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The simple answer for how you determine your direct competitors, both current and potential, is by running a competitive analysis. However, there is a ton of work and many different aspects to a competitive analysis that allows you to cast a wider net and discover competing brands that you didn't know were stealing your audience. Lucky for you, there are TONS of tools to help you identify, track, measure, and counter your competition in real time, with real results!
IDENTIFY YOUR COMPETITORS
The first of these actions is to find out who your competitors are. A good first practice is running an organic research report. You can do this by adding a Search Console account for your website, and then linking that Search Console account to your Google Ads account. Google offers Search Console as a free ad-on. This will allow you to see which domains are competing for organic traffic with your site based on keyword tags. This may indicate which keywords you are using in meta descriptions and titles that garner the best response from the audience.
Another area to investigate are backlink competitors, who share referring domains in their backlink profile with your site, and you can also determine where the gap in your content is, as you examine which links your competition is including that you aren't. You can also utilize advertising and PLA (Product List Ad) reports that will help you understand who is competing for the same ad spots as you are, and who is placing ads on your site. Lastly, you can look internally at your own industry, through the industry reporting tool, to find competitors who are using completely different strategies and gaining high amounts of traffic and high SEO rankings.
All of these serve as common points between your brand and competitors and help you understand how you can track your competition on a quarterly basis as you determine which parts of the competitive analysis to take into account as you change the contents of your site for best SEO results and ultimately differentiation within the marketplace!
Once you have identified your main competitors, an easy way to constantly keep an eye on their market position and growth is through a growth quadrant widget. This tool breaks your competition into four sectors: niche players, game changers, leaders, and established Players.
WHO NOT TO COMPETE WITH
One important thing to keep in mind is deciding who not to compete with, especially for small sites and projects. It may not be worth trying to outrank huge competition. Rather, focus on the competitors most like you, whose websites can contribute the most to your lost traffic.
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