To pay or not to pay? That is the question. Paid Search and PPC complement Organic Search and SEO. The goal is to drive as much high-potential traffic as possible to your site.
Optimizing your search strategy is key to driving traffic to your site.
To do so, you can start by analyzing your competitors' top paid keywords, search ads, and destination URLs to see what's working for them. Here, you'll discover new tactics that can help reduce your cost per acquisition, maximize your conversion rates, and win clicks from your competition.
In this guide, we'll show you how to use Similarweb to:
Similar Story: Using the data and insights:
True Botanicals is an organic skincare company that brings botany to beauty.
Let's see what the competition is up to in 2024 in the time of self-care.
Meet True Botanicals
Gauge the paid performance across your competitive landscape
See how much competitors are investing in Paid Search, how much traffic they're driving, and how much of that traffic is really engaging with their sites.
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Under Website Research in the Website Analysis tool, input the primary website. Then add up to 4 competitors, and navigate to the Marketing Channels page.
On the Marketing Channels page, focus on the percentage of traffic from Paid Search for your competitive set.
How does it compare against other channels? Who is investing the most relative to total incoming traffic? Pro Tip: Use the # and % toggle to get two distinct views of the traffic distribution.
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Next, navigate to the Paid Search Overview page.
See the Total Paid Search Traffic per website and a preview of Top Paid Keywords.
Scroll down to the Paid Search Traffic & Engagement module. View PPC Spend across your competitive set during your analysis timeframe.
Which brand is spending the most on PPC? How has their spend changed over time? Think through what could be driving these changes and save your hypotheses for testing later.
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Look closely at the engagement data.
Check out the Visit Duration, Pages Per Visit, and Bounce Rate tabs to assess a competitor's PPC campaign. Use these metrics as a proxy for conversion -- the more time a visitor spends on a site, the more likely they are to take action. They're also helpful to understand how engaged an audience is.
Similar Story: True Botanicals Metrics that Matter:
- In Channels Overview, we see Paid Search is a decent share of total online traffic with top competitor Juice Beauty investing the most in paid search relative to their total visit numbers. Over 15% of their traffic in the time frame is from paid search.
- Paid Search Overview shows 100% Pure is winning the most traffic from paid search overall, but with a 12% decrease in traffic from the last month.
True Botanicals may want to investigate 100% Pure’s ad copy and identify opportunities to optimize their own Ad strategy.
See paid search insights for True Botanicals or start your own analysis here.
Words, words, words. Which terms are more than just that, and actually drive high-potential traffic to sites?
We’ll show you how to identify trending, high-volume, and low CPC paid keyword opportunities for your business.
- From the Paid Overview page, click on See all paid keywords within the Top paid keywords module.
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This will take you to the Keywords report, which exists under Search Intelligence > Website Explorer. It will be filtered for Paid Traffic.
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Scroll down to view the Search Terms table in order of clicks (but you can sort by other metrics by clicking the columns).
Note the Competitive Traffic Share and CPC for each term to discover which brand owns that term and how much they're paying for it.
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Select the Non-Branded Keywords filter up top to view objective terms that indicate product or service interest. (Note that you might need to click the include/exclude filter to remove branded terms that might've slipped through the non-branded filter.) This will allow you to understand market trends.
Scout out any top terms with low CPC that you're not owning -- that's an opportunity.
Pro Tip: Hover over the table with Search Terms and a "G" will appear. Click on it to go directly to the Google SERP for that keyword. Who shows up and how?
Use the filters at the top of the page to experiment.
- Try filtering by CPC for targeted keyword research.
- Select Last 28 Days in the date range picker and sort the results by the Change column to see the recently trending terms.
- Identify long-tail keyword opportunities by checking the Question Queries box.
Pro Tip: Want to look deeper at a highly competitive keyword?
Click on the term and you'll arrive on the SERP Players page for an analysis of the sites that receive traffic for the keyword.
Similar Story: True Botanicals Metrics that Matter:
Top-level metrics show us, across the selected competitive set of True Botanicals, 100 Percent Pure, Juice Beauty, and Herbivore Botanicals that njust under 2,000 paid keywords drove traffic. Of those, True Botanicals has 51.34%.
Search Terms with the highest traffic volume are mostly branded. Filtering to Non-branded keywords reveals the beauty-related terms, like "bakuchiol" and "bakuchiol serum" that True Botanicals could bid against.
Competitive Traffic Share shows Herbivore Botanicals owns the majority share of multiple "bakuchiol" terms. These have relatively low CPC (below $2) and may be ripe for bidding.
See paid search insights for True Botanicals or start your own analysis here.
Nailing the content and copy of your Search ads directly impacts their success. Headlines hook the reader and descriptions show why they should care.
See which ads nab the top position and what you can learn from them.
- Navigate to the Search Ads page within the Search Intelligence > Website Explorer section. Use the filter to select a competitor whose ads you will analyze in the table.
- View the Ads and their associated data, including Landing Page, Keywords, and Position.
- Sort by Position to view top ads in order of appearance on Google SERP.
| What are your competitor's top ads? |
| How do they describe their products? |
| Is there a particular product that competes with yours? |
Compare and contrast across competitors. Look for any similarities in language, product selection, and offers. Learn from your competitors' PPC strategies and think through opportunities to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Similar Story: True Botanicals Taking a look at a competitor like 100% Pure, their Ad Copy shows a variety of clear headlines that speak to the core of their brand (like "All-Natural" Beauty Products).
Descriptions include more product qualifiers like "non-toxic" and "vegan." Most Search Ads are generic vs. for a specific product.
True Botanicals could use this insight to launch more targeted, product-specific ads that focus on their unique approach to organic, plant-based skincare.
See paid search insights for True Botanicals or start your own analysis here.
So far we've been talking about your core brand competitors. You know the deal. But what about the online PPC competitors you may not even know about?
Whether they're an eCommerce site, an influencer, or a publisher site, find out who's elbowing you out for the same keywords in the digital landscape. And elbow them right back.
- Navigate to the Search Competitors report within the same section: Search Intelligence > Website Explorer. Starting with your website, view a graph of Total Traffic vs. Search Overlap for competitive domains. Note which sites are in the upper right quadrant (more visits and more overlap).
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Scroll down and view the table of domains in order of Search Overlap Score.
What industry are they in? How much Paid Traffic are they driving and what is their percentage of Shared Keywords? Scan the percentage of Shared Keywords in particular to view websites that have over 10% overlap.
Tip
Hover over a Domain of interest and a Knowledge Panel Icon will appear. Click on it and a panel will pop up on the right-hand side of the Paid Competitors page. View top-level metrics like Monthly Visits and Marketing Channels. You can even visit the website from there or start a new Website Analysis for the site.
Try checking the Rising Competitors and New Competitors boxes above the graph to find up-and-coming domains that are fighting for the same keywords.
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Next, try viewing Paid Competitor data for the sites in your competitive set. Are there any areas of overlap between your paid competitors and theirs?
Tip
Use the Website Type filter to view Transactional Websites and Content Publishing sites. Scout out Search Overlap with publishers and find new opportunities for affiliate partnerships. For more on affiliates, see Increase Referral Traffic with Affiliate Partnerships.
Who's fighting True Botanicals for paid clicks? In the last three months ending November 2023, on desktop there's Comis, but on mobile web there's Luminance Skincare.
True Botanicals can zero in on newly discovered Paid search competitors by clicking on the Knowledge Panel icon to view traffic and engagement stats. They can also analyze exactly which keywords they're fighting over by going back to Search Keywords.
See paid search insights for True Botanicals or start your own search analysis here.
You've just done all of that work getting a PPC analysis in order. No need to do it all over again. Save time and automate these insights by creating a Dashboard with Similarweb.
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