3 SEO Trends to Pay Attention to in 2022
Search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving, and the start of 2022 has shown no signs that the pace is slowing.
Knowing your competition seems like a simple task, right? After all, it would make sense that Pepsi knows that Coca-Cola's Dasani is a competitor to its Aquafina brand and Sony knows that Microsoft's Xbox competes with their PlayStation. However, the range of a company's competitors is typically much broader and more complex than that. In many cases, a company is more likely to be hurt by emerging competitors, new technologies, or changes in consumer behavior than they are by in-market competitors.
To fully understand your brand's competition, you must examine it from both an industry point-of-view and a market point-of-view. Within an industry, competitors are selling a similar product or service to the same audience. Pretty straightforward. However, looking at competitors through the lens of the overall market helps to identify competitors that may satisfy the same customer need – regardless of industry.
For example, let say your car breaks down and you're in the market for a new car. If so, the competitive set may be Ford, Chevy, BMW, etc. However, if that consumer lives and works in a city, the competitive set may include, public transportation, Lyft, Uber, bike shares, or other transportation alternatives that can best solve that consumer's unique requirement.
Taking a market-wide approach when looking at your competitive set reveals a broader set of actual and potential competitors. A great way to identify these market competitors is to build customer journey maps which reveal direct and indirect threats to each step in the buyer's process when researching, obtaining, and ultimately using your product or service.
A useful framework for understanding the variety of competitive threats along your audiences’ consumer journey is Michael Porter's Five Forces.
Porter's framework is based on the concept that there are five key forces that determine the competitive intensity of a given market. Obtaining a better understanding of where your brand exists within this framework will help you identify strengths, improve weaknesses, and avoid positioning and marketing mistakes.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving, and the start of 2022 has shown no signs that the pace is slowing.
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