How do you do competitor analysis and outrank them in your affiliate marketing SEO?

Conduct thorough keyword research to identify which keywords your competitors are ranking for and analyze their content strategy. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to evaluate their backlinks and domain authority. Create superior content by focusing on user intent and providing more comprehensive, valuable information. Optimize your on-page SEO elements, and build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources. Regularly update your content to keep it relevant and leverage social media to boost your visibility and engagement.

Research your competition. Learn where you win and the features that most of your customers consistently use. I use Ahrefs.

Choose competitors - and right away think about your USPs to beat the competition. Use the mentioned tools for analysis and also take into consideration the markets you want to target.

?? "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." — Rudyard Kipling ?? Analyzing their keywords: Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to uncover what keywords they rank for, bid on, and use in content. Identify their strengths and gaps. Explore audience interests with AnswerThePublic or BuzzSumo to find trending questions and topics. ?? Like if you believe in the power of targeted keywords!

The general rule of thumb is that you'll need to take the popular topics and add value in your own content. That's what most content marketing agencies do. Collect the content that is getting traffic and engagement, but dig deeper; find out why it is getting engagement. If it's sponsored or advertised as a paid link, you might be wasting your efforts. You can use SE Ranking which will create a full competitive analysis telling you about your competition's most popular pages.

We love SpyFu, which is a very useful tool, and it allow you to check the backlink profiles of your competitors. We also use SE Ranking, which does this automatically. Advanced versions of SEO software will tell you what your "keyword gaps" are; in other words: where your competitors are getting links from where you are not.

?? "Content is king, but engagement is queen, and the lady rules the house!" — Mari Smith ?? Analyzing their content: Evaluate the types, formats, tone, and calls to action they use. Tools like BuzzSumo and Content Explorer help measure content length, quality, and engagement. Check originality and readability with Copyscape or Grammarly to ensure high standards.

I'll use an example SAAS here called aivideo.com (not a real app) Go to AHREFS Open backlink explorer Put in Aivideo.com Identify a backlink that is coming from a review, for example "best ai video tools" Look at the target url it will probably have something like "ref=123" or "via=affiliateID" Go to the filters and filter target URL links that have "ref=" Now you have a list of all your competitors affiliate traffic. You can do this also for the affiliate networks. Impact.com for example uses PXF.io, SJV.io and many more domains to funnel all their affiliate traffic through Open backlink explorer put in pxf.io and hit search, now you have a list of all affiliates going through that domain.

?? "Backlinks are the currency of the web." — Jon Cooper ?? Learn from their strategies—guest posts, partnerships, or content syndication. Tools like LinkMiner or Link Explorer can also uncover hidden opportunities by identifying broken or lost links, which you can turn into valuable connections.

It's a longterm goal - and you have to run your business from day one unless you have huge resources/investments behind you (and it will still take a long time). Create the strategy around short-term and long-term actions.

When it comes to backlinks, you will need to bear in mind that quality is more important than quantity. Just because most of your competitors are listed in a directory, it doesn't mean you should. Especially if it has a high spam score. (https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score) It can do more harm than good!