How to Conduct a Comprehensive SWOT Analysis for SEO in 2021

Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat analysis, widely known as SWOT analysis, is crucial in SEO for identifying areas of priority. This includes identifying keywords, content, technical aspects of the site, linking, and competitive perspectives. A comprehensive SWOT analysis for Search Engine Optimization provides a detailed idea about the roadmap and the tasks that need to be systematically handled. 

1. Determining The SEO Strengths

There’s no denying that one of the primary factors that search engines take into account while determining your position on SERP is the relative strength and authority of a topical group of keywords. Identifying these keywords for which you already have some authority is an excellent way to start with. 

Here is how you can identify your existing strengths and leverage them to boost your organic traffic – 

• The first step that you should take is, to look for opportunities to link out from or to your best content. We believe that besides providing more comprehensive answers to your target user’s queries, it also leverages the authority of the strong piece.  
• The next thing that you should do is, perform in-depth keyword, technical, and link audits on all your existing web pages that are currently ranking between 5 and 20 to see where there is room for improvement. 
• Finally, determine whether or not the pages are ranking for the keywords that you want them to be. Though it may be a great idea to get your homepage ranked, this is not always sufficient as searchers will likely have to spend more time to find the answerers to their queries. 

Determine the pages that provide the best solution to your target audience and try to rank those pages currently held by the homepage. In the process, pay attention to the types and characteristics of your strongest content as it would provide you with an idea about the type of content you should create moving forward. 

2. Identifying Search Weaknesses

Let’s face it – we all have our weaknesses. In SEO, it’s essential to recognize and mend those so that you can save both your time and energy. 

• Keywords & Content

There are undoubtedly keywords that can do wonders for your business, but you must understand that it’s essential to let go of those that would require too much time and effort.

A quick review of the search engine results will provide you with a brief overview of the keywords that are out of your reach, based on the competition, reputation, or quality of the content. In such a scenario, try searching for more specific long-tail keywords or alternatives. You can also opt for paid promotions to generate visibility, traffic, and conversions. 

• Technical SEO

Another area of weakness that you need to rectify is to improve the quality of your content from a technical/structural, keyword relevance perspective. You can begin the process by identifying the areas of weakness by conducting a detailed website audit. You can use a wide range of tools for this. 

Google Lighthouse and Search Console are the best tools, especially for analyzing the core web vitals report and mobile-friendly test. Both tools will let you know the prioritized list of issues or errors that are there in your tags, links, code, keywords, and other mobile-friendly errors. 

The best strategy is to start fixing any issue on authority pages based on SERP. After you are done with this, you can try fixing the issues of other priority web pages based on data provided by web analytics tools, Google Analytics for example, or pages of strategic importance. 

• Backlinks 

Relevant backlinks obtained organically, widely referred to as inbound links, tell search engines about the authenticity of the page. All major search engines still consider inbound links as an important factor while ranking pages. Similar to keywords, it’s essential to conduct a competitor analysis for backlinks. There are several third-party tools available that will tell you the sources of the backlinks of your competitors. 

3. Leveraging the SEO Opportunities

Here’s how you can look at and leverage the SEO opportunities. 

• Keywords and Content 

Several keyword research tools will help you discover keyword and content opportunities. All these tools provide a prioritized list of high-value keywords based on estimated monthly search volumes, organic traffic, and difficulty to rank on SERP. 

The analysis must have the effort you would have to put in to obtain authority relative to the potential return on establishing organic visibility. 

• Backlinks 

While typically a manually intensive process, there is long-term value in seeking out these types of backlinks.

Despite being an intensive process, it can yield great results. There are many ways through which you can start looking for inbound links – 

• The search engine results for the keywords you want your site to rank for are the natural standing points as the websites found with the search term relevant to the search engines. You can try looking for non-competitive backlinking opportunities, such as directories, association listings, or articles and blogs that you may be able to contribute or comment on. 
• The search console links report is a time-tested strategy for backlink research as it gives a detailed insight into what Google recognizes as the domains linking to your content. You can also validate the quality and accuracy of the links that you already have and determine if there are any other opportunities through which you can obtain additional links from these domains. 
• You can use several third-party backlink tools to identify potential backlink sources and domains that have already linked to your competitors. There are tools that will even help you prioritize the potential of each source and help save a lot of your time. 

4. Knowing Your Threats in Search 

There are several factors that can threaten your organic authority. You should ensure to avoid those to overcome penalties. 

• Content

The most common content threat is duplicate content. This simply means republishing content on your website without citing proper attribution to the original source. To avoid getting penalized for writing the same content, you must include canonical tags referencing source content in the header tags of the pages having duplicate content. 

• Backlinks 

While relevant, high-quality backlinks help boost authority, irrelevant, low-quality links can do the exact opposite. This is particularly true for paid link schemes. 

The damage caused can be long-lasting and can even earn you strict penalties, leading to reduced organic traffic and visibility. Ensure to review your Google Search Console Links report regularly to review the domains linking to your site. 

• Competitors 

Even if you have strong organic visibility and traffic, there’s always a probability that a new competitor will come up. Search engines always prefer fresh and relevant content. That’s why you must monitor the SERP at periodic intervals and notice if there are any new competitors that may challenge your authority and position in due course of time. Needless to mention, the best way to combat this type of threat is to publish new content and update the existing ones. 

So, here was a detailed guide on how to conduct a SWOT analysis. Ensure to perform it quarterly for the best SEO results for your business. This way, you can track the SEO endeavors and the improvement in organic traffic and position on the result’s page.