As an online marketplace, we need to understand not just how our own website is performing, but where other marketplaces and retailers are picking up demand that we could potentially compete for.

We used SE Ranking's Competitor Research as part of that process. I particularly liked being able to move from a broad competitor view into the actual search terms and rankings behind it.

We would start by selecting a few relevant competitors and looking at their keyword profiles and ranking performance. The keyword gap analysis was useful for spotting searches where competitors were visible but Yumbles had little or no presence. From there, we could look more closely at whether those terms were relevant to the products and categories we were trying to grow.

The competitor traffic estimates also gave us a useful directional sense of which competitors had a larger organic footprint. I wouldn't treat the estimates as our actual competitor traffic, but they were helpful when deciding which competitors and keyword areas deserved a closer look.

The ranking comparison then helped us validate the opportunities. Instead of just seeing a list of keywords, we could compare where different sites were positioned and use that information when thinking about our own content and category pages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The research tools cover the areas we need, but I'd like more flexibility for smaller e-commerce teams to organize competitors by product category and customer intent. A simpler way to save specific competitor comparisons would also make recurring analysis quicker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.