#for starting the trend of calling him 167 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hms-chill · 5 years

Text

RWRB Study Guide: Chapter 7

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

Crêpe-eating tourists (157): Crepes are a thin, flat pancake traditionally filled with sugar, but commonly filled with other toppings. They are an iconic French dish and are popular with tourists both for this reason and because they are typically inexpensive.

Place du Tertre (157): A square in Paris, it is in the Montmarte district, which is known for its art history.

Crusty baguettes (157): Baguettes are a French bread that is meant to be crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.

Le Monde (158): The most popular French newspaper.

Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy (158): A famously wonderful cheese shop in Paris.

Parisian cheese shop (158): French cheese are known for being fancy and especially good.

Pisces (159): A zodiac sign known for being compassionate, artistic, and intuitive. (more)

NYU (159): New York University.

The Met (159): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a famous art museum in New York.

Joanne (160): JK Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, and has been pretty consistently homophobic and transphobic on twitter.

Freddie Mercury (161): Lead singer of the band Queen, Mercury never officially came out, but he had long-term relationships with both men and women and was known for his camp performances, and there are claims that he was “openly gay”. His flamboyance and camp performances, as well as his relationship with partner Jim Hutton, essentially demanded that people simply take him as he was. He died of complications from AIDS in 1991, one day after admitting openly that he had been diagnosed four years earlier. (More)

For context within the book, he wrote “Don’t Stop Me Now”

Elton John (161): A famous British musician. He came out as bisexual in 1976, then as gay in 1992. He and his husband, David Furnish, became civil partners in 2005, the day they became legal in the UK. They were officially married on the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership, the year that gay marriage was legalized within the UK. (More)

Bowie (161): David Bowie, who was a bi British musician and actor who, in 1976, described his bisexuality as “the best thing that ever happened to me”. His wife (who was also bi, and with whom he often shared partners) claimed that he had a relationship with Mick Jagger, though his bisexuality has been consistently erased, both during his life and since his death. (More)

Again for book context, Henry’s dog is named for David Bowie

Jagger (161): Mick Jagger, an English singer/songwriter and member of the Rolling Stones, known for his promiscuity. As mentioned above, he and Bowie pretty clearly had a relationship, though his Wikipedia makes no mention of queerness. (More)

Oakley Street (161): A street that runs through an affluent borough of London.

Stonewall (161): The Stonewall Inn in New York City is a gay bar. The riots against police brutality there in July of 1969 are heralded as the beginning of the gay rights movement.

SCOTUS decision in 2015 (161): The Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage across the US.

Walt Whitman (161): An American poet who wanted to become The American Poet and saw himself as the quintessential American. His poetry often deals with his queerness, and he absolutely slept with Oscar Wilde in the late 1800s.

Fun fact; he is celebrated in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which is incredibly popular with Sad Gay English Majors and which Henry would definitely have seen.

Laws of Illinois 1961 (161): In 1961, Illinois became the first state in the US to repeal its sodomy laws.

White Night Riot (161): A series of riots in San Francisco protesting the lenient sentencing of the man who killed Harvey Milk, the first openly queer politician. The riots were the most violent queer uprising since the events at the Stonewall.

Paris is Burning (161): A 1990s movie celebrating drag ball culture in New York. It celebrates in particular queer communities of color in the late 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was at its peak.

“If I die of AIDS...” (161): This is a real photo; you can find it here. The man’s jacket could refer to a form of protest called “die-ins”, where people with AIDS would go to a homophobic politician’s office or another public place where they were refused treatment and simply not leave until after they died. (see it here)

Chop my own tit off (162): Fun mythology fact; the Amazons (warrior women from Greek mythology) actually did this to make themselves better archers.

H fucking W (162): George HW Bush, a former US president.

George (163): George Villers was the boyfriend of King James the I/VI, and Prince George, Duke of Kent, was rumored to be in a polyamorous relationship in the 1920s.

Edward (162): Edward II was a famously gay king. He was may have been "wedded brothers" with Piers Gaveston and may have also had a relationship with Hugh le Despenser the younger following Gaveston's death. (More)

James (162): The British king known for translating the Bible and being just... indescribably gay and very deeply horny. He promoted his boyfriend, George Villers, to the highest non-royal position in the UK within a few years of starting to date him. James’s friends actively tried to set him up with hot guys for their own political gain.

Alexander (163): Alexander Hamilton was an incredibly bi founding father. He’s remembered for founding our current national banking system, having the first ever American sex scandal, and for literally never shutting up or knowing how to stop being A Lot All The Time.

Catalina (164): Catalina is an island near Los Angeles. On a more meta level, St. Catalina was a respected writer.

June (164): June Carter Cash was an American singer/songwriter/director/comedian.

Tricky Dick (164): Richard Nixon, a president remembered for wiretapping his opponent.

Taft (165): 27th president of the United States.

Eisenhower (165): 34th president of the US.

Baby (166): this is what Henry’s mom calls him; I wrote a thing about it here.

Daily Mail (166): A trashy British tabloid.

Lollapalooza (167): A music festival in Chicago known for setting fashion trends and having lots of drugs.

Joni Mitchell (167): A singer/songwriter known for her innovative use of the guitar, including unique tunings, chords, and a unique fingerpicking/strumming style. (Listen here)

Cocaine (168): A highly addictive drug. It is snorted, smoked, or injected, and while it makes people feel more confident or forget their problems, the highs from it last only up to about 30 minutes, which often drives people to take it more frequently. Side effects (aside from addiction) include a loss of appetite, irritability, and increased mental health issues.

Spitfire (168): Someone with a quick temper or willingness to fight.

High as a kite (169): Someone who’s “high as a kite” is on a lot of drugs and is still enjoying the high.

Clean (169): Drug/alcohol free.

Stiff upper lip (170): Ability to seem determined or hold it together in the face of hard times.

A levels (170): A UK test taken for admittance to college, similar to the ACT/SAT in the US

Henry V at RSC (171): Henry V is a Shakespearean history play about the life of Henry V, especially focused on the events of the Hundred Years’ War. RSC, or the Royal Shakespeare Company, is a Shakespeare theater company in London.

Travis County (171): The Texan county where Austin is located.

Surfside (171): A beach in Texas.

Adderall (172): A prescription drug taken for ADHD but commonly abused by students to help them stay awake for all-nighters or focused for unhealthily long study sessions. However, given McQuinston’s claim that Alex has undiagnosed ADHD, it likely helped him to be able to focus and helped his brain work the way it was expected to.

Almond milk (vs. dairy) (173): Texas has a huge dairy industry, and almond milk is not great for the environment.

The Gun File (173): American gun law is so deeply broken.

WASPy Hunter’s Harvard pencil cup (175): Harvard is a prestigious college in Boston; it has a reputation for being mostly rich white folks.

Iron curtains of gerrymandering (175): Gerrymandering is a form of drawing lines for voting districts to disenfranchise marginalized voters. It is a form of skewing elections to keep power in the hands of the powerful that divides marginalized votes, making people of color or poor folks the minority in their districts, therefore erasing their votes on a broader scale.

Vision-boarding his funeral (175): a vision board is typically made to inspire someone to pursue a goal.

Parks & Recreation (175): A popular American sit-com focused on the parks and recreation department in a small town in Indiana.

Leslie Knope (176): a Parks & Rec character. One of her defining traits is an aggressive, overwhelming love for the people in her life.

Mid-century rug (177): Mid-century furniture and style is characterized by lots of color and playful patterns (following the more reserved WWII period in the 1940s); it is rising in popularity again as a classy yet fashionable look.

J14 (178): A teen fashion/celebrity magazine.

Sacramento Bee (178): The largest newspaper in Sacramento, CA.

Southerness (180): In positive lights, the American South is known for its genuine, warm, unselfish hospitality.

Jane Austen my life (180): Jane Austen is a British author whose novels star lower/middle class women who fall in love with rich men. They typically try to avoid these men for large portions of the book, or at least have rather negative feelings about them due to a misunderstanding or other failure to communicate.

LSAT (181): the test taken for admittance to law school.

Carmarthenshire (183): A largely agricultural county in South Wales. As a tourist destination, it is known for its wide range of outdoor activities.

Llwynywermod (184): A royal estate in Carmarthenshire, the biggest building of which is a renovated three-bedroom farmhouse. It is surrounded by the rolling green hills common to south Wales.

Finals (in the US) (185): At US colleges, a semester’s final tests (typically worth up to 30-40% of a final grade) take place the week after classes end.

Stamp on his forehead at The Tombs (185): Tombs is a bar near Georgetown. According to reviews, and “Tombs Night” parties, where students celebrate their 21st birthday and get their foreheads stamped at the end of the night, are a Georgetown tradition.

Jumped in Dalhgren Fountain (185): Dalhgren Fountain is in the center of Georgetown’s campus. Swimming in it is a Georgetown tradition.

Summa cum laude (186): “with greatest honor”.

Ceviche (186): A seafood dish native to Peru that spread to Mexico, where it contains lime, avocado, chili peppers, onions, and cilantro.

Palm Room (187): The gateway to the West Wing, the area of the White House where most politics happen.

Hoe Dameron (190): A reference to Star Wars character Poe Dameron, a rebel pilot and the first Latino main character in the series.

Prince Buttercup (190): Princess Buttercup is the heroine/love interest in The Princess Bride,

West Hollywood (190): One of the most prominent gay neighborhoods in the US.

“Call Me” (191): The most popular song of 1980; it was originally written for the film American Gigolo and inspired by the film’s opening sequence of a character driving along the coast of California. (Listen here)

“So Emotional” (191): An absolute bop about enjoying being in love. (Listen here)

“Don’t Stop Me Now” (193): A Queen song where Mercury sings to both a man and a woman; it’s a huge bop. (Listen here)

In-N-Out (194): A fast food restaurant/burger chain native to California and unavailable in other states.

Animal style (195): Animal style burgers are an In-N-Out staple; it includes the typical burger toppings, along with mustard fried into the patty, pickles, onions, and extra spread.

French-fries-dipped-in-milkshake (195): a truly god-tier American dessert tradition.

“O captain, my captain” (196): A reference both to the idea of a lacrosse team captain and to Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain” (as mentioned above, Whitman was a deeply gay American poet).

Burberry (200): A posh British brand of clothing known for its classy, traditional pieces.

Cats that caught the canaries (200): A cat that caught a canary is a person who looks smug or satisfied.

Mother hen (201): A “mom friend” or someone who will do everything they can to look out for people they care about, sometimes to the point of it being annoying.

—-

If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–

Chapter 1 // Chapter 6 // Chapter 8

#rwrb study guide #rwrb #red white and royal blue #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor x alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #bea fox mountchristen windsor #june claremont diaz #nora holleran #pez okonjo #English Major Brain™#English Major Brain™️#rwrb analysis #red white and royal blue analysis #rwarb #rwarb analysis #rwrb fic ref #rwrb reference

19 notes · View notes

amethysttide · 6 years

Note

As I see you like your rare pairs how about, kagekuroo or oikagekuroo. I dreamt of them one night and now I’m thirstying bout em

v Hgnnnnnn…damn you, anon. Damn you…

KageKuroo

No one saw this one coming.

Actually, no one even knew about it, until on a training camp where the current first years are third years now Some of the already graduated senpais came to help.

And here comes Mr. Roaster Head strolling in like he owns the place, goes up to the new captain of Karasuno and grabs his ass.

There were gasps of horror in the entire place, the only different reactions were Tsukishima’s, who knew about this very well, somehow, don’t ask he doesn’t reveal his sources Put a password on your phone Kags, Tobio who just scowls, before planting a kiss on the gropper’s lips and Kuroo with his shit-eating grin.

Then there comes the explaining. Apparently after the battle at the garbage dump, Tobio asked Tetsurou to help him improve his blocking, The ever-this-nice person agrees immediately. Ends up, Tobio barely needs help, cuz “The hell kid, you’re better all-rounder than nearly all players i’ve meet!”

But that doesn’t mean the ‘training sessions’ stop, oh no, they just turn into study dates at first. Kuroo volunteered to help the crow, as he is in Class 5, college preparation class. The win-win for both is Tsukishima’s gaping fish face after seeing Kageyama getting higher scores than him on a few subjects.

BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE, it’s just plain dates from than on, during vacation. Kags thinks going to the park alone for hours, having a picnic, sharing food and water bottles, talking for personal matters ‘till the sun goes down, going to a pizzeria and to the cinema together, staying in each other houses on weekends and sharing a bed is something friends do. Kuroo was about to commit homicide.

In the end it took Kenma, Akaashi, Bokuto, Yaku and Kai -Or the so called “Done with Kuroo’s shit group”- to tell him to get himself together and tell the damn man, he likes him in a romantic way. After hours, days of said dude freaking out how to do it, what to say, when, will he accept and the “Done with Kuroo’s shit group” being the ones about to commit homicide, they finally came up with a game plan.

Now, Tetsurou wasn’t sure if he should be happy, cry or yell when that damn, beautiful boy, who nearly drove him to getting a stroke with how nervous he was, just shrugged and said “Oh, i like you in that way too, Kuroo-san. Took you a while, please take care of me.”

“Wait, all this times that were dates? We weren’t just hanging out?” Anguished noises

It would be kinda hard to maintain a long distance-relationship for other people, but Kuroo decided to go to Niigata University, in Niigata-shi, which is 167 km (104 miles) away from Miyagi. They see each other every weekend, and Kuroo makes sure he texts at least 27 times every single day.

Now, you may think the first thing two people, volleyball players, one obsessed with the sport, would do is practice? Nah. The moment they are in the same room alone, the make out begins. It ain’t sweet it’s hardcore, i tell ya, it’s fuckin’ sexy.

After that they become the laziest people on the planet. Watching some of Kuroo’s favourite documentaries on the couch, cuddling, with some sweet dessert Kags made on the coffee table.

People either think they have no shame in public, or don’t show any PDA, but…it’s neither? Tetsurou can get pretty shy in times, while Kags doesn’t care much, either way. So, if they are with close friends they can go as far as sitting in each other’s lap, but just for walking outside, simple hand holding and little, quick kisses.

Whenever either of them is stresesed over something, be it school work, an upcoming match, an argument with a friend, or family, they both do the same thing. Staying home, gentle touches, nearly silent voices as they talk over the matter, using comforting words. Once Tetsurou had over-worked himself so much, he yelled at Tobio for no reason before storming out of the door his face as red as a tomato. Tobio knows better than to follow him, sure he gets worried once it starts raining, but thankfully his lover returns just in time, a broken apology on his lips, tears ready to stream down, the moment he is in the younger’s embrace they stream freely.

If either gets sick is a bit of a differnet story. Kuroo acts like he can die from the smallest things, while Kags might as well just go with his day as if nothing’s wrong. Tobio handles it calmly when learning his boyfriend is sick, coming over making warm soup and making sure he’s as comfortable as possible. While Kuroo caught the first train the moment he learned, during exam week and came like a mad man. Tobio damn near kicked his ass back to Niigata-shi.

In short they go from the hottest thing in the room, to the most cheesy one in the span of 00.2, no one can stand spending more than 30 minutes with both of them together. Tsukishima suffers more than all.

OiKageKuroo this might be just an excuse for Oikage shut up

Honestly, had Oikawa have taken the stick out of his ass he would’ve already been with Tobio, but. He’s hopeless, what can i say.

Oiks was, oh so lucky, to end up in the same University as Tetsurou! He didn’t even know the dude, so imagine his surprise when he was waiting in the line for Starbucks and heard an offended gasp behind him. There stands a person who looks like he just got out of bed, talking to himself; “No way, that’s the one- damned senpai who doesn’t deserve all that admiration from Tobio-” “My adorable kouhai, Tobio-chan?!” “...” “...”

Needless to say while dear blueberry was helping an underclassmen his phone didn’t stop ringing, once he finally picked up he wished he hasn’t, rest in peace to his ear “Tobio! It’s one thing to barely contact me, but you could’ve told me you’re- dating- this rooster!” “...Oh, Tetsurou-san is there? Please don’t speak of my boyfriend like that, Oikawa-san” “Disgraceful Tobio, disgraceful.”

Oikawa tried to avoid Kuroo as much as possible, but it wasn’t all that easy. They had a lot of classes together, he almost can’t believe they haven’t seen each other before. The teacher paired them up for projects several times, thanks to that those two managed to hold a conversastion together. It was mostly about Tobio, volleyball, Tobio, schoolwork, latest trends, Tobio, movies, did i say Tobio?

“Huh, that guy is not bad after all. Feel like we understand each other for some reason.” “Maybe, cuz you’re both head over heels for his boyfriend and also, you’re both kinda trash? Poor Kageyama, with that taste...” “Why are you like that, Iwa-chan?”

After getting himself together and slightly pushing his pride aside, Oikawa asked Kuroo to accompany him on his visit home, to get in touch with Tobio again. For some reason Kuroo didn’t argue at all.

Kageyama was pretty surprised to see not only his boyfriend, but his favourite senpai, and the person he once and still held feelings for on his doorstep. He expected it to be much more awkward, but they’ve both grown, so once Kuroo left his things and kissed his lover before heading out, Oikawa and Kags feel into an easy talk about various topics.

One of them was Tobio’s realtionship with Tetsurou, by the end of the story about that Tooru looking down at the cup of coffee Tobio made for him, with more milk just how he likes it and despite the sad look in his eyes he smiled. “You’re happy, right Tobio?” “Huh? Yeah, very much so.” “I see. Good. That’s good.”

After that the two trash kings friendship become really strong. They spend most of their time on campus together, little by little, Tooru began to understand what Tobio sees in the man in front of him.

Out of nowhere on Friday, Kuroo entered Oikawa’s room with a serious face which can make anyone back off. Certainly, Oikawa wasn’t expecting to hear what came next. “You love him don’t you?” “Huh?! You mean...I, he...it’s in the pa-” “I can understand why. He’s amazing, i can’t help, but feel i don’t deserve him sometimes. Bet you’ve felt the same, that’s why you haven’t made a move...But listen. I hate to admit it, but he surely holds more than platonic feelings towards you. I’m not saying he doesn’t love me, i know he does, just...i’m not the only one.”

A silence was hanging in the air for minutes, until Oikawa broke it with a raspy voice; “I really don’t deserve him... Tetsu-chan, i was horrible...he never hated me for it, but i ca’t stop thinking about how cold i was towards him at times. Yet...i also feel in love, so selfish.” “That’s all in the past, isn’t it? C’mon come with me and tell him all of this.” “But-” “No. i want him to be happy nothing else. I’m sure you feel the same. Besides...seeing you happy as well brings me even more joy.”

It was winter holiday when they got around to do it. Tooru waited ‘till Christmas, seemed like the best moment. All three of them were watching everyone else who were invited to celebrate in the snow. Taking a deep breath Tooru took Tobio’s right hand, while Tetsurou took the left. Royal blue eyes looked at both of them in confusion.

“Tobio...listen. Straight to the point. I love you. Not just from this year, since god knows how long, but i was so stupid and never told you. But then...Tetsurou came, he made me realize how much i will be missing. Heh, who would’ve thought i would fall for this garbage too.” “Look who’s talking.” “Shush. I’m sorry for all the times i’ve made you sad. Let me repay you for them. I love you. I want to be by your side, by both of your sides.”

Kuroo rested his head on the youngest head, the boy was shaking not from the cold, but the amount of emotions going through him. Before anyone realized there were three warm smiles, plus tears on the trio’s faces as they fall in a hug together.

Nothing changed much after that. Everyone were simply amazed at Tobio’s patience. The night cuddles turned into a sandwich with Tobio in between. The make out sessions somehow went even higher. How can this be so sexy everyone asked themselves. The teasing went to the seven sky as well, Oikawa and Kuroo were simply trolls, but Tobio barely had to try to shut them down.

Oikawa’s knee ended up giving out during practice in University, the moment Kuroo heard the pained noise coming from him he didn’t even think twice before taking Tooru in his arms, who hold onto his shirt for dear life and rushed to the hospital. The moment they took him in, Kuroo called Kageyama, who even tho tried not to show how panicked he was when explaing to Tsukishima he needs to handle things, his vice-captain saw straight threw him. He calmed Tobio down as much as he can before telling him to go and that Akiteru will drive him there.

With how crazy the older Tsukishima was going they reached the hospital in Niigata-shi five times faster then with a train. Tobio entered out of breath still in gym shorts and white T-shirt, he was greeted with Tetsurou who looks just as bad, they cold only hold onto each other before the doctor let them in. Tooru tried to smile, but everyone in the room knew it will be completly fake. He won’t be able to play anymore. The other two kept strong faced as they let the patient cry in their arms.

People, his family, Tooru himself expected him to took much longer to recover emotionally after that, but with the two boys by his side it didn’t take long. By endless encouragement by both of them, he finally tried his hand at writing and hell, he was darn amazing in it! Seems like when you write with your loved ones in mind it comes as easy as breathing.

Their relationship continued for the better, it wasn’t the best. Each of them had a lot of flaws, but loved each other with them. They weren’t a perfect couple, but that didn’t matter, as long as they stayed by each other’s side.

Tobio got into the school. Good luck to all those classmates.

#haikyuu!!#Hq!#Kageyama Tobio #Oikawa Tooru #Kuroo Tetsurou #Oikage #Oikuro #KageOi #KageKuro #Kurooi #Kurokage #headcanons #anon #answered #jesus fuck #i love it #thanks anon

49 notes · View notes

ruthjsmithfl · 4 years

Text

Competitor Research

Home

About

Industries

SEO For HVAC

SEO For Dentists

SEO For Roofers

Lawyer SEO Marketing

SEO For Plumbers

SEO For Doctors

Services

SEO

PPC

Web Design

Branding

Learn

SEO Dictionary

Locations

Nashville

Home

About

Industries

SEO For HVAC

SEO For Dentists

SEO For Roofers

Lawyer SEO Marketing

SEO For Plumbers

SEO For Doctors

Services

SEO

PPC

Web Design

Branding

Learn

SEO Dictionary

Locations

Nashville

Free Audit

Contact

Competitor Research

At Syndiket, our websites are built with an emphasis on design. We build fully customized, professionally designed websites that bring your business’s vision to life.

Let’s Get Started

Websites Built

0 +

Lines Of Code

Something

0 %

Happy Clients

Competitor Research - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution

If you’re designing a new online venture, or are simply sick and tired of losing to competitors in organic search, then you need to do an SEO competitor analysis.

You can learn many things from your competitor. In fact competitors are a goldmine of information that can inform you about every aspect of your SEO strategy and help to increase your website’s organic traffic.

In solid terms, performing an SEO competitor analysis lets you:

Get In Touch

Learn what works and what doesn’t in your industry.

Find competitors’ weaknesses, and capitalize on them.

Find competitors’ strengths, and replicate them.

Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward.

Understand how difficult outperforming competitors in the SERPs are likely to be.

Here, I will run through the SEO competitive analysis process for a hypothetical new infographic design tool—Minimagraphic.com.

Minimagraphic.com — a hypothetical new infographic design tool launching soon (maybe).

#makeInfographicsGreatAgain

We have also added a competitive analysis template so you can follow along with your site.

Things to Keep In Mind

Getting Started

You can do this complete process with only two tools

Ahrefs (take a 7‑day trial)

This Google Sheets template (IMPORTANT: make a copy!)

It would be great if you also make a copy of the completed sheet for our hypothetical website, as that may come in handy for clarification if any of the instructions given below feel unclear. (Hopefully, they won’t!)

You can do that here.

Got it? Let’s get started

Identify Competitors

First we need to identify our main competitors than we should proceed further

These are the websites struggling for our desired keywords in organic search.

Some competitors that come to our mind are Canva, Piktochart, Infogram, easel.ly, and Visme regarding our hypothetical infographic design tool However, our organic search competitors may not be the same as our direct business competitors.

So let’s first look at how potential customers would search for our service.

I thought that this would be something like “infographic design tool,” but it appears that I was wrong as when I search for this in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, it tells me there is no search volume.

So let’s inspect the “Also rank for” report and see if we can find a better keyword.

It seems like “infographic maker” is the most famous way people search for such tools.

Now let’s see the SERP overview to see who currently ranks in the top five.

Not an Ahrefs user?

Run a Google search instead.

It appears that our top five competitors are Piktochart, Venngage, Canva, Visme, and Infogram.

The interesting thing is, Easel.ly didn’t make the cut as they don’t rank in the top 10.

This is why you should not always rely on your instincts for direct business competitors because they’re not always competitors when it comes to SEO.

SEO is like another world, imagine that a person has a butcher business in a small town. The business that keeps him awake at night is the other small butcher down the road. However, when it’s come to SEO, they’re no competitors because they don’t even have a website.

I will note these five competitors to my spreadsheet.

PRO TIP

If you are trying to find competitors for a blog or ecommerce site, then looking for sites that rank for a single keyword may not be the best way to go about things.

That is because you are probably targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords and topics across many pages.

So it is good to see who is competing with you across the board.

For this, you can use the Competing domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic search > Competing domains

Analyze the Competitive Landscape

Next, we have a high-level view of the competitive landscape.

To do that, we will pull a small number of key stats and SEO metrics which should give us an idea as to how established the competition is.

Let’s use Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool to do this for all competitors’ websites at once.

Batch Analysis > Enter competitors’ domains > Analyze

Batch Analysis will return many useful stats for each site, and I am interested in:

Domain Rating (DR)

Ahrefs Rank (AR)

Number of referring domains

Estimated organic search traffic

Estimated number of keyword rankings

Now add them to our sheet.

To explain these SEO metrics a bit more:

Domain Rating (DR):

Having a high DR score means that the website has a solid backlink profile. Instead of considering DR absolutely you should judge it relatively. For your understanding let’s take an example, suppose that your website is DR30 and your competitor is DR50, that is a bit higher. If your website is DR30 whereas yours competitor site is DR90 that is similar comparing your mom and pop store to Walmart—they aren’t your competitor.

Ahrefs Rank (AR):

Having a low Ahrefs rank means that the website is strong. AR explains the same thing as DR but with more details. For example, if you have two competitors with the same DR like DR33 websites, you can use AR to see which is the stronger of the two sites.

Referring domains:

If your links are of good quality then having a large number of referring domains could also mean that the website is strong A high number of referring domains can also indicate a strong site—provided that those links aren’t low-quality. However, keep in mind that grabbing DR is always useful as this takes into account both the quality and quantity of links to a website.

Organic traffic & keywords:

This is quite obvious that the higher these numbers are, the better the website is performing in organic search.

In simple words the more distance between your stats and yours competitor stats, the more you have to struggle.

Still these metrics don’t explain everything about our competitors’ SEO progress.

Study Backlink Growth

We have studied approximately 930 million pages and it appears to us that link popularity is a clear SEO “ranking factor”

That is why we have to learn more about our competitors’ link building efforts.

Let’s look at the speed with which they acquire new referring domains (linking sites), as this gives us an approximate target to shoot for with our link building.

To do this, we’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > Enter domain > Overview > Referring Domains graph > Set to ‘One year’

For each participant, we take the number of all referring domains that today have minus the same number from a year ago, and then divide it by twelve to get the average monthly value.

Here is the calculation for Visme:

(7,603 — 5,599) / 12 = 167 new referring domains per month (on average)

Also keep in mind that this is the cumulative growth or decline in referring domains. For example, if a competitor gets links from a hundred new RDs in a month but loses links from ten existing RDs, their cumulative growth is ninety.

Let’s also inspect the growth trend for our other competitors.

We need to check if there is an element of consistency or not, In other words, do their link profiles show consistent or inconsistent growth or decline?

For Venngage, besides from a small irregularity earlier this year, their growth has been relatively consistent.

This might be natural, or it might be the byproduct of long-term link building efforts.

Whatever the case is, it would be worth following these two articles to go deeper into their backlink profile to see what we can learn… once finished with the basic competitive analysis, of course.

For Piktochart, their growth seems more inconsistent.

They have gained the experience of “hockey stick” growth between May and July last year, which may be the indication of a specific piece of content performing well, or them ramping up their existing link building efforts. It could also provide an indication of negative SEO attacks.

To get a sense of which, we can check the New referring domains report.

Site Explorer > Referring domains > New > use the date range to filter for that period

It is probably a negative SEO attack if most of the domains look like spam. (Hint: Confirm this by looking at the New backlinks report for the same date range)

It is probably down to a particular piece of content doing well if most of the links point to the same web page. If the spike happened recently, use the Best by Link Growth report in Site Explorer to help identify which piece of content attracted the links.

It’s likely the ramping up of existing link building efforts if you find lots of links from a specific type of content—e.g., guest posts, resource pages, etc.

For now, I am going to add some growth-related stats for each competitor to my spreadsheet.

Find Superfans

Those who have linked to our competitors on multiple occasions are called Superfans. These are people with whom it is easy for us to build relationships because they tend to link out to websites they like regularly.

In order to find these people, we can check the Referring domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > Referring Domains > add a “dofollow” filter > sort by “links to target / dofollow”

Now we will go through the list for industry blogs.

Here is just one that stood out for Canva:

If we hit the caret, we can see that this site links numerous times across many blog posts.

By just spending five seconds on the website we found that this is a single author blog by a woman named Elaine—she is the one with whom we may want to build a relationship and introduce to our product.

Now look for five superfans for each of our competitors and add them to our sheet.

Find Broken Pages

Have you ever heard the saying that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure?

That saying is true on the web too.

So now we need to see if our competitors’ websites for a specific type of junk: broken pages.

To this task we will use the Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > sort by the Referring domains column (high to low)

Sidenote: I am searching for content on a subdomain here so that I only see dead informational pages—e.g., blog posts, infographics, etc.

If we see broken pages on our competitors’ websites, that have backlinks, and are also somewhat relevant to our business, then we may be able to take advantage of such pages by:

Figuring out what the dead page used to be;

Publishing something similar, but better;

Finding everyone linking to the dead resource (use the Backlinks report in Site Explorer)

Asking them to swap out the dead link in favor of our working resource.

Learn how to carry out this strategy in our broken link building guide.

Now we are going to focus on competitive analysis and not link building, let’s just add any related broken pages from our five competitors to the spreadsheet.

Quick Note: In Following step (6 , 7 and 8) we will focus on organic traffic

By having a knowledge of which countries our competitors get the bulk of their organic traffic from can help us to understand where the opportunity lies in this niche.

For this, we will use Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Overview > Organic search tab

Let’s add the top five countries along with their traffic percentages to our spreadsheet.

I’ll then do the same for our other competitors.

Here’s what we get:

Seems like the United States is where the bulk of the traffic opportunity lies in this niche, as this is where our competitors get approximately 31% of their traffic from on average.

There is some opportunity in other English-speaking countries like the UK and Canada too.

So we now know that we should almost certainly prioritize content creation for folks in these countries, as this is where we see the bulk of search demand.

Hardly surprising.

However, the fact that there is traffic potential in Latin America and Asia has got me thinking: perhaps it would make sense to translate our landing pages into Spanish, Indian, and possibly Indonesian?

We could even launch a multilingual blog to maximize traffic from these countries.

That’s what we did here at Ahrefs—we have a Spanish blog and a Chinese blog.

The Spanish version of the Ahrefs Blog.

The Chinese version of the Ahrefs Blog.

Many of our landing pages are available in multiple languages too.

Pro Tip:

Organic traffic is not always representative of traffic value. It might be misleading to look solely at organic traffic numbers.

For example, Visme gets roughly the same amount of search traffic from the UK and Mexico.

But if we look at the traffic value for Mexico VS UK, We see that UK traffic is worth 700%+ more!

So it probably makes sense for us to prioritize UK traffic growth.

Break it Down

What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P.

“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.

I’m Interested!

Technical SEO

Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.

Relevancy SEO

Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.

Authority SEO

Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority.

Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight.

If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.

Popularity

Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.

I’m Interested!

Continued …

Spy on Competitors’ Organic Keywords

Next, we need to find out which keywords are currently driving organic traffic to our competitors’ sites.

We can do it by running the Organic keywords report for each domain.

Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Organic search > Organic keywords

Above we can see that visme.co currently ranks for 133,667 keywords in the US.

By default, the Organic Keywords report shows keyword rankings for the country that generates the most search traffic. And that is not a problem, but if you want to see keyword data for a different country, hit “more” and choose from any of the 150+ countries in our database.

Now look for some juicy keywords that might be worth targeting.

There are some that jump out right away such as “infographic maker,” “infographic creator,” etc. But there are also a lot of unrelated results muddying the waters.

So now first exclude all branded keywords with the “exclude” function.

I will also try to filter only for keywords for which our competitor ranks in the top 10 so that we only see the most relevant keywords.

Let’s keep things simple for now and note down the top five relevant, non-branded keywords sending the most traffic to our competitors, and their search volumes.

A few of those keywords would be a good match for our homepage. Others would make better blog posts (For example “what is an infographic?”).

Note: If you’re following along and are only interested in finding keyword ideas for your homepage, use the “URL” mode in Site Explorer as opposed to “*.domain/*”. That way, you will only see keyword suggestions from the homepage instead of the whole site. And don’t forget to exclude branded searches from the report!

PRO TIP

Some of the keywords that I noted down have high Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores, which mean that they will be hard to rank for without building lots of links.

For example, “infographic maker” has a KD score of 73 … and will need backlinks from approximately 235 domains to rank in the top 10.

Recommended reading: Learn more about how we calculate Keyword Difficulty.

I am not really concerned about this right now as I am looking more for “ultimate goal” keywords.

If you are following along and would prefer to find keywords that you stand a chance at ranking for in the short-to-medium-term, feel free to filter for keywords with a low KD score.

Spy on Competitors’ Featured Snippets

One additional thing you should pay attention to while analyzing your competitor’s organic traffic:

SERP features for which your competitors rank.

Featured snippets alone show up for approximately 12% of search queries, as per our study…

… And they get approximately 9% of clicks from the results on the first page:

So let’s keep things simple and focus solely on those.

The first thing is that I need to know which featured snippets our competitors own and for that, I’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Organic search > Organic keywords > SERP features filter > Featured snippets > Only linking to target

Piktochart owns 87 snippets in the US right now and gets a fair amount of traffic as a result.

Visme owns 216.

I will add these numbers to my sheet for each competitor.

To be honest, if our competitors rank for a lot of featured snippets, there could be an opportunity for us to do the same.

This can even be easy traffic because it’s not always the #1 ranking page that owns the snippet.

59.2% of featured snippets come from pages ranking in positions 2–5.

In other words, even if the SERP is competitive, there’s still a chance of owning the snippet provided that we can make it to the top 5.

Recommended reading: How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets in 2020

QUICK NOTE

In the few steps (#9, #10, and #11), we’ll delve deeper into competitors’ content.

Find Content Gaps

If you look at a particular site for some information that is not there, this is what a content gap is.

Content gaps in SEO are keywords for which your competitors rank, but you don’t, that is a gap you will probably want to fill.

To find content gaps, we can use Ahrefs Content Gap tool.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Content gap

You can see that this prefills the “But the following target doesn’t rank for” field with our domain.

Now we need to fill the other fields with competitors.

I will then set it to “Show keywords that all of the below targets rank for,” tick the “at least one of the targets should rank in the top 10” box, and run the search.

You can see that this returns some quite relevant keywords above.

Sidenote: If you are following along and don’t see any relevant keywords, feel free to loosen the settings a little and find keywords for which two, three, or four of your competitors rank, rather than all of them.

We have limited resources therefore targeting all these keywords is an impossible task.

Let’s use the filters to focus in on low/medium difficulty, high-volume opportunities.

Having low difficulty scores means that it would be easy to rank for whereas the solid search volume means that ranking will give a nice bump to our search traffic.

However, some of these keywords look to be ones we already found in the previous step.

So I am just going to add the five most relevant new keywords to my sheet.

Find Competitors’ Most Popular Content

There is no doubt that keyword search is a critical part of SEO but these days, Google’s understanding of the intent behind searches is arguably better than ever.

This is why; one page can easily rank for hundreds or even thousands of long-tail keywords.

By finding our competitors’ top pages, we can figure out which of their articles are:

ranking for a ton of keywords

pulling in loads of traffic

Then we can write about these overarching topics and earn some traffic.

For this, we can use the Top Pages report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Keep in mind that we are interested in finding blog posts here so if possible, we actually need to search the blog folder URL/subdomain as opposed to the entire domain.

Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > select “prefix” mode > Top pages

PRO TIP

If you are not sure where your competitor’s blog is located?

Check the Top subfolders report in Site Explorer and look for their blog path.

If you don’t find anything, check the Top subdomains report instead. Some websites host their blog on a subdomain.

Either way, make sure the traffic percentage for the subfolder/subfolder is in the doubt digits. If it isn’t, then it’s likely that their blog posts aren’t nested within that URL structure.

In which case, stick with a domain search.

Now one thing to note about this report is that the pages on sites with the most organic traffic often tend to have a lot of referring domains. That is hardly surprising, as backlinks are a strong ranking factor.

So let’s skim this report for each competitor and eyeball the RD column.

What we are looking for are pages with lots of traffic but not too many referring domains, as these are likely to be much easier to compete with.

I will add five relevant pages that fit the bill to my sheet, plus their traffic.

Sidenote: If you are interested in the individual keywords for which these top pages rank, click the caret in the keywords column.

Find Competitors’ Most Linked Content

Links mean referrals and often as a result, more organic search traffic.

So we know we need to build links, but where do we begin?

We will see what is working for our competitors.

The Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer shows competitors’ most linked content. If it worked for them, then something similar will probably work for us.

Site Explorer > enter competitor’s blog subfolder/subdomain > Organic search > Best by links

Sidenote: If you are doing this for a competitor whose blog posts aren’t nested under a subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com/…) or subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/…) then use their domain instead. You will have to be a little more vigilant when browsing the report.

Here, I will add the URLs of the five most relevant top pages from each competitor, the number of referring domains to each page, and what “type” of content it is to my sheet.

Now we can find at a glance what types of content work best for each competitor and in general.

For example, 60% of the most linked pages articles from Venngage are listicles, and it’s a similar story for Visme too.

Sidenote: Not every niche is the same. You may see that a different type of content is more popular in your niche.

On the other side, gaps can also present opportunities.

For example, Canva has a lot of links to text-heavy content. Such content could be simplified as an infographic and possibly attract even more links.

We could also use what is commonly known as the ‘skyscraper’ technique to attract links:

Create a similar but even better piece of content

Show it to everyone who links to our competitor’s now inferior content

Ask them to swap out the link in favor of our superior content

If you are wondering how we can find out who links to our competitor’s content, all we need to do is click the number under the Referring domains column, and we will be able to see all the sites linking to that page.

In other words, our competitor has kindly created a list of prospects for us.

Find Competitors’ PPC Keywords

Analyzing competitors’ PPC activity can be perceptive when it comes to planning an SEO strategy for one simple reason:

If they’re paying for traffic from a keyword, then that keyword is most likely profitable.

To find our competitors’ PPC keywords, let’s use the PPC keywords report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords

It looks like Venngage is bidding on a lot of infographic-related terms.

Which lead me to another point:

If you look at the competitors’ PPC data, you can find small volumes of keywords with high conversion, which can be easily omitted when conducting keyword research.

For example, a keyword like “make infographics online” (70 searches per month) is likely to have a much higher conversion rate than “creator of free infographics” (600 searches per month).

If the conversion rate for a keyword of 70 search queries per month is 20%, and the conversion rate for a keyword of 600 search queries per month is 2%, what do you think is the most appropriate keyword to rank?

I’m sure you’ve already done the math. That low-volume keyword will make more money.

Following this logic, I’m going to add five PPC keywords for each participant to my sheet, but I will intentionally choose keywords that, in my opinion, can convert well.

DISCLAIMER Take this idea with a pinch of salt. Just because a competitor spends money on a checkpoint does not necessarily know what they are doing. Before using PPC, you can check any keywords you find before trying to get a ranking for yourself.

Learn From Competitors’ PPC Ads

Viewing an ad copy of PPC members can help write title tags and descriptions that increase CTR.

This is because competitors pay cold cash to attract customers with specific keywords, and Google encourages more relevant ads with lower CPCs.

So it’s in their interest to make sure their ads win the click!

To use the PPC keyword report, look again at the copy of your competitor for the keyword for which we want to assign a rating, “Infographic maker:”

Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords

To preview an ad for a keyword, hover over the yellow ‘Ad’ icon.

They seem to use speed, cost (or lack thereof) and ingenuity to lure clicks.

These are all things we could incorporate into our meta titles and descriptions to generate more traffic from organic search.

Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect SEO Title Tag (Our 4-Step Process)

Final Thoughts

Competitive analysis is a vast field; everything mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you are familiar with Ahrefs, then you know that there are many additional reports in which we can dive deeper into the overall strategy of our competitors in the field of marketing, content and link building.

You just need to follow the process described above and then use other reports to delve into any Ahrefs area of interest (and possibly other competitive analysis tools).

Want More Info?

Let’s Chat!

Name

Company

Email Address

Campaign Scale

LocalStateNationalGlobal

Niche

Message

Submit

I am text block. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper matti pibus leo.

Facebook-f Youtube Twitter Instagram

Services

SEO

PPC

Web Design

Branding

Consulting

Other

About Us

Case Studies

Learn

Tools

Careers

Locations

Nashville, TN

Chattanooga, TN

New York, NY

San Francisco, CA

Denver, CO

Made with

in Nashville, TN

from Syndiket Marketing | SEO, Adwords, Web Design https://www.syndiket.com/services/keyword-research/competitor-research/ from Syndiket Marketing https://syndiket.tumblr.com/post/624927535258599424

0 notes

syndiket · 4 years

Text

Competitor Research

Home

About

Industries

SEO For HVAC

SEO For Dentists

SEO For Roofers

Lawyer SEO Marketing

SEO For Plumbers

SEO For Doctors

Services

SEO

PPC

Web Design

Branding

Learn

SEO Dictionary

Locations

Nashville

Home

About

Industries

SEO For HVAC

SEO For Dentists

SEO For Roofers

Lawyer SEO Marketing

SEO For Plumbers

SEO For Doctors

Services

SEO

PPC

Web Design

Branding

Learn

SEO Dictionary

Locations

Nashville

Free Audit

Contact

Competitor Research

At Syndiket, our websites are built with an emphasis on design. We build fully customized, professionally designed websites that bring your business's vision to life.

Let's Get Started

Websites Built

0 +

Lines Of Code

Something

0 %

Happy Clients

Competitor Research - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution

If you’re designing a new online venture, or are simply sick and tired of losing to competitors in organic search, then you need to do an SEO competitor analysis.

In solid terms, performing an SEO competitor analysis lets you:

Get In Touch

Learn what works and what doesn’t in your industry.

Find competitors’ weaknesses, and capitalize on them.

Find competitors’ strengths, and replicate them.

Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward.

Understand how difficult outperforming competitors in the SERPs are likely to be.

Here, I will run through the SEO competitive analysis process for a hypothetical new infographic design tool—Minimagraphic.com.

Minimagraphic.com — a hypothetical new infographic design tool launching soon (maybe).

#makeInfographicsGreatAgain

We have also added a competitive analysis template so you can follow along with your site.

Things to Keep In Mind

Getting Started

You can do this complete process with only two tools

Ahrefs (take a 7‑day trial)

This Google Sheets template (IMPORTANT: make a copy!)

You can do that here.

Got it? Let’s get started

Identify Competitors

First we need to identify our main competitors than we should proceed further

These are the websites struggling for our desired keywords in organic search.

So let’s first look at how potential customers would search for our service.

So let’s inspect the “Also rank for” report and see if we can find a better keyword.

It seems like “infographic maker” is the most famous way people search for such tools.

Now let’s see the SERP overview to see who currently ranks in the top five.

Not an Ahrefs user?

Run a Google search instead.

It appears that our top five competitors are Piktochart, Venngage, Canva, Visme, and Infogram.

The interesting thing is, Easel.ly didn’t make the cut as they don’t rank in the top 10.

This is why you should not always rely on your instincts for direct business competitors because they’re not always competitors when it comes to SEO.

I will note these five competitors to my spreadsheet.

PRO TIP

If you are trying to find competitors for a blog or ecommerce site, then looking for sites that rank for a single keyword may not be the best way to go about things.

That is because you are probably targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords and topics across many pages.

So it is good to see who is competing with you across the board.

For this, you can use the Competing domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic search > Competing domains

Analyze the Competitive Landscape

Next, we have a high-level view of the competitive landscape.

To do that, we will pull a small number of key stats and SEO metrics which should give us an idea as to how established the competition is.

Let’s use Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool to do this for all competitors’ websites at once.

Batch Analysis > Enter competitors’ domains > Analyze

Batch Analysis will return many useful stats for each site, and I am interested in:

Domain Rating (DR)

Ahrefs Rank (AR)

Number of referring domains

Estimated organic search traffic

Estimated number of keyword rankings

Now add them to our sheet.

To explain these SEO metrics a bit more:

Domain Rating (DR):

Ahrefs Rank (AR):

Referring domains:

Organic traffic & keywords:

This is quite obvious that the higher these numbers are, the better the website is performing in organic search.

In simple words the more distance between your stats and yours competitor stats, the more you have to struggle.

Still these metrics don’t explain everything about our competitors’ SEO progress.

Study Backlink Growth

We have studied approximately 930 million pages and it appears to us that link popularity is a clear SEO “ranking factor”

That is why we have to learn more about our competitors’ link building efforts.

Let’s look at the speed with which they acquire new referring domains (linking sites), as this gives us an approximate target to shoot for with our link building.

To do this, we’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > Enter domain > Overview > Referring Domains graph > Set to ‘One year’

For each participant, we take the number of all referring domains that today have minus the same number from a year ago, and then divide it by twelve to get the average monthly value.

Here is the calculation for Visme:

(7,603 — 5,599) / 12 = 167 new referring domains per month (on average)

Let’s also inspect the growth trend for our other competitors.

We need to check if there is an element of consistency or not, In other words, do their link profiles show consistent or inconsistent growth or decline?

For Venngage, besides from a small irregularity earlier this year, their growth has been relatively consistent.

This might be natural, or it might be the byproduct of long-term link building efforts.

Whatever the case is, it would be worth following these two articles to go deeper into their backlink profile to see what we can learn… once finished with the basic competitive analysis, of course.

For Piktochart, their growth seems more inconsistent.

To get a sense of which, we can check the New referring domains report.

Site Explorer > Referring domains > New > use the date range to filter for that period

It is probably a negative SEO attack if most of the domains look like spam. (Hint: Confirm this by looking at the New backlinks report for the same date range)

It’s likely the ramping up of existing link building efforts if you find lots of links from a specific type of content—e.g., guest posts, resource pages, etc.

For now, I am going to add some growth-related stats for each competitor to my spreadsheet.

Find Superfans

In order to find these people, we can check the Referring domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > Referring Domains > add a “dofollow” filter > sort by “links to target / dofollow”

Now we will go through the list for industry blogs.

Here is just one that stood out for Canva:

If we hit the caret, we can see that this site links numerous times across many blog posts.

Now look for five superfans for each of our competitors and add them to our sheet.

Find Broken Pages

Have you ever heard the saying that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure?

That saying is true on the web too.

So now we need to see if our competitors’ websites for a specific type of junk: broken pages.

To this task we will use the Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > sort by the Referring domains column (high to low)

Sidenote: I am searching for content on a subdomain here so that I only see dead informational pages—e.g., blog posts, infographics, etc.

If we see broken pages on our competitors’ websites, that have backlinks, and are also somewhat relevant to our business, then we may be able to take advantage of such pages by:

Figuring out what the dead page used to be;

Publishing something similar, but better;

Finding everyone linking to the dead resource (use the Backlinks report in Site Explorer)

Asking them to swap out the dead link in favor of our working resource.

Learn how to carry out this strategy in our broken link building guide.

Now we are going to focus on competitive analysis and not link building, let’s just add any related broken pages from our five competitors to the spreadsheet.

Quick Note: In Following step (6 , 7 and 8) we will focus on organic traffic

By having a knowledge of which countries our competitors get the bulk of their organic traffic from can help us to understand where the opportunity lies in this niche.

For this, we will use Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Overview > Organic search tab

Let’s add the top five countries along with their traffic percentages to our spreadsheet.

I’ll then do the same for our other competitors.

Here’s what we get:

Seems like the United States is where the bulk of the traffic opportunity lies in this niche, as this is where our competitors get approximately 31% of their traffic from on average.

There is some opportunity in other English-speaking countries like the UK and Canada too.

So we now know that we should almost certainly prioritize content creation for folks in these countries, as this is where we see the bulk of search demand.

Hardly surprising.

We could even launch a multilingual blog to maximize traffic from these countries.

That’s what we did here at Ahrefs—we have a Spanish blog and a Chinese blog.

The Spanish version of the Ahrefs Blog.

The Chinese version of the Ahrefs Blog.

Many of our landing pages are available in multiple languages too.

Pro Tip:

Organic traffic is not always representative of traffic value. It might be misleading to look solely at organic traffic numbers.

For example, Visme gets roughly the same amount of search traffic from the UK and Mexico.

But if we look at the traffic value for Mexico VS UK, We see that UK traffic is worth 700%+ more!

So it probably makes sense for us to prioritize UK traffic growth.

Break it Down

What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P.

I'm Interested!

Technical SEO

Relevancy SEO

Authority SEO

Popularity

I'm Interested!

Continued . . .