How to evaluate competitors’ traffic

The SEO intelligence plan is as follows:

1. We find direct competitors

Look for similar websites with properties that interest you (price range, similar geographic location, specific services). Once you discuss the nuances of your business and product, it will be easy to determine the important factors.

Enter keywords related to your business in different variations into the Google and Bing search bar. Then carefully study the search and advertising unit – get to know your competitors.

2. We stop at 3-5 sites

Don’t try to cover the vast – limit yourself to a few high-quality projects from competitors. Opt for experienced, proven resources that are involved specifically in your niche. Pay special attention to industry leaders.

3. Looking at website traffic

Use attendance counters, manual checks or special programs, free and paid services. Below you will learn details about each technique and type of analyzer!

Search Traffic Tracking Tools

There are quite a lot of different services for checking website traffic. Here we will look at the most popular of them, namely:

• SimilarWeb;
• Ahrefs;
• Serpstat;
• SemRush.

Now let’s look at these services in more detail to get a clear understanding of how such services work.

SimilarWeb

The free version of this service helps you understand your competitor’s approximate traffic. The disadvantage of the service is that it only understands those sites whose traffic amounts to hundreds of thousands per month. And if your competitor has traffic of several thousand (2-3) per month, information about him will not be available.

The advantage of the service is that you can find out the share of desktop and mobile traffic, the channels through which your competitor receives traffic.

At the moment this is the complete information available on the Internet. Other services provide data only for certain channels, while SimilarWeb provides data for all.

Ahrefs

Please note that this service only shows organic search traffic. It does not take into account channels such as social networks or live events (unlike Similarweb).

Recently, this service added the ability to analyze sites verified through Google Search Console for free. But if we are talking about competitor analysis, then it is better to purchase the paid version, because it provides many features and replaces most other services.

Quick traffic numbers can be obtained immediately in the first window after you specify the site address.

And if you click the “Organic Search” button, you can see a graph of traffic changes over the entire existence of the site. Just keep in mind that this is inaccurate data. Ahrefs calculates traffic based on keywords in the top, so the information is not exact, but acceptable for comparing multiple sites or periods.

Serpstat

SERPSTAT is an analogue of Ahrefs from Ukrainian developers. This service has its own formulas for calculating the organic traffic of competitors, but the operating principle is the same.

On the plus side, the price is lower than that of Ahrefs (the minimum SERPSTAT tariff for the summer promotion is $52, and Ahrefs is $99).

Like the previous service, Serpstat shows only search data.

SemRush

Semrush is a very great SEO service. I like to use it for technical audits because it provides maximum information about the state of the site, which is enough even in the free version.

Stanislav Nikitiuk

Linkbuilder

Author's page