How to Steal the Competition’s Best Keywords: A 3-Step Guide

Finding the right keywords for your paid or organic efforts can be a daunting task. With paid campaigns, you don’t want to waste your time and money on keywords that won’t produce the desired results. One way to stay ahead of the competition and get an idea of which keywords are connecting with your audience is to spy on your competitors. In fact, the right approach to stealing your competitors’ best keywords might help you connect with the same searchers. Experts offering online marketing in San Diego share a 3-step guide on how to steal your competitors’ best performing keywords.

1. Find Out What’s Performing Well

It’s estimated that 30 percent of advertisers aren’t tracking all key actions that lead to conversions. The first thing you want to do before you check out what your competitors are doing is dive into your own stats to see what keywords are already working for you and where there’s room for improvement. Specifically, pay attention to the following conversion metrics:

• Traffic sources (direct visitors, search visitors, referral visitors)
• First-time visitor conversions (which keywords are inspiring people to take action)
• Return visitor conversions
• Interactions per visit (which keywords are convincing visitors to check out your site)
• Cost per conversion
• Bounce rate

2. Use Tools to See Which Keywords Are Working for Your Competitors

You can’t really know every detail of your competitors’ online engagement strategy, but you can discover which keywords they are bidding on. There are plenty of tools that can help you do this effectively. With most of these tools, you simply enter a competitor’s domain to get a list of the keywords they’re using.

3. Focus on Your Competitors’ Best Keywords

Many advertisers overbid or use more keywords than they need to use to reach their desired audience. Don’t just copy their lists, or you may end up wasting just as much time, effort, and money as your competitors. Instead, set your sights on the keywords that are performing best and ignore the rest. The most cost-effective way to do this is by setting up test ads. Take the following steps to get a better idea of the best keywords for your business:

• Make a smaller list of a competitor’s best performing keywords
• Run test campaigns with those keywords for about 2-3 months
• Use your existing metrics to track the results of your test campaigns
• Filter your keywords for conversions in your paid search account
• Use your results to determine which keywords to cut and which to continue using

While there’s nothing wrong with getting keyword inspiration from your competitors, you still want to create unique and relevant content for your target audience. Don’t assume that just because keywords are working for your competition that they’ll produce similar results for you. It’s important to make sure you have a website that’s appealing to the visitors who come to your website through your paid ads and organic content.

If you need high-quality content or relevant keywords to capture your target audience’s attention, turn to Saba SEO, a San Diego optimization firm you can trust. Our experts can help you look for the right keywords to target your audience. From searching for keywords to creating focused online ads, we offer a variety of services to help businesses increase their online rankings and acquire more leads. To get started with creating a comprehensive SEO plan for your business, give us a call at 858-951-1717 today.