So, you've got an idea to finally beat your search competitors and get their traffic, users and conversions. Sounds good, but are you going to step into this hard SEO battle blind-folded?

Don't risk your time and effort — tap into the most important competitor's data with SEO PowerSuite software.

We have prepared a step-by-step competition research guide to help you get started on your way to the rankings you deserve.

First of all, if you are starting SEO from scratch, please don't go after such competitors as Sony or McDonalds, even if they pop up often for your keywords — these are the gorilla brands you'll find too hard to beat.

By the way, you might want to reconsider your keywords, as seeing the top brands in the search results all the time can mean you've picked the keywords that are too generic. You can learn more about choosing keywords from our exclusive guide.

Basically, to find your online competitors, you need to Google your top keywords and then copy-paste the found URLs to a spreadsheet. Simple, but takes some manual work.

Easy so far? We promise it won't get much more complicated — let's go further!

Now, your primary list of competitors is ready and we can start the validation process. If you put the data into a spreadsheet, create new columns:

• Domain age
• Domain PageRank
• Page PageRank
• Alexa rank
• Domain's backlinks
• Page's backlinks

And fill in the stats. To collect the data, you'll need to use multiple online tools, such as Alexa, SEOQuake toolbar, and others. After you've finished, take a look at your table and compare the stats with your site. If all of the competitors highly exceed your site in the mentioned factors, mark the keyword as "hard." Depending on the results of the comparison, you can get "hard," "moderate," and "easy" groups of keywords and URLs.

Now we'll need to get a little bit more technical and check what competitors are doing in terms of onpage and onsite optimization.

Get back to the list of the ranking URLs, open them in any browser and look through their source code. Things to look at include:

• Titles and meta descriptions
• H1 and H2 tags
• Image ALT attributes
• Link anchors
• Nofollow tags

If you can spot keywords in these main on-page elements, it's very likely your competitors have tried to make their sites search-engine-friendly. Don't look at keyword usage only — analyze how catchy the titles and headings are — do they inspire users to click and convert?

Once you've analyzed your competitor's on-page optimization, update your spreadsheet with this data. You can also add notes on what can be done better for your future on-page steps.

Now we've reached the most intriguing part — analyzing your competitors' link building strategy. As you know backlinks are a very effective tool in SEO, but with all the recent Google Penguin updates, webmasters have to be more careful with link acquisition — a couple of "wrong" links and you site can fall down drastically in a single day.

So, the links have been collected and analyzed — what should you look at in the first place?

General overview:

• Check how many backlinks a competitor has
• Check on how many unique domains the backlinks are placed
• Identify the pages that receive most backlinks
• Analyze the types of anchor text used by your competitor
• Check the percentage of Nofollow links
• Review the Link Value data for backlinks

Evaluating the types of links:

• See on which blogs your competitor's posting
• Check if they are doing guest posting
• Identify the forums your competitor's participating in
• Spot if they sponsor any events or conferences
• Check if there are possibly paid links

Evaluating link building techniques:

• See what types of content a competitor creates to get links — how-to guides, infographics, photos, videos, podcasts, etc.
• Check if they invite guest bloggers to write on their blog
• See if they hold contests
• Check do they get product reviews

Okay, now you know how your competitors have received their precious backlinks. All you need is to:

• Analyze how costly and time-consuming their link building techniques are
• Avoid any link opportunities that can backfire your rankings
• Replicate the links that will bring you only positive link juice.

Social media signals may not directly influence site's rankings, but they can drive lots of traffic to a site, so it is better not to skip this check.

First of all, see if your competitors are doing any social:

Search for their company name on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Yahoo Answers, etc.

If your competitors are not too active across social media platforms, it can mean

• They haven't tried it yet and may start doing in the future
• They've tried it, but it didn't prove to be effective for their business goals.

But if your competitors have well-managed informative social media accounts, they may be getting some profit from them — it can be traffic or brand recognition.

In addition to SEO, your competitors can be using PPC to drive traffic — especially for those "hard-ranking" keywords. So, why not to analyze this segment and get some more useful stats? You should be looking at:

Ad copy: check how your competitor tries to gain more clicks — pay attention to titles, keywords, figures, etc.

Landing page copy: look through the content and note its structure, focus on conversion paragraphs, unique selling points, CTA buttons and sign-up forms. Check what kind of visuals are used and what for.

Landing page source code: scan for codes and see what your competition is up to. For instance, you can see if your competitor has been using retargeting to convert more users:

Tracking your competition is a never-ending task. After completing the initial research steps, you'll need to keep an eye on the competitors' progress:

• Scan if their rankings decreased or increased
• Check the new backlinks they are getting
• See if their sites are growing (and how fast)
• Check if the major Google updates have impact on their websites

Even if you see that you can't beat your online competition now, don't get upset. You will still learn a lot from them and it will help you get the desired rankings and traffic for in the longer run.