How to do PPC keyword and competition analysis - ColibriWP Blog (2023)

Hello friends, welcome to a new story in our "Learn From" series. Our guests today: SE Ranking, a powerful SEO software, enjoyed by over 500,000 users. Irina from SE Ranking will show us how to properly research competitors' keywords and ads so we can boost our paid ads strategy. Let's roll!

The world of PPC marketing is a very competitive place. You need to stand out from the crowd in paid search if you want to be successful. The data you can get from competitor analysis will make your job a lot easier.

By keeping an eye on your competitor's keywords and data, you can improve your own marketing strategies, increase your conversions, and avoid potential issues presented by your experience.

You need to understand that a PPC competitor analysis is not just about revealing new keywords, but it also shows your target audience, content themes, website quality, conversions and much more. This will give you a real sense of what is working well and what is currently not working in your market.

Analyzing your market with a competitive analysis will allow you to evaluate your business against your main competitors and answer the following questions:

• Who is dominating your industry right now?
• How can you improve your PPC strategy?
• Are your competitors bidding on your brand keywords?
• How do you do in the PPC battle?

Why is PPC competitor analysis important for your business?

How can you build a stable marketing strategy or create a better product if you don't know what kind of strategies and products your competitors are already using? That's where a PPC competitor analysis comes into play. This will help not to duplicate your efforts, but to create marketing campaigns that are much better than the competition.

Here are some benefits you can gain from a PPC competitor analysis for your business:

• Reveal and adapt to new trends, changes and ideas;
• Adjust your marketing benchmarks;
• Spy on seasonal or industry trends;
• Wasting money using snake oil marketing practices;
• Achieve your marketing and PPC goals;
• Find gaps in your PPC campaign.

Next I want to share a step by step guide to an advanced PPC competitor andkeyword searchbased on my experience and get a leg up on the PPC ad space.

#1. Identify your competitors in paid search

If you already know your competitors in paid search, you can skip this step. If you need help finding your rivals, you can useSE Ranking Competitive Research Toolto find all the sites that compete with your marketing campaign for paid keyword rankings.

Just go to Competitive Search, log in to your site and get a comprehensive list of your top paid search competitors ranked by the number of paid keywords they have in common with your site.

The best thing about the tool is the ability to compare your site to any of the paid competitors listed based on the number of keywords it ranks for, thetotal website traffic, your cost of traffic and your backlinks. In addition, you can choose a period of up to 36 months to see the results.

Once you've created a list of paid competitors, you can take it a step further and take a closer look at your competitors' strengths and leverage their best strategies.

#2. Find keywords that competitors are paying for that you can rank for

Finding out how your competitors are doing in terms of their paid search efforts and what keywords they are bidding you rank for will help you see opportunities in your market and improve your PPC campaign.

To find competitors' keywords directly with yours, go to the Competitor Comparison section and enter two of your competitors' domains next to yours. Here you can compare your site's keywords to any of your rivals to find keywords that each rival's site ranks for, that you rank for but none of your competitors, and that you still it is not oriented.

The section only shows data for the current month. But if you want to get historical data, you can do it separately for each competitor.

#3. Analyze Search Results Ads, UVPs, and Call-to-Action

Analyzing your competitors' ad variations is an important step in knowing how you see yourself in the market and how you can use that to your advantage. Find out what ad copy they're writing to highlight, what discounts or special offers they're running to get their users' attention so they'll click.

It may take some time to sift through the SERPs and identify what it will take to create one of the most effective bids in search. The best way to do this is to go to the Ad History section and better understand what variations of ad text were used to get results.

Another important step is to analyze each competitor's unique value proposition (UVP) to see how your site stacks up against the competition, or create your own UVP. Visit your competitors' websites to take notes on their UVPs. Once you've done that, you can improve your value proposition and make your product valuable and unique.

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#4. Dive into AdWords Auction Statistics

Let's say you're already running your PPC campaign and bidding on AdWords terms, but you want to drill down into the details and track every little change in your ad position or impression share. you may come inauction outlookto find out where your competitors appear and what their impression share is.

With a keyword tool, you can also evaluate each competitor from there and see all their profitable keywords, which landing pages are driving the most traffic and which ads are showing. This is a great way to look beyond the hype and figure out where you should be focusing your optimization time.

#5: Dive deep into the conversion funnel

Many PPC marketers used to keep an eye on competitors' keywords and ad text variations. But I would love to take a look at PPC competitors comparing their conversion funnel to their rivals.

For that, I recommend usingTranslatedto track conversions not only for separate ads and keywords, but you can also check your landing pages. Track all actions taken by users before making a purchase and create histograms to view tracked events. It will automatically generate funnels and save the data as a report for further analysis.

You can easily find out how they are converting their traffic and what they offer (a discount or a free guide) to get people to click through to Google. Write down what you need to improve on your landing page, or any ideas for testing new ad copy variations.

#6. Analyze seasonal fluctuation

Another important step for the success of your PPC campaign is the seasonality analysis to better understand which keywords are most used by competitors in those months. This data can help you make informed decisions to achieve big wins.

The competitor search section in SE Ranking is the perfect place to see all of your competitors' seasonal fluctuations and reveal which specific keywords are performing in paid search. It shows which months are the most active in your industry regarding online advertising. It's a great way to plan your PPC campaign in advance based on your competitors' experience.

#7. Improve your multi-device strategy

According tosmart information, users prefer the use of multiple devices, not just a mobile-friendly website. It's important to create effective strategies to engage cross-channel switching behavior for your brand. People used to switch between desktop and mobile. So if you want to stay ahead of the PPC competition in 2021, you need to figure out what works well and what doesn't for paid search on desktop and mobile.

Make sure the keywords you are targeting mobile search engines can be distinguished from the keywords you are targeting desktop search engines. Once you reveal your competitors' best strategies, you can improve your marketing efforts and create a successful PPC strategy.

EmGoogle Search Consoleyou can view your search analysis using the filter comparing mobile and desktop. It will pull up a list of mobile keywords that are driving ads to your competitor's website and compare it to the desktop keywords.

If you're creating desktop and mobile ads, make sure you need to tailor them to specific audiences. Because mobile and desktop users are two different people.

Once you've defined which keywords you'll be using for mobile and desktop paid search, you'll need to create an effective Google Ads campaign. WithDepositphotos, you can use or download royalty-free photos and images that will help yourcustomers find more content options and quickly find exactly what they're looking for.

#8: Keep spying on your competitors

It's important to keep monitoring your competition so you don't miss out on what they're doing in paid search. Whether they are launching a new product or service, updating their unique offerings,or change prices, you should be the first to know what changes have taken place.

To automate the process, it's best to use competitor research tools like SE Ranking to instantly see how your ads appear on the SERPS from different locations and times.

Ending

If you're stuck planning your PPC strategy, doing a competitor analysis will go a long way, giving you real insight into what's working well and what's not working in your niche. Your priority is getting great results for your campaign, and competitors can rock your boat and steer you in the right direction. I hope this guide helps you audit the competition and gain a competitive edge.