads of things out and go back to the client and say, right. Um, they have a website that's, uh, that's got a thousand pages. They've got lots of really good content. We've read it, we like it. It appears in search. They're spending a heap of money on Google ads, search, search ads, and it looks like they're spending money on LinkedIn. They're spending money on Facebook. You know, we estimate that they are spending maybe, I don't know. Let's just pluck a figure out of thin air. They're spending five thousand quid a month on, on their digital marketing. So that kind of helps us, our potential client, if you like, understand the kind of effort, the resource that's going to be required if they really do want to go after And if the client says, hey, you know, that's just like way too much money, I can't possibly do that. Then we say, okay, well, we can't go after that market. Then that, that market, that those guys. And it's not just like a competitor. We're talking about looking at lots of competitors, aren't we?
Yeah, that's exactly it. And, but I mean, I would point out as well that sometimes there are kind of efficiencies. I guess if you like, that you can make, you know, you can we see a lot of the time when we do competitor research, I think people wasting money, right? We see them doing foolish things with their spend. And we think, actually, you know, you could probably get as much traction for half that amount. But yeah, I mean, by and large, it gives you a good steer on what you need to spend, I think. Yeah.
Okay. So by understanding all of this does it is all we needing to do is, you know, putting it bluntly, do we just need to look at what the competitors are doing and copy them? Is that what we're talking about?
Well.
He said we're very leading tone of voice.
Yes, Dave, it's just that simple. If you do what your competitors do, you're guaranteed to rank. I mean, obviously not. I mean, the idea is obviously to outdo them, right? It's to do whatever they're doing better. I think a lot of the time, what it's really good for is giving you a kind of baseline that you have to exceed, right? It's like, this is who's currently ranking number one. This is what they're doing. How are you going to knock them off the top spot? And a lot of the time that is what we're talking about, right? It's like knocking off the top two competitors and stealing their their position in SERPs. Search engine results pages. Before you shout at me, no need for the.
Search engine results page. A Serp is what you see, dear listener. When you do a search in Google and you put in a search term, and then you get a page of results consisting of videos and shopping results and links to websites that's known in the trade as Serp search engine results page.
Do you think if we do this for long enough, I'll eventually stop using jargon?
Or you know what? I think I'm probably as guilty as you of using jargon. It's just that you don't pick me up.
I'm polite.
I mean, I love trying to avoid jargon, but yeah, you do slip into it. We all do, don't we? Yeah. We do definitely. Okay. So, you know, go on, go on.
No, I was gonna say I think, you know, generally what we're saying with competitor research is it's great as a kind of baseline. It's great to give you a suggestion of what you should be doing. But it's not a Bible, is it? It's not a this is what the competitor does. So you must do this.
Yeah. So it's a little bit like, and I think I used this analogy in the last podcast, I do apologise, but it's a, it's a little bit like if you know somebody who's, um, from scratch, from being a bit of a couch potato has run a marathon, then you might speak to them and they might say, well, I started off doing like one kilometre walks and then I built up into a five kilometre run. And then I did this and I did that, and I changed what I was eating and da da, da da. And twelve months later I ran a marathon in, I don't know, Let's be, let's be, you know, um, realistic. I ran a marathon in five hours, which is like, you know, yeah. That's good. You know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's an achievement and the kind of, it's like a formula, a recipe and, you know, and the good, there's a good chance that if you do exactly the same, then you could potentially run a marathon in five hours. Unless you know you by doing it, you figure out that you're really good at something and you're really good at running sort of thing. And suddenly instead, you know, by, by month six, you're doing twenty kilometer training runs, whereas the other person was only doing ten kilometer training runs. So I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just rambling. But basically, basically we're looking we're looking for proof, aren't we? We're look, we're looking for like, you know, how did these people get their websites to appear in front of the right kind of audience on Google? And we can, we can just dig in so deep to that using the tools that we use.
Well, I think that's the thing. And I think a lot of people do think it's very cloak and dagger, that it's maybe like a shifty or unfair thing to do. But I think the wonders of the internet, if you like, is that everything you do online is very exposed. It's very transparent. Everyone can see the content that you're publishing. Everyone can see the ads you're running. All the information is there.
They can, they can, they can see.
Oh.
Okay, okay.
All the mistakes, you know, all those horrible short blog posts that you publish in, in like, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I was referring to. Yep. Moving on.
Whatever dirty secrets you've hidden about the web. Um, no, but, you know, I think the thing is, it's foolish not to try and use it, right? It's the information's there and a lot of the time, just picking up on your marathon analogy again, I think, you know, one of the things that's really useful about doing competitive research is often that you do see the gaps in what other people are doing. You see areas where they're not so hot and you think, I could do that better? Yeah, that's really useful too.
Yeah. Well, if you come round to um search terms, keywords, if you, we can, we can use tools like SEMrush or SEMrush. I think they prefer it to be called SEMrush. They don't like it, but I've always called it a SEMrush. But yeah, rush, you know, and lots of other tools, uh, will let you do this analysis of anybody's website and it will make a really good guess at listing out, um, the keywords, the search terms that that website ranks for. And one of the interesting things there, just like one of the other favorite tools that we use the free tool off Google, the Google Google search console is not only can you see, oh, I'm number one for this search term, I'm number one for that search term. But you can also see actually, you know, we're number twenty one, number thirty one for this search term, but lots of people because the data is there, lots of people are typing that into Google. So, you know, if you've got a customer, if we've got a customer who's really got a very weak online presence, and that's one of the reasons people come to us to change that, then, you know, competitor analysis not only helps us see how their competitors have achieved what they've achieved, but using that analysis, we can also see where their competitors are missing opportunities as well. And that might be they might be the opportunities that we decide to pursue for our client, because the data is right there in front of us, and we know that it's going to be potentially powerful if we can, if we can, if we can square that circle and get our customer, our client in front of their customers on, on Google.
Yeah, absolutely. It does sound wonderfully kind of cloak and dagger and sneaky when you think like that.
Yeah, I suppose it does.
I mean.
I.
Suppose in, in, in, in the olden days, um, when Julie first started marketing, I can say that because she's not in the office foolishly, she's not here. While we're recording this podcast, I can say what I like. Um, when, you know, when Julie started out.
Yesterday, when people still use, um. Sinclair.
Well, that's right, it was, it was back in those days for sure. Thereabouts anyway. I mean, who am I? I'm older than Julie, for goodness sake. But you could it would be difficult to really figure out what your competitors were doing. So they could figure they could. They could, like, do some stuff and, and really kill it in the marketplace for, for a long time before you figured out what they were doing, you know, whether it's, they were getting cute with direct mail or whether they were buying mailing lists or whether they'd figured out that some particular, you know, um, traditional marketing technique, marketing technique was working particularly well in a particular industry.
Well, it's interesting that you make that point actually, because even with, you know, direct mail, for example, versus email, you know, you can go and sign up to your competitor's email newsletter and you'll find out exactly what they're saying to their customers.
Yeah.
You never used to be able to do that.
No, I guess so.
I guess I guess that's right. So so as we said earlier, the, the, um, digital marketing, if you like, it makes pretty much everything you're doing transparent, including, um, you might, for example, and we've done this, you know, when we've done competitor research, we've figured out how, um, people are trying to, uh, work or game. The search engines. We can see them, um, hiding text. Putting text on a web page and then using various there's various techniques you can use. Like you.
Can make.
You can do the white text on a white background. But you know, what a lot of people do is, you know, they'll make the text, um, not appear on the screen. They'll position it like minus 5,000 pixels off to the left. So an ordinary user never sees it. But Google does, you know, you can see them doing things like that. Although, you know, let's be honest, most of that stuff is easily easy to detect. And if you're doing it, then you know, to try and rank better, then you're going to get you're going to get hammered.
It does remind me of something else that you can do, though, which I do think is really interesting and useful and I think often overlooked, which is running your competitor's websites through a backlink profiling tool, right? Like Moses Link Explorer. Yeah. Which will tell you, we talked a bit about backlinks before, but basically, you know, every time somebody mentions or cites your website, creates a hypertext link towards it that counts as a backlink and Google views that as a marker of authority. Now, when you take your competitor's website and plug it into a tool like Link Explorer, you can see where they've been going to get their backlinks. And sometimes that's super useful because it will clue you into, I don't know, news outlets or blogs that are willing to talk about things in your industry. And you can say, oh, you know, if they've got a backlink from them, then I can approach that outlet and say, you know, I know you're interested in talking about this subject. Why don't you, you know, let me write for your blog or whatever. But it also does sometimes let you see where people are again, trying to game the system by buying loads of backlinks from blogs and stuff. Right. And I think sometimes that's quite useful to know.
Definitely. Um, and it's also a tool that we would use, you know, when we are taking on a new customer, we would actually review the backlink profile of our new customer to see if there are potentially any quick wins by, um, doing what's called a disavow. So basically, if a web page or a website has got some links, which are potentially harmful because they are, Uh, they're clearly there to try and game the search engines. Um, Google might just ignore them, but at the same time, you can, you can put what's called a disavow file into Google and say, hey, Mr. Google, I know, hey Mr. Google, please ignore these links. You know, we didn't put them there. We don't we don't want them, but we we've asked and we can't get rid of them. We're not trying to game the search engine. Please ignore them. And um, in theory, Google goes, thanks for telling us. We'll ignore them. Chances are it was ignoring them anyway because they come from some spammy link farm or or content network that, you know, people use for trying to improve their websites rankings.
Yeah, I think the consensus now is that Google's getting better at ignoring spam links, but I don't think it ever hurts to disavow. I think one of the things, though, I probably would say about people, um, doing their own kind of backlink audits and especially competitor backlink audits is that it can be quite disheartening sometimes when you look at your competitor and see they've got links from like, I don't know, GQ magazine, BBC, Whatever. Yeah. But I think, you know, it's it's always best to be optimistic about these things, right. Whatever links your competitors have got, you can probably follow suit if you're clever about it. Or at least try.
Yeah you can.
That does fall into the bucket of like, well, our competitors have got all these links, so we'll get them as well. And is that going to be worth doing? I mean, it's interesting. Um, you can analyse backlinks as we've just said, and that could be used to good effect potentially. But what it can often do is it can show you links that your competitors have got that you're just never going to get. You know, they, they created something and it was picked up by the national press, for example. Uh, you know, the Guardian ran an article and the digital version links to, to that person's website, which is, which is an authoritative website linking to their website, which is really helping them in the rankings. And you're not going to get that. I mean, so.
Ironically, we were talking a bit about this this morning, weren't we? Because you built a tool a while ago that has more links pointing towards it than our than our website?
Potentially it does. That's right. Yeah. The seed keywords tool. Yeah. That's right. And I think we'll maybe when we do a podcast about tools, we'll probably mention the seed keywords tool because it's a, instead of, you know, artificial intelligence, it's actually using human intelligence, which is a, which is far superior, obviously.
Obviously, but it does, I think, yeah, I think generally this kind of plays into this whole idea, doesn't it, of like, do your research, do thorough research into what everybody's doing, but don't get too caught up in the nitty gritty of trying to copy people's tactics, rather use it as a way of looking holistically at the kind of strategy you should be trying to implement, I guess.
Yeah, but.
I mean, another thing, another part that competitor analysis and competitor research plays is explaining to clients, explaining to customers and why their competitor. And let's just assume that the person they thought was their competitor is their competitor. I mean, they are, you know, hoovering up all the good stuff, all the traffic in Google and and they might say, well, you know, we've got this fantastic website, great looking website, and we've got this really good article on subject A, and yet when I search on that, we don't appear anywhere but our, our competitor. And look, it's, it's an awful web page and it's an awful you know, what we can actually do is unpick that for them and explain to them why the competitor's page is ranking and they're not because we, you know, we can look at like a lots of different aspects that feed into the ranking algorithm and show them by using this, this, this competitor analysis technique, um, which can really help them understand the big picture and the kind of, and the reasons, if you like that we're talking about what we're talking about because it is a little bit abstract, isn't it to a lot of people.
It's a little bit abstract. And I also think this is one of those areas where there's like a shit ton of misinformation out there on the internet, right? A lot of the time when people I see all the time on places like Reddit and forums where people are talking about this stuff, they're like, oh, why does somebody outrank me? And somebody will say, oh, well, their website might look worse than yours, but they've obviously got more backlinks or they've obviously got better content or whatever. And people make these huge kind of sweeping assumptions and they just say, oh, it's dead simple. Just do what Google say. I think sometimes it's really useful, like you say, to sit down with a client and actually on a case by case basis, unpick the reality of why somebody outranking you instead of making those kind of sweeping generalisations. Yeah. Like you say, saying it's actually because they're doing X, Y, and Z, and that gives you a better steer on what you should be doing or shouldn't be doing.
Certainly. And, and another thing that can come away that you can take away from, um, competitive research is you can, or rather not, you can, you get a very split infinitive to say very real, I don't know. You get, you get a real, you get a, you get a real picture of the situation that the customer is in. You know, there's, there's no kind of, you know, because we work in an industry where we've talked about guarantees and promises in previous podcasts. And the thing about the competitor research is it can, you know, you can lay it out in almost just lay it out in very easy to digest numbers. You know, your, your website's got ten pages, your competitor's websites has got, I've got like a minimum even, even the one that's at the bottom of page one has got two hundred pages, which means that they've got and, you know, and we've looked at it and it's got lots of, you know, authoritative good content in there. And they've got these links. They're spending this much. I'm repeating what I said earlier, but you, you can really, it takes all the guesswork out. You know, it can be a bitter pill to swallow.
I think it's one of the things just to pick up on what you were saying there, though. That's one of the things I really like site bulb for, right? It's like when you drop a website into site bulb is a free tool.
It's not free. No, it's not free. No, it's a fantastic tool. And we're going to get Jeff from bond to talk, and he'll tell us more about exactly what cyborg does. I'm just waiting for him to book a slot.
Because, uh, because you pay for it, obviously.
Red evolution. Yeah.
You drop, um, your URL in and it maps out your content into clusters, right? And it shows you one of the many things it does.
Yes.
It shows you how kind of developed your content clusters are. And when you do it, the competitor site and you see like, like you say, um, that they've got much more developed content clusters that they're much bigger clusters of content. Um, that's, it can be a bit of a pill to swallow, but like you say, it's also super useful because it's just there in black and white, you know, that is the gap you've got to bridge, I guess.
At a very high level. Alex, just to explain a content cluster.
Yeah, you're going to pull me up on that.
I'm not pulling you up. No no no no I'm not I'm not pulling you up. Because it came up in conversation today with the customer, didn't it? With a client a long a long time client. And you said content cluster. And I said, you know, to the client, do you understand what Alex means by that? And she said, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think it's, it's kind of out there. It's not, it's not a very sort of industry niche term, but just, you know, for people listening who don't know what a content cluster is, just, just, just at a high level.
I'll try my best to avoid the jargon.
Don't worry about the jargon.
So I guess the idea is that instead of just having a page ranking for a keyword, you build a cluster of pages that are trying to rank for semantically linked keywords. That is, keywords that are very similar, that show the same kind of intent, but are kind of variations of.
So give me an example of a semantic connection, a semantic link. I've got, I've got one in mind which I could run past you and you could say, yeah, that's one or that isn't one.
I guess, you know, a really simple level, it would be like galvanised steel ladders and window ladders or what was your example?
Well, my example was if you had a website that was about weddings, then you would expect that website to be about also mentioning cakes. You would expect it also to be talking about photographers, you would expect it to be talking about venues, potentially churches, um, food menus, that sort of thing. So there's, there's lots of connected content because it's, it's semantically linked to whatever the core subject is. AM I, am I close with that? Would you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's exactly it isn't it? Google is getting better and better at understanding the kind of intent behind a web page and how kind of meanings are connected. And like you say, what the semantics are of a subject. And I think the idea is that eventually we kind of reach a point where Google can look at a website that only ever mentions wedding cakes and never wedding venues and say, actually, this is a bit spammy. This is a bit unnatural, a bit weird, because if you were talking naturally around the subject, you would have also mentioned these things. Yeah. Um, so I guess the idea of content clusters is that you're showing Google that you're not just trying to rank for a keyword that you are talking holistically about a subject that you know a lot about.
And we're not doing this to keep Google happy. We're doing this because it's, it's just kind of a natural layout. It's a natural, um, naturally occurring event almost. If you're talking about one subject, it would be unusual if you weren't talking about other subjects as well.
Yeah. And I think the only reason we really kind of tell clients that they need to create more content clusters, if you like, is because people will only kind of produce or publish the content they think they need to publish to rank and then they stop, right? It's like, oh, I want to rank for this keyword. I produced a page about it and now I've finished. We have to go in and say actually, like, hang on a minute. You can't, you can't just say, you know, we do technical SEO services, full stop. Goodbye. It has to be more holistic than that.
Yeah. That's right. And, um, I had something in my mind then and I didn't scribble it down. And it's gone and I'm, and I'm trying desperately to, to, uh, to, to recall it, but it's just not coming back to me. So you better say something quickly or this is going to get embarrassing.
Sound clever. Um, um, but yeah, so we were talking about content clusters, I guess, because again, this is another thing that you you find competitive research very useful for, isn't it? It's finding where somebody else has done a better job of talking around the subject than you have and where they've got a more kind of developed, I guess, um, hub of content.
Yeah. And what that also feeds into that, that, that content cluster is, is, is the different, uh, different places where potential customers are. So, you know, a customer, a potential customer who's really at the very early stages of considering a product or a service is going to need different content to somebody who has decided exactly what they need, they want to buy it, and they just want, for example, to know that you can do it. So the kind of content they might be looking for is like, well, you've got this page that says you provide service a like maybe you're a, I don't know, a corporate accountant or something like that. And then I also found these case studies, which were, which were easily accessible from the page that I found those case studies are talking about exactly who you've helped and how you've helped them. Probably a bad example, because accountants wouldn't go into great detail of talking about how they helped an Acme engineering avoid a load of tax or something. But, um, but you know what I'm saying? I mean, they're basically basically, you know, so, so I we're at different, you know, people are at different places. And by talking very broadly around subjects as well as demonstrating expertise in your content and building these clusters out where you've got lots of lots of different types of content, which could include podcasts and videos and all sorts of things. It just builds this body of evidence, doesn't it?
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, you talk about accountants. I think it's fair to say we work with quite a few energy sector clients who are doing this thing right, where we're kind of in the midst of transitioning towards renewable energy. And without naming any names, a lot of people like to say, you know, we're transitioning to renewable energy. Here's a page about it, full stop, end of story. And people coming across these websites are not likely to be convinced that you're a, you know, kind of renewable energy expert because you've got a single page on your website about it. You've got to have that body of evidence.
That's right. Yep. And to loop back to the original subject of the podcast, by doing the analysis, we can, we can really build a good picture of how content clusters are helping the people who currently, um, appear in, uh, Google search for a particular search term. Now, but it is also possible, uh, when you do this competitor analysis, which is something I haven't spoken about yet, is and this has happened. This is not unusual. You actually find that in that particular niche where the customer is operating, that the people who rank just the there by almost by default because they've just they've been there for a while. They've got some content there. Their websites are not well optimised. They're not well written. Um, they just, they just happen to rank because it's a niche where nobody's really bothered to take a more structured strategic approach to it. And that's when you find that when you do competitor analysis, it's like, wow, there's such a fantastic opportunity here.
Yeah, they're the golden opportunities, aren't they? When you find like it's often really old sights, isn't it? Old domains that have been kind of sat on a keyword for ten, twenty years sometimes and you just think they're not doing anything, you know, that's kind of considered current modern best practice. Um, let's, let's go after that keyword. Let's just create a page of good content and go after that. And that's, yeah, I think there's a huge when you find them.
I can't remember which, which company it was, but this has happened quite recently where the competitor analysis we've done, which kind of competitor analysis, market analysis, uh, you know, you're not just looking at competitors, you might, you might look at a competitor, get a bunch of search terms that that competitor ranks for that then triggers other research. They are what you might term the seed keywords. So you then find other keywords, other search terms. And from there you can think like, well, look at this, you know, like the number one page for this search term, which lots of people are typing into Google is not particularly well optimised. It's just Google's basically going, well, you know, this is this is kind of the best. I've got the best. I mean, Google's not going to say it's a bit shit, but it's all I've got. But, you know, it's, it's very easy to figure out that there are some really good opportunities. Um, again, because of the competitive research.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, and I then I think, you know, that kind of plays back into that whole idea of the real value of doing this is in spotting the areas where you should be investing energy, right? Because I think it's fair to say often we're quite surprised when we do competitor research for somebody. There have been times when I've thought, you know, this is, you know, before you actually kind of sit down and look at the competitors, this is what we're going to have to do to rank. And then you start looking around and you see actually the keywords you thought you were going to be going after, there's no point. And the ones that you thought would be really difficult to rank for, actually, there's tons of opportunities there.
Well, yeah. I mean, quite often when you're doing this, this, this research, this work, you unearth the, the terminology that the customer is using, you know. So you are especially with some of the professional services companies and some of the engineering companies that we work with, you know, they use very industry specific niche terminology. The drilling industry is a perfect example of that. I mean, they've got a whole language, a whole is it lexicon of their own? Um, and, you know, and it's likely that people in the industry who are looking for a particular service where drilling is concerned are using the same language, but it's also possible that a company thinks their customer is looking for X, but their customer, although they are looking for X, they call it Y. So, you know, and that comes up again when you when you carry out competitor research, keyword search term research and general market analysis.
But that also kind of plays back to that point you're making earlier, right, about the fact that this is often about finding the customer at kind of like, you know, at the very beginning when they're first looking for a product or a service and they don't necessarily know the right terminology, because I think it's fair to say that, you know, going back to the drilling analogy, that people who have done research around the subject and know exactly what kind of product or whatever they want will just use that keyword. But that's kind of missing the point that there are a load of other customers who haven't even got to that point yet, who are just kind of generally looking for peripheral solutions. You know, how do I do this? What's the solution to this? How does this work? And that's all the kind of areas where, like you say, you uncover really good opportunities there, that a lot of the time our clients don't see because they're too immersed in their industry. And I'm sure we're guilty of that too. You know, I'm sure when we're writing pages about SEO and that kind of thing, that we miss people who are like, how to, how to grow my business, for example, that's much more kind of yeah, early in the process, I guess.
That's right. Yeah. I mean, what would be, you know, from a competitor research point of view and you can't do this. But what would be fantastic is if you could get access to their Google search console data. And for anybody that doesn't use Google Search Console, it's a free tool. It will tell you all of the things that your website ranks for. It will tell you stuff where you rank, but don't get any traffic because you rank at position fifty as well as a whole heap of other information. It's one of the most useful tools when you're doing digital marketing. But can you imagine if you could get hold of, uh, access to Search console data for competitors? Yeah. And it would be, it would be a goldmine of information, wouldn't it? Really would. Okay. So, um, just to start thinking about wrapping this up, we talked about, we're talking about competitor research, why we do it and what it is. So we do it so that we can try and understand what kind of strategy is going to be required to move the dial for our customer. That's why we're looking at, you know, the people currently ranking, etc.. We can look at the search terms that our website ranks for. We can look at its link profile to see why it's popular, what's made it popular. We can look at what it's bidding on in Google Ads, Google search, and we can look.
At how much they're spending.
How much they're spending. Certainly, we can get a good estimate of all that. Yeah. And that lets us paint the big picture and really help both us and our client understand what it is we're up against, you know, and, and sometimes it's a, it's a painful exercise for the customer because it kind of makes them realise that, you know, they thought they were playing a little bit of catch up, but actually they're massively behind. Yeah. That's right. But at the same time, as we've said just a few minutes ago, it can also show us that the people currently dominating that market online are doing it almost by accident. They haven't really tried to. They've just kind of put something up there and Google's going, oh, well, there's not many people talking about that subject here. You know, have a page one ranking and have the traffic that goes along with it. Is there anything else or do you think we've kind of pretty much covered what we needed to cover on this one?
No, I think that's everything really.
Um, everything. Well, just like everything, it's basically listen to this podcast and you've got a PhD in competitor analysis. That's it.
That's what I'm saying. Is it?
It probably is, right? There'll be somebody doing a PhD in competitor analysis somewhere. And the. Yeah. You know, it'll be, you know, Doctor John, he's PhD. He studied studied competitor analysis data, uh, you know, on a, in a certain niche area. And oh, don't get me started.
Right in if that's you and you have a PhD in this. Okay. Tell us what idiots we've been. Yeah, but no, I think yeah, like you say, that's exactly it. Competitor research. Super useful. Um, very easy to do nowadays with the tools at hand and a fantastic way to either kind of help start putting together a strategy or at least point you in the right direction.
Yeah, absolutely. Been a joy as ever. And we'll be back quite soon with the next podcast.
Thanks for listening.