Yearly Archives: 2023

Backlinks continue to be an important ranking factor in 2023 — and it seems it never changes. But what kind of backlinks matter most in SEO?

Editorial links, pillar links, sitewide links? What’s the difference between them? Which are worth the effort?

In this guide, I’ll share 20 different types of backlinks in SEO with examples. Additionally, you’ll read some expert tips and tricks to acquire high-quality links and gain better search visibility.

Table of Contents

What is an SEO backlink?
3 Undeniable Benefits of SEO Backlinks
20 Types of SEO Backlinks
Tips for SEO Backlinks

What is an SEO backlink?

An SEO backlink is a hyperlink from one website to another. They’re also known as inbound, incoming, or external links.

Backlinks are an integral part of search engine ranking algorithms, as Google uses them to determine the credibility, authority, and relevance of the website.

The more backlinks from authoritative sources, the better the chances of higher rankings.

Here’s how a backlink looks on a web page.

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3 Undeniable Benefits of SEO Backlinks

Over 46% of SEO pros spend $5,000-$10,000 monthly on link building, a recent study found. However, according to Ahrefs, a whopping 66.31% of pages have no backlinks. And 90.63% of pages receive no organic search traffic from Google.

See the trend?

But let’s dive deep and see why backlinks matter.

1. Better Search Rankings

Backlinks are known as the “vote of confidence” from Google.

If your website gets high-quality backlinks, Google sees you as a trustworthy source, thus elevating your ratings in the search results.

Ahrefs backs up this assumption with a study revealing the direct correlation between the number of referring domains and keyword rankings.

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Does it mean SEOs have to focus on acquiring an abundance of backlinks? Quite the opposite.

A plethora of low-quality backlinks won’t do in the long run, as Google may consider them spammy. That said, I suggest acquiring high-quality backlinks in fewer quantities rather than playing the numbers game.

But what defines a quality backlink? A high-quality backlink comes from a high domain authority website that is trusted by not only search engines but also people.

Here is a case study from Andrew Holland, Director of SEO at JBH. Look how they managed to improve their rankings with the help of a few links.

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2. Higher Domain Authority

Acquiring backlinks from relevant and reputable websites gradually improves domain authority (DA). This metric, developed by Moz, scores websites from 1 to 100. Higher scores indicate that your website will rank higher on SERPs.

However, SEO folks rely heavily on Ahrefs’ Domain Rating — an altered alternative to Moz’s score. Check your website’s domain rating with this free tool.

Pro tip: Earn backlinks from quality sites with a DR of 40+. Target DR 70+ sites for maximum impact on your rankings.

3. Referral Traffic and Leads

Backlinks are not only about improving your website. In fact, they can bring you referral traffic and prospective customers. This occurs when someone clicks on links in an article and lands on the webpage of the linked website.

Note: In my experience, you never know what media outlet or blog post will convert better and how many leads will come to your website. I’ve seen my guest posts bring hundreds of demo requests while others resulted in a few clicks. So, don’t build links for the sake of referral traffic alone.

Consider it a nice side effect.

20 Types of SEO Backlinks

Learn the nuances of the 20 most fruitful backlink types with examples and how to earn them.

1. Editorial Backlinks

Editorial backlinks are organic links acquired when other websites find your content valuable and link to it. These are the most coveted in SEO as they are earned based on superior, relevant content rather than being paid or requested.

Therefore, editorial backlinks significantly improve SEO performance by signaling to search engines that your content is authoritative and credible. Usually, these links come from highly authoritative websites with a DR of 80+. Such websites include HubSpot, TechCrunch, Forbes, Vogue, news sites, etc.

To earn editorial backlinks, focus on creating authentic content with “originality nuggets.” Examples include thought leadership content, research, case studies, linkable assets, expert round-ups, and experiments.

A simple way to gain editorial links is to use services that connect journalists with experts like HARO and HaB2BW. Pitch your unique point of view backed up by data to get mentioned in industry publications.

These platforms email a source and a journalist with questions and answers every day.

HubSpot recommends: Find out which types of HubSpot’s blog post earn the most editorial backlinks.

2. Guest Post Backlinks

Guest post backlinks are a type of backlink that you acquire by writing and publishing content on other websites, typically within your niche or industry.

Guest posts help improve your website‘s authority and relevance within your industry, offering both SEO value and driving targeted traffic at the same time. Choose reputable websites for guest posting, and ensure your content is well-researched and provides value to the host site’s audience.

Pitch your guest post directly to a media outlet’s content marketer, or look for the guest post submission form like we have at HubSpot.

3. Mend Broken Backlinks

The strategy involves identifying broken links on relevant websites and suggesting your content as a replacement. This way, you’re earning a backlink by providing a solution to the webmaster.

Use tools such as Check My Links or Broken Link Checker to scan relevant websites, find broken links, and then reach out to the site owner with your content as a solution. Brian Dean capitalizes a lot on this strategy to earn top-notch backlinks with one piece of content.

Explore how Brian pitches webmasters.

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Pro tip: Create astonishing content pieces to make webmasters link to them. As with editorial backlinks, content with originality nuggets shows the best results.

4. Dofollow Backlinks

Dofollow backlinks allow search engines to follow them, passing on link equity to the linked page. By default, all links are dofollow and do not require a rel= “dofollow” attribute to be used.

Example:

<a href=“https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/covid-19-benchmark-data” target=“_blank” rel=“noopener”>How COVID-19 Is Impacting Sales and Marketing Performance</a>

When high-quality websites link to your content using “Dofollow” links, it enhances your website’s credibility and improves its position in search engine results. Your domain and page rating also rise.

5. Nofollow Backlinks

Nofollow links contain the nofollow (rel=“nofollow”) attribute and instruct search engines not to follow them (not to pass link equity to the page).

Although they don’t directly impact authority, nofollow backlinks can still drive traffic to your site and contribute to a natural link profile.

Example:

<a rel=“noopener” target=“_blank” href=“http://www.blog.hubspot.com/” rel=“nofollow”> Head to the HubSpot Blog </a>

You might want to use “Nofollow” links when you link to a page you don’t want to endorse, the link is sponsored or is user-generated.

6. Comment and Forum Backlinks

Comment backlinks are links that you acquire by leaving comments under blog posts. Likewise, forum backlinks come from forum threads or your signature.

While they are considered one of the easiest ways to acquire backlinks, they are often associated with low authority and relevance. Search engines are aware of comment spam and, in many cases, treat comment backlinks with caution.

The only reason I mention them is to warn you about the negative impact these links may cause.

Pro tip: Here are four well-known forums you can leverage for backlink building:

Quora.
Reddit.
Stack Overflow.
BabyCenter.
TripAdvisor.

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7. Niche Edits Backlinks

Niche edits, also known as curated links or link insertion, are backlinks inserted into existing articles, listicles, or pages on a website, rather than creating new content as you would with guest posts.

The top benefit of niche edits is that you add contextual links to already indexed and high-ranking pages. This means you start getting link juice nearly immediately.

Conversely, when you build links from new content (guest posts, press releases, etc.) you have to wait for the page to be indexed, which takes anywhere from two weeks to months.

“At HubSpot, we’re really trying to take content that’s already out there, improve upon it, and make sure that it’s optimal to support driving referral traffic and signups,” says Autumn Witter, an associate account manager of SEO and link building at HubSpot.

To do so, Witter’s team finds content where HubSpot products are already being mentioned. They then ask webmasters to add more relevant links with more relevant anchors.

8. Press Release Backlinks

These links you obtain by distributing press releases about your business updates or events. If done right, it’s a great tactic to gain brand exposure, as well as give an additional boost to your SEO efforts.

Use them when you want to inform people about a big event that your company is organizing, announce the release of a new product or service, or simply when you want to get attention for your brand.

Choose any natural-looking anchor text. Naked URLs, branded or generic anchors, and CTAs work best.

Keep in mind that most press release links are usually “Nofollow.”

Learn how to carry out an effective press release link building.

9. Social Media Backlinks

Social media backlinks refer to any link from a social media website or page to your site. They can be placed inside a post, in the comments, on user profiles, or be shared directly on the feeds.

While social media links are “Nofollow,” they can indirectly improve SEO by driving traffic and engagement on your site. The latter translates into higher rankings, as it boosts “time on page” and improves user behavior. Both are ranking factors.

Share nice visuals, videos, and thought-provoking posts across your social media channels, and include a link to your web page.

Andy Crestodina virtuously invites its LinkedIn audience to navigate to his company’s blog posts by crafting enticing hooks, sharing diagrams, or video explainers.

10. Directory Backlinks

Directory backlinks come from submitting your website to online directories or business listings, typically with a link to your site. They can enhance local SEO and diversify your backlink profile.

Don’t submit your site to hundreds of directories. Focus on reputable, niche-specific directories that are relevant to your business with an active audience.

Further, ensure your information is consistent across listings, as Google pays attention to this for local businesses. Some of the decent directories include:

BOTW.
Spoke.
Yelp.
Better Business Bureau.
Google My Business.

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11. Image Backlinks

An image backlink is an image that is linked (attributed) to a site/page.

Why care about image backlinks? A Semrush study discovered that webpages using images earn 555% more quality backlinks.

Here are the most common types of images that tend to gain backlinks passively:

Infographics.
Graphs.
Product photos.
Maps.
Visual examples that support text.

Use Google Reverse Image Search to identify where exactly your image is being used. If someone is using your image and is not crediting you, directly reach out to the webmasters and claim your backlink.

Pro tip: Create original, high-quality images and use descriptive file names and alt tags to enhance their discoverability.

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12. Video Backlinks

The links come from video descriptions, comments, or video credits when your videos are uploaded on platforms like YouTube. Every link from YouTube content is “Nofollow.”

While backlinks on YouTube don’t give you direct SEO link juice, they are still links that can be discovered within YouTube searches and generate traffic. Optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags for relevant keywords to maximize their SEO impact.

13. Paid Backlinks

Paid link building is when a website pays a third-party domain for a dofollow backlink that points back to its domain. According to Authority Hackers, 74.3% of link builders pay for links, with the average amount being $83 for each link.

The numbers are impressive, but keep in mind that buying links is a black-hat SEO tactic. Google sees them as link schemes and a violation of search engines’ policies.

If engaging in sponsored link building, ensure the links are relevant to your niche and come from real websites, not PBNs. Ideally, they come from a commercial blog (some editors may sell links).

14. Edu and Gov Backlinks

Domains with the EDU and GOV suffix are the most trusted extensions for Google, as these areas belong to government and educational institutions.

These backlinks possess more authority and are harder to get than regular backlinks, but they are worth the effort.

What makes this type of backlinks unique is that you can’t buy them. How to acquire? For educational institutions, try creating scholarships, internships for students, and events to grab their attention.

For example, AutoAccident regularly creates college scholarships.

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When it comes to .gov websites, they are super selective. Most often, you have to contact them to partner up on different initiatives.

15. Unlinked Brand Mentions

If a website talks about your brand, a case study, or research but does not link to you, these are unlinked brand mentions. Therefore, they’re great opportunities for link-building.

Use Ahrefs to spot unlinked brand mentions:

Navigate to Ahrefs Content Explorer and type in your brand name.
Create filters: Published (e.g., Last 30 days), Language, Only live.
Click on “Highlight unlinked” and enter your domain name.
Analyze link prospects and select those with high domain authority (DR) and topical relevance.

16. Podcast Backlinks

Obtain backlinks by being a guest on a podcast or when your website is mentioned in podcast show notes. It’s a great way to build homepage links, enhance your online presence, and contribute to industry recognition.

Identify relevant websites and podcasts and reach out with personalized messages. Here are some popular podcast platforms:

Apple Podcasts.
Stitcher.
Spotify.
Google Podcasts.
Podchaser.
Podcast Addict.
Podcorn.

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17. Testimonial Backlinks

Earn links by providing testimonials or reviews for products, services, or businesses. They are a win-win situation both for the business and the reviewer.

For businesses, it’s a valuable form of social proof that adds to their credibility and reputation.

On the other hand, the reviewer will get a link-building opportunity. All you have to do is select products and services that you actually use, pitch them, and then create a testimonial.

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18. Footer links

Footer links are sitewide links placed at the bottom of your website in the footer section. They appear on every page since the footer is static.

Use your footer to place internal links to important pages on your website so visitors can easily find information.

Google frequently checks footer links to make sure that you prioritize the user by providing value rather than for SEO purposes.

Though most of the time, footer links are internal, there are a few times when you might need to link to external sources, like credit a company that designed your site.

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19. Badge Backlinks

Badge backlinks are a unique type of backlink that can be earned when other websites or organizations award you with a digital badge or emblem that links back to your website.

These badges are typically given to recognize achievements, certifications, partnerships, or contributions.

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20. Influencer-Generated Backlinks

Influencers have high authority, they are respected in their industries, and their recommendations are strong.

When they mention or link to your website in their content, Google views these backlinks as a vote of confidence, especially in the era of the E-E-A-T algorithm.

Collaborate with influencers in your niche for round-ups, joint studies, etc. Ask for a product review or recommendation, and run a creative contest on their social media channels or website linking back to you.

5 Tips for SEO Backlinks

Still not sure how to acquire backlinks? This section covers 5 tips for backlinks shared by industry experts.

Tip 1: Focus on quality over quantity.

“A perfect backlink is an elusive goal. While you may strive to acquire backlinks that meet many metrics, your competitors are securing backlinks that intuitively fit their content, giving them an edge,” says Georgi Mamajanyan, CEO at SayNine.

As a result, Mamajanyan recommends focusing on quality over quantity. He also recommends identifying “the minimum metrics that meet your standards.” From there, you can build backlinks accordingly.

“The most critical metric isn‘t DR or DA, nor is it domain traffic; it’s whether the website represents a legitimate business (e.g., SAAS/Agency) or if it’s merely a platform created solely for selling backlinks,” says Mamajanyan.

Tip 2: Prioritize low-hanging fruits for quick wins.

Unlinked brand mentions are low-hanging fruits for both early startups that are just taking off and creating buzz and established companies. Monitor sites that don’t give you credit once per 30 days to strike while the iron is hot.

Securing these links usually comes with a low effort since media outlets already know and recommend your business.

Tip 3: Leverage relationships, not links.

According to Digital Olympus Founder Alex Tachalova, “The future of link building lies in acquiring links strictly through relationships.”

For example, Tachalova says, your team should ask industry players to share their thoughts on the topics you cover. This applies to webinars, podcasts, and virtually any marketing initiative that allows you to feature other companies.

“ Links are recommendations that can only be earned by connecting your brand meaningfully with other companies and individuals who may provide backlinks to your site. To achieve that, run co-marketing campaigns with other companies in your niche,” Tachalova says.

According to Tachalova building relationships with niche professionals unlocks various opportunities.

“Instead of focusing solely on transactions, consider the value you can offer other companies. This not only helps you gain links but also expands your brand’s visibility and puts your product or service in front of their audiences,” he says

Tip 4: Widen your prospecting to indirectly related verticals.

If your services are limited to a city or a target audience, build links from indirectly related platforms.

Say, you have an online shop for vegan skincare cosmetics. Which are your target sites for backlinks? Top of mind, blogs about skincare and vegan products. However, you can also consider building links from environmental projects.

For example, write op-eds on how your company contributes to resolving social or environmental disasters. You can then highlight the cruelty-free, low waste you’re on.

Tip 5: Monitor and disavow low-quality links.

When you grow, some competitors may take extra measures to make sure you fail in rankings by attacking your site with negative SEO. Usually, your site is subjected to link spam from PBNs, link farms, etc.

To maintain a healthy backlink profile, conduct a link-building audit once per month. Also, set up notifications about low-quality links pointing to your website using Linkody — a backlink monitoring tool.

Noticed unnatural links in a big quantity?

Google recommends disavowing all of them to prevent a negative impact on your site’s rankings.

Watch Matt Cuts from Google addressing questions about negative SEO in 2023.

Leverage Different Types of Backlinks to Maximize SEO Efforts

SEO is complex. It’s essential to not only acquire backlinks but also to understand the nuances of each type. Make sure to combine different link-building types with other SEO initiatives to maximize your online visibility.

At any given time, I have GSC open in 2 to 10 tabs. It’s helpful on a macro and micro level — both when I need to see how many impressions HubSpot is gaining month over month or figure out what’s happened to a high-traffic blog post that suddenly fell.

I’m a content strategist on HubSpot’s SEO team, which means GSC is particularly useful to me. But anyone who’s got a website can and should dip their toes in these waters. According to Google, whether you’re a business owner, SEO specialist, marketer, site administrator, web developer, or app creator, Search Console will come in handy.

I remember the first time I opened GSC — and it was overwhelming. There were tons of labels I didn’t understand (index coverage?!?), hidden filters, and confusing graphs. Of course, the more I used it, the less confusing it became.

But if you want to skip the learning curve (and why wouldn’t you), good news: I’m going to reveal everything I’ve learned about how to use Google Search Console like a pro.

This guide covers:

What is Google Search Console?
Adding your website to Google Search Console
Setting up owners, users, and permissions
Submitting a sitemap
Understanding dimensions and metrics
Adding filters
Using GSC (26 use cases)

First things first. If you haven’t already signed up for GSC, it’s time to do so.

Google starts tracking data for your property as soon as you add it to GSC — even before it’s verified you’re the site owner.

Verifying Your Site on GSC

Because GSC gives you access to confidential information about a site or app’s performance (plus influence over how Google crawls that site or app!), you have to verify you own that site or app first.

Verification gives a specific user control over a specific property. You must have at least one verified owner per GSC property.

Also, note that verifying your property doesn’t affect PageRank or its performance in Google search. Of course, you can use GSC data to strategize how to rank higher — but simply adding your website to GSC won’t automatically make your rankings go up.

GSC Verification Methods

HTML file upload: Upload a verification HTML file to a specific location of your website.
Domain name provider: Sign into your domain registrar (like GoDaddy, eNom, or networksolutions.com), and verify your site directly from GSC or add a DNS TXT or CNAME record.
HTML tag: Add a <meta> tag to the <HEAD> section of a specific page’s HTML code.
Google Analytics tracking code: Copy the GA tracking code that you use on your site. (You need “edit” permission in GA for this option.)
Google Tag Manager container snippet code: Copy the GTM container snippet code associated with your site. (You need View, Edit, and Manage container-level permissions in GTM for this option.)

Google-hosted sites, including Blogger and Sites pages, are automatically verified.

URL Versions: WWW Domain or Not?

True or false: hubspot.com and www.hubspot.com are the same domain.

The answer? False! Each domain represents a different server; those URLs might look very similar, but from a technical perspective, they’re two unique domains.

However, if you type “hubspot.com” into your browser bar, you’ll land at “www.hubspot.com”. What is this sorcery?

HubSpot has chosen “www.hubspot.com” as its preferred, or canonical, domain. That means we’ve told Google we want all of our URLs displayed in search as “www.hubspot.com/……”. And when third parties link to our pages, those URLs should be treated as “www.hubspot.com/……” as well.

If you don’t tell GSC which domain you prefer, Google may treat the www and non-www versions of your domain as separate — splitting all those page views, backlinks, and engagement into two. Not good.

(At this time you should also set up a 301 redirect from your non-preferred domain to your preferred one, if you haven’t already.)

GSC Users, Owners, and Permissions

There are two GSC role-types. I know you might be itching to get to the good stuff (cough the data) but it’s important to do this right.

Owner: An owner has total control over their properties in GSC. They can add and remove other users, change the settings, see all data, and access every tool. A verified owner has completed the property verification process, while a delegated owner has been added by a verified one. (Delegated owners can add other delegated owners.)
User: A user can see all data and take some actions, but can’t add new users. Full users can see most data and take some actions, while restricted users can only view most data.

Think carefully about who should have which permissions. Giving everyone full ownership could be disastrous — you don’t want someone to accidentally change an important setting. Try to give your team members just as much authority as they need and no further.

For example, at HubSpot, our technical SEO manager Victor Pan is a verified owner. I’m an SEO content strategist, which means I use GSC heavily but don’t need to change any settings, so I’m a delegated owner. The members of our blogging team, who use GSC to analyze blog and post performance, are full users.

Here are detailed instructions on adding and removing owners and users in Search Console.

There’s a third role: an associate. You can associate a Google Analytics property with a Search Console account — which will let you see GSC data in GA reports. You can also access GA reports in two sections of Search Console: links to your site, and Sitelinks.

A GA property can only be associated with one GSC site, and vice versa. If you’re an owner of the GA property, follow these instructions to associate it with the GSC site.

Do You Need a Sitemap?

A sitemap isn’t necessary to show up in Google search results. As long as your site is organized correctly (meaning pages are logically linked to each other) , Google says its web crawlers will normally find most of your pages.

But there are four situations a sitemap will improve your site’s crawlability:

It’s really big. The more pages you have, the easier it is for Googlebot to miss any changes or additions.
It has lots of “isolated” pages. Any page that has few inbound links from other pages is harder for a web crawler to discover.
It’s new. Newer sites have few backlinks (links from other sites) making them less discoverable.
It uses rich media content and/or shows up in Google News. In these cases, your sitemap makes it easier for Google to format and display your site in search.

Once you’ve built your sitemap, submit it using the GSC sitemaps tool.

GSC Sitemaps Report

After Google has processed and indexed your sitemap, it will appear in the Sitemaps report. You’ll be able to see when Google last read your sitemap and how many URLs it’s indexed.

GSC Dimensions and Metrics

There are a few terms you should understand before using GSC.

What’s a Google Search Console query?

This is a search term that generated impressions of your site page on a Google SERP. You can only find query data in Search Console, not Google Analytics.

What’s an impression?

Each time a link URL appears in a search result, it generates an impression. The user doesn’t have to scroll down to see your search result for the impression to count.

What’s a click?

When the user selects a link that takes them outside of Google Search, that counts as one click. If the user clicks a link, hits the back button, then clicks the same link again — still one click. If then, they click a different link — that’s two clicks.

When a user clicks a link within Google Search that runs a new query, that’s not counted as a click.

Also, this doesn’t include paid Google results.

What’s average position?

This is the mean ranking of your page(s) for a query or queries. Suppose our guide to SEO tools is ranking #2 for “SEO software” and #4 for “keyword tools.” The average position for this URL would be 3 (assuming we were ranking for literally nothing else).

What’s CTR?

CTR, or click-through rate, is equal to Clicks divided by Impressions, multiplied by 100. If our post shows up in 20 searches, and generates 10 clicks, our CTR would be 50%.

Filtering in Google Search Console

GSC offers several different ways to view and parse your data. These filters are incredibly handy, but they can also be confusing when you’re familiarizing yourself with the tool.

Search Type

There are three search types: web, image, and video. I typically use “web,” since that’s where most of the HubSpot Blog traffic comes from, but if you get a lot of visits from image and/or video search, make sure you adjust this filter accordingly.

You can also compare two types of traffic. Just click the “Compare” tab, choose the two categories you’re interested in, and select “Apply.”

This can lead to some interesting findings. For example, I discovered this color theory 101 post is getting more impressions from image search than web (although the latter is still generating more clicks!).

Date Range

GSC now offers 16 months of data (up from 90 days). You can choose from a variety of pre-set time periods or set a custom range.

As with search type, you can also compare two date ranges in the “Compare” tab.

Queries, Page, Country, Device, Search Appearance

Click “New” next to the Date filter to add up to five other types of filters: query, page, country, device, and search appearance.

These filters can be layered; for instance, if I wanted to see data for SEO-related queries appearing on mobile search, I’d add a filter for queries containing “SEO” on mobile devices. If I only wanted to limit the results even further to posts on the Marketing Blog, I’d add another filter for Pages containing the URL “blog.hubspot.com/marketing”.

You can get very specific here — I recommend playing around with different combinations of filters so you see what’s possible.

Index Coverage Report

The index coverage report shows you the status of every page Google has tried to index on your site. Using this report, you can diagnose any indexing issues. Each page is assigned one of four statuses:

Error: The page couldn’t be indexed.
Warning: The page is indexed but has a problem.
Excluded: The page is an alternate page with content duplicate with a canonical page. For this reason, it has been purposefully excluded while the canonical page has been found and indexed.

Submitted Sitemaps

In this area, you can make your sitemap available to Google and see its status.

Can you see why I love GSC? Let’s dig into each use case.

1. Identify your highest-traffic pages.

Click Performance.
Click the “Page” tab (next to Queries).
Change the date range to “Last 12 months”. (A full year gives you a comprehensive overview of your traffic, but feel free to adjust the time period.)
Make sure “Total clicks” is selected.
Click the small downward arrow next to “Clicks” to sort from highest to lowest.

2. Identify your highest-CTR queries.

Click Performance.
Click the “Queries” tab.
Change the date range to “Last 12 months”. (A full year gives you a comprehensive overview of your traffic, but feel free to adjust the time period.)
Make sure “Average CTR” is selected.
Click the small downward arrow next to “CTR” to sort from highest to lowest.

Note: It’s useful to look at this in tandem with “Impressions” (check “Total impressions” to see this information side-by-side). A page might have high CTR but low impressions, or vice versa — you won’t get the full picture without both data points.

3. Look at average CTR.

Click Performance.
Click the date to adjust the time period. Choose whatever range you’re interested in. (Alternatively, click “Compare” to analyze two date ranges at once.)
Look at “Average CTR”.
Click Performance.
Click the date to adjust the time period. Choose whatever range you’re interested in. (Alternatively, click “Compare” to analyze two date ranges at once.)
Look at “Total impressions”.
Go to Status > Performance.
Click the date to adjust the time period. Choose whatever range you’re interested in. (Alternatively, click “Compare” to analyze two date ranges at once.)
Look at “Average position”.

4. Monitor your CTR over time.

I recommend keeping an eye on CTR. Any significant movement is significant: If it’s dropped, but impressions have gone up, you’re simply ranking for more keywords, so average CTR has declined. If CTR has increased, and impressions have decreased, you’ve lost keywords. If both CTR and impressions have gone up, congrats — you’re doing something right!

5. Monitor your impressions over time.

As you create more content and optimize your existing pages, this number should increase. (As always, there are exceptions — maybe you decided to target a small number of high conversion keywords rather than a lot of average conversion ones, are focusing on other channels, etc.)

6. Monitor average position over time.

Average position isn’t that useful on a macro level. Most people are concerned when it goes up — but that’s shortsighted. If a page or set of pages starts ranking for additional keywords, average position usually increases; after all, unless you’re ranking for the exact same position or better as your existing keywords, your “average” will get bigger.

Don’t pay too much attention to this metric.

7. Identify your highest-ranking pages.

Click Performance.
Click the “Page” tab.
Change the date range to “Last 28 days.” (You want an up-to-date, accurate snapshot of your pages.)
Make sure “Average position” is selected.
Click the small upward arrow next to “Position” to sort from smallest (good) to highest (bad).
Click Performance.
Click the “Page” tab.
Change the date range to “Last 28 days.” (You want an up-to-date, accurate snapshot of your pages.)
Make sure “Average position” is selected.
Click the small downward arrow next to “Position” to sort from highest (bad) to lowest (good).

Because you’re looking at average position by URL, that number is the mean of all of that page’s rankings. In other words, if it’s ranking for two keywords, it might be #1 for a high-volume query and #43 for a low-volume one — but the average will still be 22.

With that in mind, don’t judge the success or failure of a page by “average position” alone.

8. Identify your lowest-ranking pages

Follow the same steps that you would to identify your highest-ranking pages, except this time, toggle the small upward arrow next to “Position” to sort from highest (bad) to smallest (good).

9. Identify ranking increases and decreases.

Click Performance.
Click the “Query” tab.
Click “Date range” to change the dates, then choose the “Compare” tab.
Select two equivalent time periods, then click “Apply.”

At this point, you can look at the data in GSC, or export it. For an in-depth analysis, I highly recommend the second — it’ll make your life much easier.

To do so, click the downward arrow beneath “Search Appearance,” then download it as a CSV file or export it to Google Sheets.

After you have this data in spreadsheet form, you can add a column for the position differences (Last 28 days Position – Previous 28 days Position), then sort by size.

If the difference is positive, your site has moved up for that query. If it’s negative, you’ve dropped.

10. Identify your highest-traffic queries.

Click Performance.
Click the “Query” tab.
Click “Date range” to choose a time period.
Make sure “Total clicks” is selected.
Click the small downward arrow next to “Clicks” to sort from highest to lowest.

Knowing which queries bring in the most search traffic is definitely useful. Consider optimizing the ranking pages for conversion, periodically updating them so they maintain their rankings, putting paid promotion behind them, using them to link to lower-ranked (but just as if not more important) relevant pages, and so on.

11. Compare your site’s search performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Click Performance.
Go to the “Devices” tab.
Make sure “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” and “Average Position” are selected.
Compare your performance across desktop, mobile, and tablet.

12. Compare your site’s search performance across different countries.

Click Performance.
Go to the “Countries” tab.
Make sure “Total clicks,” “Total impressions,” “Average CTR,” and “Average Position” are selected.
Compare your performance across nations.

13. Learn how many of your pages have been indexed.

Start at “Overview.”
Scroll down to the Index coverage summary.
Look at the “Valid pages” count.

14. Learn which pages haven’t been indexed and why.

Go to Overview > Index coverage.
Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing indexing issues and how frequent they are.
Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.

15. Monitor total number of indexed pages and indexing errors.

Go to Overview > Index coverage.
Make sure “Error”, “Valid with warnings”, “Valid”, and “Excluded” are all selected.

The total number of indexed pages on your site should typically go up over time as you:

Publish new blog posts, create new landing pages, add additional site pages, etc.
Fix indexing errors

If indexing errors go up significantly, a change to your site template might be to blame (because a large set of pages have been impacted at once). Alternatively, you may have submitted a sitemap with URLs Google can’t crawl (because of ‘noindex’ directives, robots.txt, password-protected pages, etc.).

If the total number of indexed pages on your site drops without a proportional increase in errors, it’s possible you’re blocking access to existing URLs.

In any case, try to diagnose the issue by looking at your excluded pages and looking for clues.

16. Identify mobile usability issues.

Click Mobile Usability.
Make sure “Error” is selected.
Scroll down to the Details box to learn which Errors are causing mobile usability issues and how frequent they are.
Double-click on any Error type to see the affected page URLs.

17. Learn how many total backlinks your site has.

Click Links.
Open the Top linked pages report.
Look at the box labeled “Total external links.”
Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links” to sort from highest to lowest backlinks.

Every backlink is a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and useful. In general, the more backlinks the better! Of course, quality matters — one link from a high-authority site is much more valuable than two links from low-authority sites. To see which sites are linking to a specific page, simply double-click that URL in the report.

18. Identify which URLs have the most backlinks.

Click Links.
Open the Top linked pages report.
Click the downward arrow next to “Incoming links” to sort from highest to lowest backlinks.

If you want to help a page rank higher, adding a link from a page with a ton of backlinks is a good bet. Those backlinks give that URL a lot of page authority — which it can then pass on to another page on your site with a link.

19. Identify which sites link to you the most.

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linking sites” > “More.”

Knowing your top referring domains is incredibly useful for promotion — I’d recommend starting with these sites whenever you do a link-building campaign. (Just make sure to use a tool like Moz, SEMrush, or Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs to filter out the low-authority ones first.)

These may also be good candidates for comarketing campaigns or social media partnerships.

20. Identify the most popular anchor text for external links.

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linking text” > “More.”

Anchor text should be as descriptive and specific as possible — and best case scenario, include your keyword. If you find websites linking to your pages but using anchor text like “Click here” “Learn more”, “Check it out”, etc., consider sending an email asking them to update the hyperlink.

21. Identify which pages have the most internal links.

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linked pages” > “More.”

It’s normal for some URLs to have more inbound links. For example, if you run an ecommerce site, every product page in your “Skirts” category will link back to the “Skirts” overview page. That’s a good thing: It tells Google your top-level URLs are the most important (which helps them rank higher).

However, a heavily skewed link distribution ratio isn’t ideal. If a tiny percentage of your URLS are getting way more links than the rest, it’ll be difficult for the 95% to receive search traffic — you’re not passing enough authority to them.

Here’s what a heavily skewed distribution looks like:

The optimal spread looks like this:

Use GSC’s link data to learn how your links are distributed and if you need to focus on making your link distribution more smooth.

22. Learn how many total internal links your site has.

Click Links.
Scroll down to “Top linked pages” > “More.”
Look at the box labeled “Total internal links.”

23. Find and fix AMP errors.

Click AMP.
Make sure “Error” is selected.
Scroll down to the “Details” box to see which types of issues you have and how frequent they are.

Google recommends fixing errors before looking at the pages in the “Valid with warnings” category. By default, errors are ranked by severity, frequency, and whether you’ve addressed them.

24. See Google how Google views a URL.

Click the white magnifying glass at the top of the page.
Enter the page URL. (Make sure it belongs to the property you’re currently viewing.)

Here’s how to interpret the results. If the URL is on Google, that means it’s indexed and can appear in search.

That doesn’t mean it will — if it’s been marked as spam or you’ve removed or temporarily blocked the content, it won’t appear. Google the URL; if it shows up, searchers can find it.

Open the Index coverage card to learn more about the URL’s presence on Google, including which sitemaps point to this URL, the referring page that led Googlebot to this URL, the last time Googlebot crawled this URL, whether you’ve allowed Googlebot to crawl this URL, whether Googlebot actually could fetch this URL, whether this page disallows indexing, the canonical URL you’ve set for this page, and the URL Google has selected as the canonical for this page.

The Enhancements section gives you information on:

The AMP version of this page, if it exists, and any AMP-specific issues
Status for job posting and/or recipe structured data

25. Use the Reg-Ex Filter.

Bianca “Binks” Anderson, HubSpot SEO Strategist, recommends using the reg-ex filter. In GSC, the “regex filter” refers to using regular expressions (regex) to filter the data in the Performance or Search Analytics report based on specific patterns or criteria.

“When setting up a regex filter in GSC, you can specify a regular expression pattern to include or exclude certain URLs or queries from your reports. This can be helpful for segmenting the data based on specific URL structures, query patterns, or other criteria,” she says.

Do you want to analyze the performance of a specific group of URLs? With the help of regular expressions (reg-ex), you can filter your Google Search Console (GSC) data to only display the metrics for the URLs you are interested in. A useful tool for this is the URL Regex Generator, a free Google Chrome extension that allows you to easily generate a regex pattern for your desired set of URLs. Simply copy and paste the URLs into the tool, and it will create the corresponding regex for you.

25. Use the date compare feature.

According to Amanda Sellers, HubSpot Blog Strategy Manager, the date compare feature is “a great way to keep tabs on search performance and whether you’re trending up or down in certain areas.”

Take the Next Steps to Learn More

HubSpot’s CMS Hub Pro and Enterprise offer integration with Google Search Console, providing you with enhanced control and insights into your website’s performance in organic search.

Get started with Google Search Console Integration with HubSpot’s tools

You can gain access to valuable data such as search queries, impressions, clicks, and average position of their website in Google Search results. This integration enables you to identify opportunities for increasing organic traffic, optimize content to target specific keywords, and track the impact of their SEO efforts.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Post Content

As a content strategist, I like to ask my clients a lot of questions, starting with, “Who’s your target audience?”

But do you know what answer I always dread hearing? “Everyone”

While it’s nice to believe that everyone would be interested in purchasing your product or service, this definition (or lack thereof) creates way more work for you and also does a disservice to your actual target market. This is where segmentation, targeting, and positioning come into play.

We developed this guide to help you understand how and why you should invest time into STP for better, more effective marketing. Let’s dive in.

At its core, STP marketing helps you to better target your marketing messages and better serve your customer base.

Here’s an example: I once created a marketing strategy for a fitness apparel brand. Rather than appeal to all fitness enthusiasts across the board, the brand wanted to target a specific segment within their target market: female yoga fans in their 30s and 40s. 

Ultimately, our marketing campaign was much more efficient and cost-effective since we knew our audience, where to reach them, and what messages would resonate.

Conducting an STP Marketing Analysis

STP allows you to take a large, anonymous audience and define how your different products (or different components of the same product) relate to specific consumer segments within that larger audience — thus understanding how to position your product(s) and messaging to grab the attention of each segment.

Let’s unpack each part of the segmentation-targeting-positioning model.

1. Segmentation

Segmentation refers to the process of dividing your audience into smaller groups based on certain characteristics. This process allows you to group your individual audience members into similar groups so you can better communicate your products, features, and benefits that may be most relevant to them.

You can segment your audience based on one or more of these criteria:

Demographics, which typically answer the question of who your buyer is (e.g. age, gender, education, location, and profession)
Psychographics, which answer the question of why your buyer buys (e.g. priorities, personality traits, and beliefs and values)
Lifestyle traits, such as hobbies, entertainment preferences, and non-work activities
Behavior, such as brand loyalty, channel preferences, and other shopping habits

Segmentation may sound a little familiar to another process we often discuss here on the HubSpot blog — creating buyer personas.

While the two are very similar,  buyer personas help you create a handful of customer profiles that represent your broader audience. Segmentation allows you to split your audience into countless groups, each of which you can uniquely target.

For example, let’s say Paws & Tails is a Chicago pet-sitting company that offers pet-sitting, dog walking, and boarding services. Given the vast number of pet owners in the city, they need to segment their audience into smaller groups to better understand how to position their services.

Based on their research and current customer base, they split their audience into three main segments:

Segment A is made up of high-income pet owners who work often and need daytime dog walking and pet pop-in visits.
Segment B is made up of middle-class individuals and families who travel and need overnight boarding or pet-sitting services.
Segment C is made up of older pet owners and retirees who need help caring for their pets.

2. Targeting

With your audience segments in hand, it’s time to move on to the targeting phase. First, however, you must decide which segments are worth targeting with your marketing. To decipher this, I like to ask myself the following questions about each segment:

Is this segment composed of enough potential customers to justify targeting? Would it yield enough profits if the segment were to convert?
Is it measurably different from the other segments?
Is it accessible by all members of Marketing and Sales?
Is your company equipped and able to serve the segment? Are there any physical, legal, social, or technological barriers that could prevent that?

Choosing what segments to target is a strategic decision. Thankfully, certain strategic planning models — the PESTLE analysis is a personal favorite — can help you better understand the viability of each segment.

It takes a lot of work to successfully target a segment of your audience. But from my experience, whether you’ve identified two segments or ten, don’t feel the need to target more than one segment at once. In fact, I’ve found that targeting one at a time can help you better position your marketing for each specific segment.

Following our example from before, Paws & Tails conducts research to better understand its Chicago audience. Paws & Tails finds that Segment A makes up 60% of its market size, Segment B makes up 30%, and Segment C makes up 10%. Moreover, Segment A has a higher average income and is willing to pay more for pet-sitting and walking services. Because of this, they choose to focus on Segment A.

3. Positioning

At this point, you should understand the demographics, psychographics, motivations, and pain points of the segments you’ve chosen to target, which can provide a place to start when it comes to positioning your product or service.

First, take a step back and examine your product or service through the perspective of your chosen segment. If you were in their shoes, why would you choose your product over a competitor’s? What features or benefits are most relevant to you, based on the motivations and pain points you’ve identified?

This information is important to defining your brand positioning and understanding how it stacks up next to your competitors. One way to understand where you, well, stand is by building a positioning map, which is “the visual plotting of specific brands against axes, where each axis represents an attribute that is known to drive brand selection.”

The segment you choose to target should dictate what two attributes you plot on your positioning map. For example, let’s say Paws & Tails decides Segment A selects pet-sitting brands based on two attributes: service area and reliability.

By understanding 1) what the target segment deems most important for brand selection and 2) where its competitors succeed (and fall short), Paws & Tails is able to identify an open market opportunity and position its marketing to best fit the needs and goals of its audience.

Using Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning in Marketing

The STP model is a priceless addition to any marketing strategy, regardless of your industry, product, or audience. It prioritizes efficient and effective marketing and ensures you’re delivering only the most relevant, targeted messaging across the board.

It also plays an important role in developing other strategies, such as your buyer personas, customer lifecycle stages, and core brand proposition.

By leading with a consumer-centric approach like STP, you can be sure that every inch of your marketing is relevant to your audience — thus, increasing the likelihood that they convert, purchase, and become lifelong customers.

Examples of Great Market Segmentation and Positioning

Brands are segmenting, targeting, and positioning their audiences and marketing constantly, oftentimes without us (consumers) even noticing. Ever seen a brand or product and thought “Huh, that’s perfect for me” or “Wow, right place at the right time”? Yeah … you’ve been subject to the STP model.

Let’s review a few examples of great marketing segmentation and positioning.

1. Panera Bread

With countless fast casual restaurants on the map, it’s hard to decide where to eat when you’re in the mood for a quick meal. For some reason, Panera Bread always comes to mind (at least for me).

Panera has successfully cornered the “health-conscious” and “climate-conscious” segment of the fast casual dining industry. Is Panera’s food so different from other fast casual options? Not entirely.

But by branding themselves with the perspective that “we believe that good food, food you can feel good about, can bring out the best in all of us”, Panera remains top-of-mind as a place to get high-quality food, fast.

2. AllBirds

Like dining opinions, there are so many shoe brands on the market. But AllBirds didn’t let that stop it from carving out a new niche in a busy space full of comfortable, active shoe options.

How did AllBirds position itself to set itself apart from the competition? By elevating its eco-consciousness and placing that front and center in its marketing. According to the AllBirds website, the brand “crafts with planet-friendly natural materials, like merino wool and eucalyptus trees, because they’re our best chance for a sustainable future.”

At first glance, AllBirds shoes don’t look too terribly different from other running or walking shoes. However, its audience segment that cares about sustainability and earth-conscious products knows the difference.

3. Billie

No longer can businesses simply segment their audiences by “men” and “women” — the individuals within each broad gender group vary too much, and razor brand Billie took note of this.

In an effort to extinguish the “pink tax,” Billie markets cost-friendly razors and associated products. Moreover, they work to normalize body hair and other forgotten or shamed parts of women’s bodies.

Through this positioning, Billie is able to set their products apart from competitors and create a strong, positive community around their brand.

4. Hinge

The world of online dating is a busy, strange place. From Tinder to FarmersOnly.com, there seems to be a place for everyone to meet, well, anyone. Hinge came on the scene only a handful of years ago, yet it has skyrocketed to the top of the list of the most popular and reliable dating app.

Time and time again, I’ve heard that Hinge is a favorite because it works — meaning it helps people meet people and make real relationships. You wouldn’t think a dating app would position themselves to eventually be unnecessary, but that’s exactly what Hinge has done. In fact, its mission statement is to “[build] an app that’s designed to be deleted.”

By putting the needs and desires of its audience front and center, Hinge has created a more trustworthy, in-demand online dating experience and set itself apart from its competitors.

The Case for Using STP Marketing

The segmentation-targeting-positioning model is designed to help you better target your marketing messages and better serve your customer base. It’s a win-win for you and your customers!

This article was originally published October 29, 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In the competitive realm of digital advertising, understanding your PPC competitors is crucial. If your ads aren‘t performing at their best, it’s likely because you’re not fully tuned into what others in the space are doing.

Competitors might be employing tactics you haven’t considered or even mirroring your brand to divert your audience.

A thorough PPC competitor analysis helps you pinpoint these strategies, allowing you to refine your campaigns for better performance.

This guide offers a deep dive into the how and why of pay-per-click competitor analysis, ensuring your ads get the visibility and impact they deserve.

What is a PPC competitor analysis?

Why does a PPC competitor analysis matter?

The Anatomy of a PPC Competitor Analysis

How to Create a PPC Competitor Analysis Process

PPC Competitor Analysis Tools

Navigating the Future of PPC Competitor Analysis

What is a PPC competitor analysis?

PPC competitor analysis pulls back the curtain on your competitors’ pay-per-click strategies.

It’s a systematic process where advertisers critically assess and contrast their search engine marketing (SEM) approaches against their rivals. The aim?

To pinpoint where competitors are excelling, where they’re falling short, and most importantly, to unearth potential opportunities for differentiation and growth.

This involves a deep dive into:

Ad content, examining how competitors frame their messaging, their choice of words, and the kind of CTAs they use.
Keyword strategy, investigating which keywords competitors are banking on and how effectively those keywords are driving results.
Budget allocation, identifying how competitors allocate their ad spend, which campaigns they‘re investing heavily in, and which ones they aren’t.

By analyzing these components (and more), advertisers can glean valuable insights into their competitive landscape’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

This not only informs smarter strategy but fosters innovation in PPC marketing campaigns.

Why does a PPC competitor analysis matter?

In digital marketing, knowledge is power. And in the PPC arena, understanding your competitors’ moves can give you a critical edge.

PPC competitor analysis isn‘t just a fancy term or an optional endeavor — it’s integral to crafting impactful and efficient campaigns. Let’s explore why these analyses are indispensable for companies wanting to advance.

Gain Competitive Insight

Looking closer at how your competitors structure their PPC campaigns is like receiving a roadmap of potential best practices.

Not all strategies will suit every business, but understanding the competition’s approach can guide adjustments to your own.

Whether it’s the ad copy they use, the landing pages they direct traffic to, or the times of day they prioritize, these insights allow marketers to benchmark their campaigns against the industry’s best and craft strategies that stand out in the marketplace.

Identify Market Gaps

While it‘s crucial to understand where competitors shine, it’s equally vital to notice where they don‘t. PPC competitor analysis can reveal areas your competitors might be neglecting.

Perhaps there’s a set of keywords they still need to target or a demographic they’ve overlooked.

Recognizing these gaps allows businesses to pivot, positioning themselves uniquely in the market. It‘s about being where others aren’t, providing solutions to audiences who might have previously been overlooked.

Optime Your Budget

In the world of PPC, where every click costs, ensuring that every dollar is well-spent is paramount.

By observing which keywords competitors pour money into or understanding the ad formats they prioritize, businesses can make informed decisions about where to allocate resources.

This insight helps avoid overspending in saturated areas and ensures a focus on avenues with higher potential ROI. Understanding competitors’ budgeting strategies provides a more straightforward path to maximizing your investment.

The Anatomy of a PPC Competitor Analysis

A PPC competitor analysis is not just a report — it‘s a comprehensive breakdown of your competitors’ advertising strategies on search platforms.

Think of it as a magnifying glass that reveals the intricacies of their campaigns, providing you with invaluable data to inform your next steps.

Let’s peel back the layers to understand the core components of this analysis.

Ad Content Overview

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Behind every successful PPC campaign lies compelling ad content that resonates with the target audience. This section zeroes in on the actual text and visuals your competitors use in their advertisements.

By analyzing their ad copy, headlines, and CTAs, you can gauge the messaging that might resonate with the audience.

What’s their value proposition? Are they leveraging emotions, highlighting discounts, or emphasizing fast delivery? Understanding these elements can inspire your ad creation.

Keyword Strategy

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The lifeblood of any PPC campaign lies in its keywords. Here, the analysis uncovers the specific keywords your competitors are bidding on. But it goes beyond just listing them.

This section also showcases performance metrics associated with each keyword — like click-through rates, conversion rates, and quality scores.

Such insights can aid in refining your keyword strategy, ensuring you’re bidding on terms that promise optimal engagement and conversions.

Landing Page Experience

Once a user clicks on an ad, where do they land?

The destination — the landing page — is pivotal in converting that click into a desired action.

This analysis segment evaluates competitors‘ landing pages’ design, layout, and user experience. It’s about aesthetics, ease of navigation, mobile optimization, and clarity of CTAs.

The efficiency of these pages in guiding users toward a conversion can offer a wealth of ideas to enhance your landing page designs.

How to Create a PPC Competitor Analysis Process

In PPC, knowing your rival’s moves is half the battle won, and systematic competitor analysis can be your secret weapon. Ready to up your PPC game? Let’s dive into crafting a detailed competitor analysis process.

Identify your main competitors.

First up, know your competitors. Using tools like Ahrefs, SpyFu, and Google Ads’ Auction Insights can offer invaluable insights right out of the gate.

For instance, by plugging your target keywords into Ahrefs or SpyFu, you can pinpoint the brands frequently ranking for those terms.

While it might seem almost too basic, running a simple Google search with your main keywords can unveil a landscape of competitors’ ads. On the other hand, Google Ads’ Auction Insights tool is like having insider information.

It offers a glimpse of who’s bidding on the same terms as you and how often their ads are displayed compared to yours. This information makes crafting a list of your top PPC competitors a breeze.

Find competitors’ PPC keywords.

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Within PPC, the keyword strategy is your foundation. Tools like Ahrefs or SpyFu are perfect for exploring keywords you and your competitors bid on.

At the same time, they can highlight specific keywords unique to your business or your competitors. Such distinctions can influence your overall strategy.

Understanding the balance between short-tail keywords (broader) and long-tail keywords (more specific) can guide your bidding approach.

And when you‘re trying to gauge the intent behind your competitors’ keyword choices, Google’s Keyword Planner offers insights into search volume and competition levels.

Analyze competitor ads.

With a grasp on your main competitors, it’s time to delve into their ad strategies.

Platforms like SpyFu or the Facebook Ad Library can give you a visual overview of their ads. Studying each component — from headlines and descriptions to display paths — can unveil patterns in their strategy.

Perhaps they emphasize specific phrases or benefits? Or maybe there’s a consistent offer they promote?

Observing these trends can give you insights into what might resonate with their audience. As you study, maintaining an organized collection of these ads can serve as both a reference and inspiration.

Conduct PPC landing page analysis.

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Your ad’s landing page plays a pivotal role in conversion. That’s why it’s crucial to analyze the post-click experience provided by competitors.

Tools that assess user experience, like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights, offer data on loading speeds.

Additionally, ensuring the content on a landing page aligns with its respective ad is critical. A mismatch here can lead to higher bounce rates.

And, of course, the clarity and positioning of CTAs on these landing pages can drastically impact conversions. As a marketer, having a mechanism to frequently audit and compare your landing pages against competitors can be invaluable.

Track competitors’ ad positions.

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Remarketing is a nuanced strategy that many brands employ. That’s why visiting competitors’ websites can offer insights into their retargeting game.

This hands-on approach can help you understand their remarketing strategies, especially regarding imagery, ad copy, and CTAs.

Tools like Google Ads‘ Auction Insights can help gauge if competitors are consistently grabbing those coveted top ad positions. Within the Auction Insights tab, you can see if new names pop up in your insights.

It’s a cue to dive deeper into their online strategies because sometimes the fiercest competitors on search aren’t your traditional industry adversaries.

A spike in a familiar brand‘s overlap rate might hint they’re upping their ad spend, signaling changes in their marketing priorities.

And, while predicting exact budgets is tricky, platforms like SEMrush can offer a ballpark figure on competitors’ PPC spending. Keeping tabs on these elements ensures you stay agile in your strategies, ready to pivot when necessary.

PPC Competitor Analysis Tools

PPC competitor analysis tools should be an essential part of your overall strategy. They are the backbone of your research, making the difference between guesswork and data-driven decisions.

Let’s explore some of the standout tools in the industry that can elevate your PPC game.

SEMRush

SEMRush is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance your client‘s Google Ads campaigns from the ground up. It’s not just about tracking but about strategizing.

Enter a website, and SEMRush unveils essential insights about major competitors, from top keywords to potential spending habits. It’s a must-have for clients who want to maintain a competitive edge across various advertising platforms.

Features: Keyword research, site auditing, ad tracking
Pricing: $119.95 per month
Best for Agencies and professionals focused on all-rounded digital marketing solutions
What we like: The multifunctional toolkit spans from SEO to PPC and content strategy.

SpyFu

When deciphering the intricacies of competitors’ ad strategies within Google Ads, SpyFu stands out.

The tool grants you a front-row seat to your competitors’ keywords, bidding, and ad choices, making it easier to craft a formidable counter-strategy. For every keyword purchased and every ad run, SpyFu captures it all.

Features: SEO and PPC competitor research, keyword research, ad history
Pricing: $39 per month
Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses diving into competitor analysis
What we like: Its deep dive into competitors’ keyword strategies, stretching back over a decade

Ahrefs

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Ahrefs serves as an all-in-one toolkit, offering a plethora of functionalities from link building and keyword research to competitor analysis.

Its keyword explorer tool reveals potential keywords and gauges their competitiveness, ensuring your client’s budget optimizes by focusing on the most impactful keywords.

Features: Backlink analysis, organic traffic insights, keyword explorer
Pricing: $99 per month
Best for: SEO professionals and marketers wanting granular data
What we like: The depth and accuracy of its backlink analysis

BuzzSumo

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BuzzSumo is your go-to for all things social media. This cloud-based platform is tailored to boost your social media presence by uncovering trending topics, relevant keywords, and strategic outreach opportunities.

It keeps you in sync with what’s vital for your brand in the bustling world of social media.

Features: Content discovery, content alerts, influencer information
Pricing: $99 per month
Best for: Content marketers and brands looking to harness the power of viral content
What we like: Its ability to spot content trends and analyze what resonates with audiences

Google Ads Auction Insights

While Google Ads Auction Insights truly shines when managing an active campaign, it remains an invaluable asset for periodic insights.

By frequently checking the Auction Insights tab, you can garner many actionable insights to stay ahead of the curve.

Features: Overlap rate, top of page rate, position above rate
Pricing: Integrated within Google Ads (No additional cost)
Best for PPC advertisers wanting direct insights within the Google Ads ecosystem
What we like: The straightforward way it showcases how you stack up against competitors in the same auctions

Navigating the Future of PPC Competitor Analysis

Tapping into the power of PPC competitor analysis is more than just a strategic move — it’s a ticket to better ads, smarter campaigns, and a deeper understanding of the market landscape.

You can elevate your campaigns to unmatched heights with the right tools in your arsenal and a systematic approach. Remember, it’s not just about outspending your competitors but outthinking them.

Embrace the insights, act on the findings, and watch your PPC endeavors thrive in this digital age. Stay informed, stay ahead.