SEO

10 Tools You Can Use For SEO Competitive Analysis

Published

2 months ago

January 30, 2023

10 Tools You Can Use For SEO Competitive Analysis

A successful search engine optimization strategy includes competitive analysis. The tools available today offer incredible value at generally reasonable fees.

They help users accomplish more in less time, and many may find that the tools are so useful that they essentially end up paying for themselves. Here are 10 popular SEO competitive analysis tools, their pricing, and how you can use them to bolster the success of your SEO strategy.

1. Semrush

Pricing: Plans start at $119.95 per month.

Semrush not only offers good data for search results analysis, but everything functions the way you expect it to – it’s that easy to use.

There is no need to read a manual to use Semrush’s SERP analysis tool.

Every link, button, and heading has a tooltip that explains what it is so that everything makes sense.

Semrush Tooltip Explains SERP Analysis Tool Data

Screenshot from Semrush, January 2023

Semrush Tooltip Explains Jargon

Screenshot from Semrush modified by author, January 2023

Semrush’s Authority Score is assigned to every URL listed in the SERP Analysis.

Like any third-party metric, the Authority Score is just a score based on factors like backlinks, traffic, and referring domains.

The metric makes it easy to make a quick judgment about a webpage without having to spend hours researching all of the factors for each webpage.

The research is already done; that’s what Semrush’s Authority Score is about.

That’s just one part of the Semrush SERP analysis, but it’s the part that is directly tied to competitor research.

Semrush is useful for researching competitor backlinks. The ease of use makes the workflow of researching links a pleasure.

There’s no need to read a manual. Everything is self-explanatory.

Starting an analysis consists of entering a domain name or an entire URL.

The resulting page shows various metrics that help you see the competition at a glance, literally.

There’s a graph that shows the growth of referring domains and also backlinks by year, which provides a quick idea of how aggressively they’re building links, organized by time.

Screenshot from Semrush modified by author, January 2023

Beneath that graph, there’s another visual representation of the backlinks organized by the categories of referring domains.

The categories are the general niche areas that the backlinks belong to.

Screenshot from Semrush, January 2023

When you click through a category, the tool presents a filter where you can add a word, a phrase, or a TLD, which means Top Level Domain (.net or .org), to find all the relevant links.

There’s also a drop-down menu for selecting “zones by TLD,” but I found that typing in the TLD works better.

Or you can get granular and click on the View Full Report button to see all of the categories in granular detail.

It’s easy to recommend Semrush because it truly is designed for researching competitors and for link building.

The tools for competitive research are easy to use and give a visual snapshot of their activities and offer a useful user interface for drilling down by category.

2. Ahrefs SERP Checker (Free And Paid)

Pricing: Free checker tool, then starts at $99 per month.

Ahrefs has a free SERP checker that shows the same SERP data as the paid version, only for just the first few positions.

The paid version has more data. But if you’re on a budget, the free version is a useful start.

Below is a screenshot of the SERP overview that lists featured snippets, people also ask, and the sitelinks enhancements.

This extra data gives a good overview of what the SERPs look like, plus page and domain rating metrics.

Screenshot from Ahrefs, December 2022

Here is a screenshot showing more data from the SERP analysis tool.

All of the column headings show a tooltip that explains what each column means.

Screenshot from Ahrefs, December 2022

Ahrefs is a solid choice for search results competitor analysis.

3. Serpstat

Pricing: Free version, then starts at $69 per month.

Serpstat is an affordably priced SEO platform that offers SERP analysis tools. It’s possible to sign up for free to test it out.

Serpstat is focused on analyzing the search results and is useful for Backlinks Analysis and Competitor Analysis.

4. SpyFu

Pricing: Free analysis tool, then starts at $39 per month (or $16 per month on an annual plan).

SpyFu is a very reasonably priced service that is dedicated specifically to competitive research and offers many useful features.

The benefit of the tool is that it generates all the data necessary for competitive research.

SpyFu basically takes the “research” part out of competitive research tasks and provides the data.

The SERP Analysis tool, which can be used for free, offers unique information, such as indicators that signal a website rises or drops in the search results.

Screenshot from SpyFu, January 2023

Another interesting feature is that it offers a Ranking Difficulty score, data on whether .gov or .edu sites are ranking, and the number of homepages that are ranking in the top 100 positions.

Screenshot from SpyFu modified by author, January 2023

SpyFu Backlinks Report

Another unique feature is how SpyFu identifies what it determines are the strongest webpages to get a link from.

Just enter a keyword phrase into the search box, and SpyFu searches the backlinks of the top 5,000 ranked sites, including for similar keyword phrases, and identifies all the backlinking domains that the ranked sites have in common.

Even better, SpyFu allows users to filter those webpages by backlink types.

The backlink types one can filter for are .gov/.edu/, sites with affiliate links, blogs, news sites, forums, and directories.

Filtering for forums reveals all the strongest forum backlinks, filtering for .edu domains shows the best .edu sites to get a link from, and so on.

Another cool feature is called Backlink Kombat.

Screenshot from SpyFu, January 2023

This tool allows you to enter two competitor domains and then exclude your own domain. It will then show you all the links the competitors have in common that your site does not.

I like using tools in creative ways to get even more or better data.

What I would suggest doing with the SpyFu Backlink Kombat tool is comparing sites that aren’t your direct competitors. This can help you discover opportunities you might not otherwise.

So if your topic is plumbers in City X, compare roofers in City X.

Competitor backlink research with SpyFu is incredibly easy. I would like the flexibility to filter by keywords (like Favorite Sites) or by TLD (to find .org or .us domains).

A limited amount of this data is free, and the complete data set is available to paid subscribers.

SpyFu is an interesting tool because it takes the extra step of presenting the data while minimizing research.

It’s easy to use, specific to competitor research, and reasonably priced.

5. Sandboxweb.io SERP Analysis Tool

Pricing: Free version, then pricing starts at $19 per month.

Sandboxweb.io offers a SERP analysis tool that provides data on top-ranked competitors.

This tool shows the schema types, Core Web Vitals data, and word counts.

You can click on each competitor in the SERP to research further.

The free version of this tool offers a lot of information. But it’s limited to 10 keywords per month.

The data is somewhat limited, but it does offer a quick analysis.

6. Screaming Frog

Pricing: Free version and a paid version at $209 per year.

Screaming Frog has a SERP analysis function. It’s not easy to use, but it’s not excessively difficult.

I’d like to see Screaming Frog make it easier to run this kind of analysis without getting technical.

If you take the time to figure it out, Screaming Frog can scrape the SERPs and provide analysis.

It’s also useful for analyzing competitors one at a time to get a sense of what sites they link to, how much content they have, interlinking patterns, headings used across the site, and many other competitor data points.

7. Inlinks

Pricing: Free version, then pricing starts at $39 per month.

Inlinks is a content optimization-focused tool that can extract relevant data points from search results and competitors.

Inlinks features a SERP analysis function that offers multiple data points about the sites in the search results, such as semantically related topics and user intent data.

The user intent data and topic suggestion features are quite unique.

There is also a Topic Analysis feature that provides competitors’ related topics and other data that is useful for creating content.

Other SERP Analysis tools look at the top 100 through the top 5,000 for their analyses.

But in my opinion, what really matters most are the top 10 search results because not every site in the top 100 or even the top 10 is a competitor.

So, I really appreciate that Inlinks’ SERP analysis tool focuses on the top 10.

The Inlinks SERP analysis tool offers data on the following:

Topic density.
Internal and external link counts.
Readability scores.
List of H2 headings.

I asked one of the founders, Dixon Jones, to explain what Inlinks does regarding competitor analysis.

Dixon answered:

“Inlinks analyzes ten competing pages for any Keyword. It aggregates the combined number of times entities are used in the SERP and uses this to build a Knowledge Graph of entities related to a given search.

This is then compared to the entities in the content on YOUR competing page, highlighting material gaps in your content.

At a site level, Inlinks can build a knowledge graph of any site, but does not currently have many tools to compare whole sites.

We look at the verbs used to describe entities (in competing pages for a SERP) and cluster them into verb based intent.

This helps content publishers answer a genuine user query, rather than use words in the wrong context.”

Inlinks offers more tools; it’s more than just competitor analysis.

There is a free, pro, and enterprise level.

8. MarketMuse

Pricing: Free version and paid plans starting at $600 per month.

MarketMuse is an AI-based content analysis tool that functions within the entire content creation workflow, from research to content brief and more.

What I appreciate about MarketMuse is that it looks at the top-ranked pages and offers a keyword overview of the topics.

A key competitor analysis function in MarketMuse is called Compete.

The Compete tool analyzes the competition and suggests what to write about and ways to do better than the competitors, such as covering overlooked related topics.

Compete’s unique selling proposition, in my opinion, is that it is focused on helping users create content that is better than the competition.

My understanding of MarketMuse is that it’s not just focused on helping users beat their competition.

The tool streamlines the entire content creation workflow, with competitor research being one part of the process.

There is a learning curve to MarketMuse.

9. SimilarWeb

Pricing: Free version and paid plans starting at $167 per month for the starter package.

SimilarWeb is a unique competitor analysis tool.

It’s focused less on SEO and more on providing a clear image of the differences between the two websites.

There are multiple data points related to traffic, keywords, traffic share by country, and even a comparison of audience demographics.

SimilarWeb offers a free and paid version.

The free version offers a generous amount of data that helps users compare competitors.

10. LinkResearchTools

Pricing: Starts at $599 per month. One-week trial for $17.

LinkResearchTools is an enterprise-class link research tool.

It’s the most sophisticated and comprehensive link-building tool I’ve ever used.

One of the qualities I like most is that it feels like it has a comprehensive inventory of crawled links.

The tool makes it easy to find links with normal searching, like adding a TLD, but you can also find links multiple sites have in common.

Most of the functionality is geared toward businesses that want to disavow backlinks, which is useless for link builders.

I’d like to see a tool that does away with all of the link-disavowing-related features and just focuses on researching competitor backlinks.

One can subscribe to most of the other lower-priced tools and use their combined competitor backlink research features and still pay less than LinkResearchTools.

For most people, that’s more than enough.

But the data in LinkResearchTools is, in my experience, possibly the most comprehensive backlink data available.

Backlink Analysis

Backlink analysis is more than just poaching keywords from competitors.

It’s a way to understand what the barrier to entry might be, which means how easy or difficult it might be to compete.

Competitor links can be a starting point for building better links as well.

Sometimes a group of links might stand out, giving you an idea of a direction to take.

Doing solid link building requires a flexible backlink analysis tool.

Competitor Research

There are many useful SEO tools available today. They don’t do the SEO for you, but they make it easier to accomplish better results faster.

The tools also provide time-saving access to a huge amount of data that would ordinarily take days to compile.

Saving time, being more productive, and having the data to make informed decisions is the hallmark of all of these SEO tools.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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TikTok CEO To Testify In Hearing On Data Privacy And Online Harm Reduction

Published

5 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

TikTok CEO To Testify In Hearing On Data Privacy And Online Harm Reduction

TikTok CEO Shou Chew will testify in a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce this Thursday, March 23, at 10:00 a.m. ET.

As CEO, Chew is responsible for TikTok’s business operations and strategic decisions.

The “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms” hearing will be streamed live on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s website.

According to written testimony submitted by Chew, the hearing will focus on TikTok’s alleged commitment to transparency, teen safety, consumer privacy, and data security.

It also appears to broach the topic of misconceptions about the platform, such as its connection to the Chinese government through its parent company, ByteDance.

Chew shared a special message with TikTok yesterday from Washington, D.C., to thank 150 million users, five million businesses, and 7,000 employees in the U.S. for helping build the TikTok community.

@tiktokOur CEO, Shou Chew, shares a special message on behalf of the entire TikTok team to thank our community of 150 million Americans ahead of his congressional hearing later this week.♬ original sound – TikTok

The video has received over 85k comments from users, many describing how TikTok has allowed them to interact with people worldwide and find unbiased news, new perspectives, educational content, inspiration, and joy.

TikTok Updates Guidelines And Offers More Educational Content

TikTok has been making significant changes to its platform to address many of these concerns before this hearing to evade a total U.S. ban on the platform.

Below is an overview of some efforts by TikTok to rehab its perception before the hearing.

Updated Community Guidelines – TikTok updated community guidelines and shared its Community Principles to demonstrate commitment to keeping the platform safe and inclusive for all users.

For You Feed Refresh – TikTok recommends content to users based on their engagement with content and creators. For users who feel that recommendations no longer align with their interests, TikTok introduced the ability to refresh the For You Page, allowing them to receive fresh recommendations as if they started a new account.

STEM Feed – To improve the quality of educational content on TikTok, it will introduce a STEM feed for content focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Unlike the content that appears when users search the #STEM hashtag, TikTok says that Common Sense Networks and Poynter will review STEM feed content to ensure it is safe for younger audiences and factually accurate.

This could make it more like the version of TikTok in China – Douyin – that promotes educational content to younger audiences over entertaining content.

Series Monetization – To encourage creators to create in-depth, informative content, TikTok introduced a new monetization program for Series content. Series allows creators to earn income by putting up to 80 videos with up to 20 minutes in length, each behind a paywall.

More Congressional Efforts To Restrict TikTok

The TikTok hearing tomorrow isn’t the only Congressional effort to limit or ban technologies like TikTok.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the RESTRICT Act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology), which would create a formal process for the government to review and mitigate risks of technology originating in countries like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

Organizations like the Tech Oversight Project have pointed out that Congress should look beyond TikTok and investigate similar risks to national security and younger audiences posed by other Big Tech platforms like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.

We will follow tomorrow’s hearing closely – be sure to come back for our coverage to determine how this will affect users and predict what will happen next.

Featured Image: Alex Verrone/Shutterstock

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SEO

How Is It Different From GPT-3.5?

Published

12 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

GPT-4, the latest version of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s language model, is a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) technology that has revolutionized how we communicate with machines.

ChatGPT’s multimodal capabilities enable it to process text, images, and videos, making it an incredibly versatile tool for marketers, businesses, and individuals alike.

What Is GPT-4?

GPT-4 is 10 times more advanced than its predecessor, GPT-3.5. This enhancement enables the model to better understand context and distinguish nuances, resulting in more accurate and coherent responses.

Furthermore, GPT-4 has a maximum token limit of 32,000 (equivalent to 25,000 words), which is a significant increase from GPT-3.5’s 4,000 tokens (equivalent to 3,125 words).

“We spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations.” – OpenAI

GPT-3.5 Vs. GPT-4 – What’s Different?

GPT-4 offers several improvements over its predecessor, some of which include:

1. Linguistic Finesse

While GPT-3.5 is quite capable of generating human-like text, GPT-4 has an even greater ability to understand and generate different dialects and respond to emotions expressed in the text.

For example, GPT-4 can recognize and respond sensitively to a user expressing sadness or frustration, making the interaction feel more personal and genuine.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

One of the most impressive aspects of GPT-4 is its ability to work with dialects, which are regional or cultural variations of a language.

Dialects can be extremely difficult for language models to understand, as they often have unique vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that may not be present in the standard language.

However, GPT-4 has been specifically designed to overcome these challenges and can accurately generate and interpret text in various dialects.

2. Information Synthesis

GPT-4 can answer complex questions by synthesizing information from multiple sources, whereas GPT-3.5 may struggle to connect the dots.

For example, when asked about the link between the decline of bee populations and the impact on global agriculture, GPT-4 can provide a more comprehensive and nuanced answer, citing different studies and sources.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Unlike its predecessor, GPT-4 now includes a feature that allows it to properly cite sources when generating text.

This means that when the model generates content, it cites the sources it has used, making it easier for readers to verify the accuracy of the information presented.

3. Creativity And Coherence

While GPT-3.5 can generate creative content, GPT-4 goes a step further by producing stories, poems, or essays with improved coherence and creativity.

For example, GPT-4 can produce a short story with a well-developed plot and character development, whereas GPT-3.5 might struggle to maintain consistency and coherence in the narrative.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

4. Complex Problem-Solving

GPT-4 demonstrates a strong ability to solve complex mathematical and scientific problems beyond the capabilities of GPT-3.5.

For example, GPT-4 can solve advanced calculus problems or simulate chemical reactions more effectively than its predecessor.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

GPT-4 has significantly improved its ability to understand and process complex mathematical and scientific concepts. Its mathematical skills include the ability to solve complex equations and perform various mathematical operations such as calculus, algebra, and geometry.

In addition, GPT-4 is also capable of handling scientific subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy.

Its advanced processing power and language modeling capabilities allow it to analyze complex scientific texts and provide insights and explanations easily.

As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that GPT-4 will continue to expand its capabilities and become even more adept at a wider range of subjects and tasks.

5. Programming Power

GPT-4’s programming capabilities have taken social media by storm with its ability to generate code snippets or debug existing code more efficiently than GPT-3.5, making it a valuable resource for software developers.

With the help of GPT-4, weeks of work can be condensed into a few short hours, allowing extraordinary results to be achieved in record time. You can test these prompts:

“Write code to train X with dataset Y.”
“I’m getting this error. Fix it.”
“Now improve the performance.”
“Now wrap it in a GUI.”

6. Image And Graphics Understanding

Unlike GPT-3.5, which focuses primarily on text, GPT-4 can analyze and comment on images and graphics.

For example, GPT-4 can describe the content of a photo, identify trends in a graph, or even generate captions for images, making it a powerful tool for education and content creation.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Imagine this technology integrated with Google Analytics or Matomo. You could get highly accurate analytics for all your dashboards in a few minutes.

7. Reduction Of Inappropriate Or Biased Responses

GPT-4 implements mechanisms to minimize undesirable results, thereby increasing reliability and ethical responsibility.

For example, GPT-4 is less likely to generate politically biased, offensive, or harmful content, making it a more trustworthy AI companion than GPT-3.5.

Where Can ChatGPT Go Next?

Despite its remarkable advancements, ChatGPT still has room for improvement:

Addressing neutrality: Enhancing its ability to discern the context and respond accordingly.
Understanding the user: Developing the capacity to understand who is communicating (who, where, and how).
External integrations: Expanding its reach through web, API, and robotic integrations.
Long-term memory: Improving its ability to recall past interactions and apply that knowledge to future conversations.
Reducing hallucination: Minimizing instances where the AI is convinced of false information.

As ChatGPT continues to evolve, it is poised to revolutionize marketing and AI-driven communications.

Its potential applications in content creation, education, customer service, and more are vast, making it an essential tool for businesses and individuals in the digital age.

More Resources:

Featured Image: LALAKA/Shutterstock

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SEO

Should Congress Investigate Big Tech Platforms?

Published

19 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

Should Congress Investigate Big Tech Platforms?

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a full committee hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Chew to discuss how the platform handles users’ data, its effect on kids, and its relationship with ByteDance, its Chinese parent company.

This hearing is part of an ongoing investigation to determine whether TikTok should be banned in the United States or forced to split from ByteDance.

A ban on TikTok would affect over 150 million Americans who use TikTok for education, entertainment, and income generation.

It would also affect the five million U.S. businesses using TikTok to reach customers.

Is TikTok The Only Risk To National Security?

According to a memo released by the Tech Oversight Project, TikTok is not the only tech platform that poses risks to national security, mental health, and children.

As Congress scrutinizes TikTok, the Tech Oversight Project also strongly urges an investigation of risks posed by tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google.

These platforms have a documented history of serving content harmful to younger audiences and adversarial to U.S. interests. They have also failed on many occasions to protect users’ private data.

Many Big Tech companies have seen TikTok’s success and tried to emulate some of its features to encourage users to spend as much time within their platforms’ ecosystems as possible. Academics, activists, non-governmental organizations, and others have long raised concerns about these platforms’ risks.

To truly reduce Big Rech’s risks to our society, Congress must look beyond TikTok and hold other companies accountable for the same dangers they pose to national security, mental health, and private data.

Risks Posed By Big Tech Companies

The following are examples of the risks Big Tech companies pose to U.S. users.

Amazon

Amazon has made several controversial moves, including a partnership with a state propaganda agency to launch a China books portal and offering AWS services to Chinese companies, including a banned surveillance firm with ties to the military.

Apple

Independent research found that Apple collects detailed information about its users, even when users choose not to allow tracking by apps from the App Store. Over half of the top 200 suppliers for Apple operate factories in China.

Google

The FTC fined Google and YouTube $170 million for collecting children’s data without parental consent. YouTube also changed its algorithm to make it more addictive, increasing users’ time watching videos and consuming ads.

TikTok

TikTok employees confirmed that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is involved in decision-making and has access to TikTok’s user data. While testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Vanessa Pappas, TikTok COO, would not confirm whether ByteDance would give TikTok user data to the Chinese government.

Conclusion

While the dangers posed by TikTok are undeniable, it’s clear that Congress should also address the risks posed throughout the tech industry. By holding all major offenders accountable, we can create a safe, secure, and responsible digital landscape for everyone.

Featured Image: Koshiro K/Shutterstock

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