How to Research your Competitors and Use the Insights in Long-form Writing?

A competitors analysis by Scalenut helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and find a gap in the market and use it to your benefit. 

Working of Competition Overview in Article Writer

The ‘Top Page Statistics’ section of the SEO Report gives you an overview of how your competition is performing. The table will give you an overall idea of planning the content piece in terms of various parameters such as word count, images, etc.

How to Read Scalenut Competition Overview Report?

The Scalenut top page statistics table includes three columns for ranking positions - 1 to 10, 1 to 20, and 1 to 30. The stats in each column are the average of all the ranking URLs and not individual scores.

For example, in the first column:

• The average word count of the first ten ranking articles is 1574.

• The average SEO Score is 52.

• The average number of H tags is 27.

• • The average number of images is 58.

What Are These SEO Statistics & How are They Useful?

The five statistics measured are - 

1. Word Count - Word count refers to the total number of words present in a content piece. Through the suggested word count, you, as a content planner, can get an approximate idea of how many words to include in your content to compete with the ranking pieces. Scalenut's SEO Hub suggests a range of ideal word count by calculating the average of the top 30 URLs.

2. SEO Score - You can take your content to the next level by optimizing it with our Scalenut SEO score. Our powerful AI technology assesses your content to determine how SEO friendly it is as compared to your competitors and then assign an SEO score to it. It also lists down the top and average score for that particular keyword for your reference. The SEO score is calculated on the basis of 9 parameters compared for your content and the top competitors which are as follows - 

• Key Terms

• Content Depth

• Keyword Density

• H1 Heading

• H2 - H6 heading

• Meta Tags

• Featured Snippet

• Links

• URL

The SEO score also takes into consideration your metadata. Along with that, the tool also shows you the pointers you can follow to improve on your SEO score and increase your chances of ranking higher on the search engine result page (SERP). 

3. H Tags - This denotes the number of heading tags used in the content piece by your competitors. It gives you an idea of how many headings you can include in your content piece.

4. Images - Images make the content interactive and easy to understand for the target audiences. Our AI-powered research gives you an idea of how many images your competitors are using in their content pieces. 

What are Metric Trends?

Metric trends are a graphical visualization of the content parameters for the top 30 ranking URLs. It allows you to easily analyze and observe a trend for parameters such as the SEO Score, word count, and heading tags individually in a graphical form.

How to Read the Metric Trends?

In the top right of the given graph, there is an option to check the metric trends for each statistic,SEO Score, word count, images, and H tags individually. In the graph, the horizontal axis represents the rank of the article, ranging from 1 to 30. The vertical axis represents the measure of each statistic. You can observe the trends for each parameter by clicking on it. 

For instance, if you want to see the common trend for readability in all the top competitors, you can click on the Readability option. Here, the vertical axis represents the readability score, while the horizontal axis represents the rank.

You can also click on a single bar to see the statistics for that particular URL, as shown below.

What is the Competitors Section?

The ‘Competitors’ section of our competitions overview displays a list of all 30 top-performing content pages for your primary keyword and the target location, arranged according to their ranks. You can also sort these pages as per their word count, SEO Score, number of images, and number of headers which are visible right next to the name and link of each URL. 

You can click on each URL if you want to visit it separately. However, the view option allows you to read the entire article without opening any new tabs. It also displays the URL’s top page statistics all in one place. It also offers a brief description of the article, as shown here.

You can also insert the URL you want to use as a reference to your content brief so that you can refer to it directly while creating your content without going repeatedly back and viewing the article in a new tab. All you have to do is click on the ‘Insert as a reference’ option right next to the URL.

How to Effectively Use Competitive Insights in Long-form Writing?

Competitor research is an important step before writing any article. The ‘Competition’ button is placed in the ‘Create Content’ section as well to make it convenient for you as a writer or a content planner to refer to the insights from the top 30 competitor pieces at any point in time. It also helps you identify the gaps your competitors are missing. 

Let us check out the steps to effectively use the ‘Research’ section to write your content piece with all the insights.

Step 1 - Go to the ‘Create Content’ section and click on the ‘Competition’ tab under the Research tab on the right panel.

Step 2 - You can see the detailed article outline in the box for each top-.ranking article by your competitors by just clicking on the ‘Expand’ option, as shown in the image. 

Further, if you want to read the article as well for a better understanding of the content, you can click on the ‘Read Article’ option at the end of an outline.

Step 3 - You can click on the ‘Paste Outline’ button to add the basic outline of that particular piece in the AI Editor to create your content according to that brief. The outline is pasted in the AI Editor, as shown in the image below.

Step 4 - You can also view the content covered in any particular heading of a competitor’s article by clicking the drop-down icon. The content can appear in the following way:

Step 5 - Confused about what to cover in a heading you liked from a competitor’s article? Click on the ‘robot’ icon button highlighted in the image below. Our powerful AI will then generate content on that particular heading.

Our competitor overview helps you enhance your business strategy by outdoing your competitors. You can identify areas to gain your customers' attention and gain a competitive edge. Scalenut’s SEO Tool gives you the data on your competitors’ articles with just a few clicks.