Analyzing the website traffic allows digital marketers to focus their efforts on topics that generate good results and stop wasting resources on content that isn't getting visitors. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the go-to services to track traffic to a personal website. However, neither of these services is helpful when it comes to spying on a competitor.
Analyzing other websites' traffic helps us reshape our content strategy and focus on what works for them. Nevertheless, to check the traffic of other websites, we'll need other third-party tools, out of which we'll cover the four best.
1. SEMRush
SEMRush can be a handy tool for traffic analysis for digital marketers worldwide. It provides an overview of organic and paid search traffic, the distribution of traffic by country, and the data by time period (1M, 6M, 1Y, 2Y, and all-time).
The traffic analytics tab gives you a breakdown of unique visitors per month, how much time each user spends on average, and what percentage of those users bounce back. You can also generate reports for the website's top pages, the number of subdomains associated with it, and the geographic distribution of visitors across the globe.
To speed up analyzing your dozens of competitors simultaneously, SEMRush also allows you to bulk analyze the traffic of 100 domains at a time. In the final report, you will find the same data (visits, unique visitors, page per visitor, average visit duration, and bounce rate) that you see in the domain overview tab when analyzing an individual domain.
The organic research section helps you in competitor analysis. You can view a breakdown of the top organic keywords bringing in the most traffic to your competitor, the intent behind the ranking keywords, and how many positions the website holds in different SERP features such as featured snippets, image packs, and more.
Moreover, 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 useful for identifying and disavowing toxic backlinks.
If you are looking for a helpful traffic analysis tool for your business, give SEMRush a try. For pricing information, visit SEMRush's pricing page.
2. Similarweb
Similarweb provides you with a brief overview of total visits, bounce rate, pages per visit, and average time spent by the audience on the analyzed website. You can view the website's traffic report for the last three or six months or three years in the traffic and engagement section if you have the premium plan.
Additionally, you can analyze the traffic breakdown of the website across different countries and locations. Following that, a dedicated audience interest section gives an overview of the major categories this website ranks for, a list of similar visited websites, and top topics the website deals with.
In addition, unlike other traffic analysis tools showing organic traffic data only, Similarweb also allows you to see the distribution of total traffic across different marketing channels, such as direct traffic, social traffic, referrals, and others. It also filters out top-ranking keywords, top referrals bringing in the traffic, and how much traffic is coming from social networking platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
Similarweb's free version is suitable for basic traffic analysis, but if you want to go for more technical analysis for a couple of years, go for its premium version. However, note that Similarweb does not show traffic data for sites getting less than 50,000 visits per month.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is mainly used for backlink analysis. However, it can also be helpful when analyzing a website's traffic. The Ahrefs site explorer tab gives you an overview of your website's organic keywords and organic traffic by simply entering its URL. Below it, you can see the organic and paid traffic trends for one month, one year, and all time.
You can also see the list of organic keywords the website is ranking for, the volume of each keyword and how much traffic it is bringing in, and where this keyword ranks in SERPs. You can also filter out keywords based on their traffic and other metrics, such as their volume, position, etc. Similar to keywords, you can also track the top-ranking pages of your competitors and filter them out based on traffic.
Using the content gap tool, you can determine which pages or keywords your competitors are getting traffic from, but your website isn't ranking. The goal is to fill in those gaps to have a good chance of ranking for them.
Since Ahrefs only displays organic traffic data, it won't help much if the traffic is mainly from other sources, such as social traffic. Check out the Ahrefs pricing page for more details about its paid plans.
4. Ubersuggest
A well-known digital marketer, Neil Patel, created Ubersuggest, which is a handy keyword and traffic analysis tool. It also works the same as the other tools in the list, showing you an overview of monthly visitors and organic ranking keywords that brought them. The traffic overview for individual months is available for almost a year.
Moreover, in addition to allowing you to see how many visits each page on your or your competitor's website is getting, it will show you the social traffic those pages are bringing by way of Facebook and Pinterest. The tool also gives you a general overview of all the keywords bringing organic traffic to those pages. In addition, a breakdown of the total traffic for different countries will help you determine which locations are attracting the most traffic.
Ubersuggest is much more affordable than other tools in a list with expensive pricing plans. Despite offering cheap individual, business, and agency plans, it also provides a lifetime subscription option. Even its lifetime subscription price is comparable to the monthly charges for other tools. Because of its low cost, Ubersuggest is a go-to tool for digital marketers. For more information, visit the Ubersuggest pricing page.
The tools covered in the list can be helpful in keyword research as well, but if you don't find them satisfactory, you can try other free keyword research tools such as Keywords Everywhere, Soovle, Google Trends, and many others to come up with great content ideas for your blog.
Analyze Your Competitor's Traffic With Ease
The tools mentioned in the list prove helpful in analyzing your competitor's traffic and planning your content strategy accordingly. Keep in mind that the tools can only estimate the traffic, which may not be accurate. Therefore, it's better to look at traffic from various sources and then average it out.
In addition to these traffic analysis tools, you can also check the live traffic on your website with several tools. Google Analytics, Live Traffic Feed, Hitsteps, and Watch Them Live are a few of them you should try.