Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the preferred services for tracking individual website traffic. However, neither of these services is helpful when it comes to monitoring competitors.
Analyzing traffic from other websites helps us to reshape our content strategy and focus on content that is useful to them. However, in order to check the traffic of other websites, we need other third-party tools, among which we will present you with four of the best ones.
1. SEMRush
SEMRush is arguably a convenient tool for global digital marketers to conduct traffic analysis. It provides an overview of organic and paid search traffic, traffic distribution by country, and data by time period.
The Traffic Analytics tab gives you a breakdown of each unique visitor, how much time each user spends on average, and the percentage of those users bouncing back. You can also generate reports for your site’s top-level pages, the number of subdomains associated with it, and the geographic distribution of visitors around the world.
To speed up the simultaneous analysis of dozens of your competitors, SEMRush also allows you to analyze traffic for 100 domain names at a time. In the final report, you’ll find the same data you see in the domain overview tab when you analyze individual domains (traffic, unique visitors, pages per visitor, average visit times, and bounce rates).
The organic research section helps you analyze your competitors. You can see the categorization of the top organic keywords that drive the most traffic to your competitors, the intent behind ranking keywords, and where your site occupies across different SERP features.
In addition, SEMRush gives you an overview of the top-ranking pages of your competitors, which can help you change or plan your content strategy. As an SEO ranking booster, SEMRush can also be used to identify and eliminate toxic backlinks.
2. Similarweb
Similarweb gives you a brief overview of total visits, bounce rates, pages per visit, and the average amount of time your audience spends on the site being analyzed. If you have a premium plan, you can view the site’s traffic reports for the last three months or six months, or three years in the Traffic & Engagement section.
In addition, you can analyze the traffic segmentation of your website in different countries and regions. Subsequently, a dedicated audience interest section gives an overview of the main categories of the site’s rankings, a list of similar visited sites, and the top topics that the side handles.
In addition, unlike other traffic analysis tools that only show organic traffic data, Similarweb also allows you to see the total traffic distribution of different marketing channels, such as direct traffic, social traffic, referral traffic, and others. It can also filter out the top keywords, the top referrers who bring in traffic, and how much traffic is coming from social networking platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
The free version of Similarweb is suitable for basic traffic analysis, but if you want to do more technical analysis in a few years, choose its premium version. It’s important to note, though, that Similarweb doesn’t show traffic data for websites that have fewer than 50,000 visits per month.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is primarily used for backlink analysis. However, it can also be helpful when analyzing a website’s traffic. The Ahrefs website browser tab enables you to understand your website’s organic keywords and organic traffic by simply entering your website’s URL. Underneath it, you can see organic and paid traffic trends for months, years, and all times.
You can also see a list of organic keywords for website rankings, the number of each keyword and the traffic it brings, as well as the ranking of this keyword in the SERP. You can also filter out keywords based on their traffic and other metrics, such as their number, location, and so on. Similar to keywords, you can also track your competitors’ top-ranking pages and filter them out based on traffic.
Since Ahrefs only shows organic traffic data, it won’t help much if the traffic is mainly from other sources, such as social traffic.
4. Ubersuggest
Renowned digital marketer Neil Patel created Ubersuggest, a handy keyword, and traffic analysis tool. It also works the same way as the other tools on the list, showing you an overview of your monthly visitors as well as organic ranking keywords that bring in visitors. Each month’s traffic overview will last for almost a year.
In addition, in addition to letting you see the number of visits to each page on your or your competitor’s website, it will also show you the social traffic that those pages bring through Facebook and Pinterest. The tool also gives you an overview of all the keywords that drive organic traffic to these pages. In addition, segmenting the total traffic across different countries will help you determine which places are attracting the most traffic.
Ubersuggest is much cheaper than the other tools on the list that have expensive pricing plans. Not only does it offer inexpensive individual, business, and institutional plans, but it also has a lifetime subscription option. And, its lifetime subscription price is only equivalent to the monthly fee of the other tools on the list. Due to its low cost, Ubersuggest is the tool of choice for digital marketers.
The tools covered in the list are also helpful for keyword research, but if you find them unsatisfactory, you can try other free keyword research tools like Keywords Everywhere, Soovle, Google Trends, and many other tools to come up with good content ideas for your blog.
Conclusion
All of these tools help analyze your competitors’ traffic and plan your content strategy accordingly. However, it is important to note that these tools can only estimate traffic and may not be accurate. You can observe traffic from different sources and come to a conclusion that you are satisfied with.
In addition to these traffic analysis tools, there are several tools you can use to check live traffic on your website. Google Analytics, Live Traffic Feed, Hitsteps, and Watch Them Live can all be tried.
