Having too many options can be hard and can lead to problems – in life, that is, but in the case of marketing, that is hardly so; in fact, when there’s so much competition, it’s quite important to use the best tools for the job – and the more, the merrier.
SEO PowerSuite
Dubbed as one of the most popular software, it consists of three tools, namely Website Auditor, SEO SpyGlass and Rank Tracker.
Available in two versions – free and professional, the former will let you access all the features of this software, though there will be a few limitations, the latter one is available for a one-time payment of $299, though, after six months, you will be required to pay a small monthly fee to keep the algorithms of the search engine updated.
With the powerhouse of tools, you can track and analyze your competitors in any way you can imagine. With ‘Rank Tracker’, you can find out about the keywords and how they rank in a particular country, and that includes individual states, too. With the tool ‘Website Auditor’, you can get reports on the web pages of your competitors and get to know their on-page SEO tactics.
With SEO SpyGlass, you will get to know the best backlink opportunities that can be found in the intuitive ‘Link Intersection’ module, plus you will also get to know how your competitors receive backlinks from the source (and from which you can also get the same) and can turn out to be useful for finding potential new influencers.
BuzzSumo
Available in ‘Free version’ and ‘Pro version’, the tool ‘BuzzSumo’ is one of the most renowned tools used by content marketers, and as such, it allows its users to track the most popular trends all over the social networks plus understand their performance.
With this tool, you will get the ‘Influencers’ tool that will let you see who is sharing what content the most and thus, in return, will give some ideas on who you can reach out to.
One of the best-liked features of this tool is ‘Question Analyzer’ module which will scour the web to find questions on a brand or topic – that said, you will also get detailed reports on people’ needs, like what want to know about your competitors or industry, and hence, you will find a potential to find gaps in your competitor’s marketing strategy.
Social Animal
Available in ‘Pro version’, though there’s a 14-day trial available for all editions, this tool is priced at $49 per month.
With this tool, you will be able to scrape content – including articles and individual words – and all of them from a variety of different sources. It will let you get insight into word count, keywords and engagement figures, and which in turn will make it quite easy for you to analyze the tactics of your competitors.
And not to forget the ‘influencers’ mode – it will help you to find the best publishers or creators in your niche that you can work alongside with.
SpyFu
Available in two versions – free version and premium version, and which is priced at $39 per month, this tool can be used to spy on all of your rivals, plus it will also tell you their most profitable keywords.
Come to the ‘overview’ page, and you will be greeted with all of the information that you are going to need – that said, you will also be able to look at the history of individual keywords and paid targeting, that will give you an idea of potential competition.
One of the most liked features of this tool is ‘Kombat’ – it will let you see the keywords that are targeted by all your selected competitors visually.
SimilarWeb
Available in two versions – free version, and with which you can get detailed statistics on search data, and right back up to three months, and as for the premium version, the pricing is based on your quote.
With this tool, you can know everything about your competitor’s engagement – you will get detailed reports on graphs that display visits over time, total visits, and pages viewed per visit, and which will help you to understand competitor strength better.
Come to the ‘dashboard’ tab, and you will get custom graphs and visuals, that will be tailor-made for whatever field that you would like to analyze.
Google Trends and Keyword Planner
One of the best free tools for content marketers – made by Google, the former tool ‘Google Trends’ will give you information on the search term that is in trend over time, and with which, you can use this insight to spot opportunities in your market.
With the ‘Keyword Planner’ tool, you can get a rundown on keyword competition, and background figures on advertising costs, and while it may look basic, you can pull out some very detailed data on your competitors.
Awario
Available for $29 per month, this tool is an amalgamation of all the best tools out there – so that you can investigate your competitors.
With this tool, you can identify what kind of content your competitors are producing, with factors such as patterns in their posts or articles will give you useful insight into their marketing efforts. Plus, you will also find out what kind of content is the most impactful in your market, and which will give you plenty of ideas for your project. It will be only a matter of time before you will know exactly which platforms you should target with your content.
If you are on the lookout for such a tool that will give you detailed reports on your competitors’ activity, then, ‘Awario’ is the tool to be in your arsenal.
As for the above-mentioned tools, each one of them has their strengths and weaknesses – it’s recommended that you check out each one of them, and choose the one that best suits your needs.