Guide
Website competitor analysis, page by page
A competitor's website shows its priorities in public: which pages it builds, which offers it leads with, and how much care goes into the basics. This checklist covers what to look at, where the evidence lives, and what a gap actually means.
1. Measure the inventory before the design
Start with /robots.txt. It usually declares one or more sitemaps. The sitemap is the closest thing to a table of contents the company publishes: how many URLs it lists, and what kinds. Group the paths by pattern (product, location, blog, help, comparison, integration pages) and count each group.
An inventory gap is often the largest gap. If a rival lists hundreds of location or integration pages and you list five, the difference in search coverage has little to do with copywriting. If there is no sitemap, record that as unknown rather than zero. A site can be large without declaring one.
2. Open the templates that make money
Pick the pages a buyer would visit before paying: the homepage, pricing, a product or service page, signup or booking, and about and contact. For each, note:
- The title tag and meta description, and whether they are unique across templates.
- Exactly one H1, and a heading order that does not skip levels.
- A canonical tag that points to the page itself, not to the homepage.
- Open Graph and Twitter card tags, so shared links render with a title and image.
- Structured data: Organization on the home page, Product or SoftwareApplication with offers on pricing, FAQPage where a real FAQ exists, BreadcrumbList on deep pages.
These are cheap fixes with a clear before and after. If the competitor has them and you do not, they belong near the top of the list.
3. Read the pricing page literally
Write down what the page actually states: the trial or free-plan wording, the prices, the billing periods, and what sits behind "contact sales". Do not infer a price that is not printed. Compare how quickly each page answers "what does it cost and can I try it?" A competitor that answers in the first screen is removing a step you may still be making buyers take.
4. Check speed on the same terms
Run Google PageSpeed Insights on each homepage using the same strategy (mobile is the usual default) and on the same day. Lab scores move between runs, so treat a difference of a few points as noise and a difference of twenty as a signal. Core Web Vitals field data only exists for sites with enough real traffic. If it is missing, say so rather than substituting lab numbers.
5. Look for trust and conversion signals
- Trust: testimonials, review widgets, links to review profiles, security or compliance badges, a real address and phone, privacy and terms pages.
- Conversion: the calls to action on the homepage, the offer types (free plan, trial, demo, quote, booking), the forms and how many fields they ask for, and whether live chat is present.
- Tracking: analytics, tag managers, ad pixels, and A/B testing tools in the page code. An ad pixel suggests paid acquisition; confirm it in the public ad libraries.
6. Do a quick accessibility pass
Missing image alt text, unlabeled form inputs, links with no accessible name, a missing lang attribute, and skipped heading levels are easy to detect and easy to fix. They affect real users and help search engines understand the page.
7. Turn it into fixes
For each gap, write the action, the evidence, and the effort. "Add a pricing FAQ with FAQPage markup (competitor has it on /pricing; ours has no FAQ)" is a fix. "Improve SEO" is not. Rank by impact relative to effort and ship the cheap, visible ones first.
Bizzik automates this checklist: it reads robots.txt and sitemaps, audits up to 14 key pages per site, runs PageSpeed, and lists the gaps with a source on every number. For the search side, see SEO competitor analysis. To compare two specific sites, see how to compare websites.