Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Digital SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Competitor Research is a fantastic tool to understand how you stack up against your competition. Looking into competitor performance in terms of traffic, keyword rankings, top pages and content can help highlight any gaps your site is missing. You can also analyse competitors’ backlink profiles to spot any links from high-profile sites they might have obtained in your industry that are also feasible for you to obtain with some strong PR.
With the introduction of Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, as well as other AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Co-Pilot, businesses need to rank within these chatbots to capture more traffic, as the number of users engaging with LLMs continues to grow.
Using AEO Competitor Research to help you rank
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is fundamentally the same as SEO; the techniques are the same, creating clear, engaging, high-quality content that is reliable. The only difference is that, instead of trying to rank on search engines, users are now trying to rank in answer engines. Using competitor research can be really helpful for ranking in AEO, especially those who are now just starting to track their AI rankings for the first time (yes, I’m talking to you!). Seeing what keywords your competitors rank for, what content they are using to get mentioned and linked, can help you to identify any gaps in your content or how you might amend your existing content so it is more friendly to LLMs. We’ll go through some of the key metrics you can track with AEO competitor research to understand performance.
Key Metrics
AI Share of Voice (SOV): The percentage of mentions your brand receives compared to your competitors. You can see how you stack up to your competitors in real time in AI overviews, and this will give you an understanding of how well your site content has been created to be picked up by AI.
Citation Gap Analysis: Different keywords and queries that your competitors are appearing in answer engines for which you are not. By understanding gaps you are missing that competitors are not, you can draw up a content plan to alter existing weak content or create new content to strengthen your site.
Sentiment & Positioning: How AI describes both you and your competitors in results can let you know how it positions you and your competitors, and what other areas you can look to improve on.
Identify Cited Competitor Pages
After analysing different metrics, it is also important to look at your competitors top performing cited pages. This will help you to understand what type of content in your industry is doing well and pulling through into answer engines, and you will be able to create similar content to this.
By analysing these key metrics and tracking competitor content, you will put yourself in good standing to rank higher in different answer engines in future, as well as making sure you always stay competitive.
