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Did you know that 94 percent of businesses are including competitive intelligence in their plans?
Gaining a competitive advantage is a high priority for both up-and-coming and established businesses because threats can come at any time and competition is brutal, whatever market you’re in.
Competitor monitoring, or tracking your competitors in simpler terms, is a must if you want to keep up with the times and react quickly to changes in your industry.
Tools for monitoring competitors are not limited to pen, paper, and spreadsheets anymore. There are endless options for every business need, whether you want to track keyword strategy, websites, audience sentiment, or PPC campaigns.
Here are the best competitor monitoring tools on the market and why they’re worth a try.
Top 5 Competitor Monitoring Tools to Use
Panoramata
Panoramata simplifies competitor tracking and analysis by feeding all your competitor’s updates on a personalized dashboard.
Follow your competitors’ profiles on Panoramata and you’ll receive real-time notifications on your dashboard about their marketing activity, such as:
- emails they send to their list
- ads they publish on multiple ad networks
- edits they make to their website and landing pages
- SMS messages they broadcast to their subscribers
Don’t have time to read through all those updates? You can also read AI-generated summaries of the latest updates you need to know so you get the gist of what your followed brands have been doing recently in less than a minute.
If you have dozens of brands to keep track of, you can also create separate dashboards for each group of brands.
Gaining a competitive advantage is a high priority for both up-and-coming and established businesses because threats can come at any time and competition is brutal, whatever market you’re in.
You can have personalized dashboards for an industry, country, language, or any other use case you can think of. That way, you keep your data organized and extract insights quickly.
Panoramata gives you a bird’s eye view of your competitor’s activity on key channels so you can make informed decisions and respond quickly. With funnel and landing page tracking, you’ll also discover how your competitors are improving their conversion rates so you know what practices to replicate.
Benchmarks and insights compare email and ad performance, domain rankings, and traffic data so you can see how well you’re performing in comparison to your competitors.
Panoramata goes beyond competitor analysis and will even help you source creative inspiration thanks to curated collections of marketing content for seasons and key events like Black Friday, back to school, and Christmas.
Take Panoramata out for a spin (it’s free) today to see how it works.
Similarweb
Similarweb is a go-to for brands who want to understand where their website traffic is coming from and understand their audiences’ profiles and behavior.
It also monitors other brands’ website traffic sources, which means you can see if your competitors get most of their traffic from organic search, paid ads, social media, or referrals.
In turn, you can extrapolate and see which channels they are putting their resources into and which are working most effectively for them.
Since you can also peek at your competitors’ audience demographics and behaviors, their search patterns will tell you how competitors are engaging with their potential customers and what content is luring those customers into their sites.
Similarweb is useful for keyword research, too, since it identifies what external websites and keywords are directing traffic to your competitor’s website. However, this tool also comes with downsides.
First, you are limited to competitors with an established digital presence or high web traffic. While you can still track these types of competitors, your analysis will not be as accurate or meaningful.
Secondly, Similarweb does not offer real-time tracking for things like ads or SEO-related activity–basically anything short-term or immediate. It also doesn’t allow you to see all collected data in one graph (i.e. historically) because it reviews metrics weekly.
Still, it excels in tracking web traffic and will do wonders for keyword and audience research.
Semrush
Next, we have an oldie but goodie: Semrush. It’s a competitor monitoring tool that’s just as or possibly even more popular than Similarweb.
Its reputation is well-earned because it’s an expansive collection of tools for tracking SEO, social media, ads, content, and market research.
Marketers use Semrush in different ways. No use case is the same. Some will value content more than others while some will use it primarily for SEO.
On the SEO front, it has tools for tracking competitor rankings and web page optimizations. It can also tell you:
- High-impact keywords that your business isn’t ranking for
- The keywords your competitors are ranking for and if you too can rank for those keywords
- How to fix your web pages
- What your competitors can fix on their web pages technically
- Link-building opportunities
That’s just scratching the surface because Semrush also has a content toolkit, an advertising suite, and a social media management platform.
And therein lies the problem: if you only want one aspect of its full functionality, Semrush will be too much for you.
If you can’t make extensive use of it or if you feel its features are too advanced for the money you’re paying, you will be better off with a specialized tool with a cost-effective price.
SpyFu
SpyFu is all about SEO and has a pocket-friendly price tag that will appeal to people interested only in competitor SEO monitoring.
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It will check what keywords your competitors are ranking for and the ads they are running.
SpyFu can also monitor keywords long-term, conduct backlink analysis, and perform SEO audits so you can optimize your content and increase your rankings and search traffic.
With this tool, you can get insights and features for your SEO strategy. These are just a few of the data it can source:
- High-value keywords
- Backlink sources
- Keyword profitability and difficulty
- Clickthrough rate forecast
- Search volume by season
- Sources of web traffic to competitor sites, including long tail keywords
- PPC strategies
- Keyword performance data
- Custom reports
Take note that SpyFu only gives estimates for PPC ads since its insights are not sourced from real-time data. This can be a disadvantage if you’re focusing on ads. It also doesn’t cover as many keywords as other SEO tools because it has a smaller keyword database.
SpyFu’s scope is narrower compared to Semrush and Panoramata but if its features tick all your boxes, then it might be the only competitor tool you need.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a competitor content monitoring tool that will assist you in identifying competitors and discovering their best content and why those are performing well.
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Don’t know who your competitors are? A search on BuzzSumo using keywords related to your product or industry will surface your potential rivals.
BuzzSumo can scan your competitor’s domain names and pinpoint their most-shared post across all social networks so you can replicate their content or dissect why those posts are performing well so you can improve your content strategy.
This tactic is great for when you don’t know what to fill your content calendar with. But that’s not all BuzzSumo is good for.
You can also type in a keyword and generate a list of popular topics you can write or post about related to the keyword. It’s essentially a content discovery tool.
As an example of this in action, say you want to create content related to a keyword. On BuzzSumo, you can type in the keyword and BuzzSumo will produce a list of high ranking content that you will be competing against.
It will show the engagement metrics (likes and shares) for each content piece, its backlink profile, and the publications and influencers sharing it.
BuzzSumo can also serve as a content gap analyzer, so you can publish better content than your competitors and see what’s working (and not working) for them.
Try out this tool if you want to level up your content and are willing to skip other features like SEO rankings and PPC strategies.
Competitor Monitoring with Panoramata’s Dashboard
If you want just one tool for all your competitor monitoring needs, Panoramata is your answer. Its comprehensive dashboard is a one-stop shop for up-to-date competitor information, complete with metrics and AI-generated summaries to save you time.
Plus, you can grab ideas for your content calendar with its email and ad search engine and curated swipe files.
And if you’re interested in benchmarking your brand to your competitors, you can instantly create benchmarks in a few clicks and start tracking ASAP.
Fire yourself from the role of competitor detective and try out Panoramata today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best tools for competitor monitoring?
Top tools for competitor monitoring include Panoramata, BuzzSumo, Semrush, Similarweb, and Spyfu. Each tool offers unique features to track and analyze competitors’ marketing strategies, helping you stay ahead in your industry.
How does Panoramata help with competitor tracking?
Panoramata is an all-in-one platform that tracks competitors’ marketing strategies, including ads, content, and email campaigns. It provides valuable insights to benchmark your performance and identify growth opportunities.
Why is competitor monitoring important for businesses?
Competitor monitoring helps businesses understand market trends, refine their strategies, and identify gaps to exploit. It’s essential for staying competitive and creating more effective marketing campaigns.
