Contract manufacturers must stay ahead of the competition to thrive in a largely undifferentiated market. When facing intense rivalry from other companies offering similar services and capabilities, conducting a thorough competitor website analysis can help you understand what your competitors are (and aren’t) doing online.
By gaining intelligence on your competitors' digital presence, you get a clearer view of your market and uncover opportunities to meaningfully differentiate your brand, sharpen your competitive edge, and ultimately make smarter marketing decisions.
Competitor website analysis allows you to benchmark your digital presence against others in your space. Going beyond design and “cosmetics”, it’s a way to assess how your competition attracts, engages, and converts customers.
By conducting a strategic website audit of your top rivals, you can:
Ultimately, it helps you refine your own marketing efforts with data-backed decisions rather than assumptions.
There are several ways to analyse a competitor's website and many tools to help you do so. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
The first step in this process is identifying your direct and indirect competitors. If you know your industry well, you may be able to make a simple list. Your sales team can help here – they should know the companies you've won and lost business from and to.
But it is also worth doing a keyword search for services and solutions like yours and seeing who is ranking – this will tell you who your competitors are according to the search engines. The results may surprise you.
At the most superficial level, you can do a Google search on a keyword and see what turns up, both in organic search and sponsored ads.
Using a website competitor checker to analyse rivals' traffic will give you some idea of their standing in your industry. Looking at how dynamic individual pages are on their websites will also tell you which products buyers are interested in, what blog posts and subjects are proving popular and so on; all valuable insights.
Key questions to ask when looking at competitors’ traffic and visibility include:
Look at traffic trends over time to understand the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.
In the B2B environment, content marketing is crucial to gain new business, nurture prospects, and support existing customers. Getting an insight into what content your competitors are publishing, what topics they are having success with, and their content strategy is paramount to gaining an edge.
Review competitors’ content for quality, keyword targeting, and topical relevance. Consider the formats they’re using (blogs, whitepapers, videos, case studies), how often they’re publishing, and the topics they cover; are they answering buyers' questions?
At the same time, consider if their messaging and value proposition are clearly communicated in their content, whether they lead with benefits or features, and how well their website copy resonates with your shared target market.
Undertaking a thorough SEO competitive analysis is one of the most valuable tasks you can carry out. It gives you critical data insight into the tactics that work in your industry, helping to answer key questions like:
While great for gauging competitors' appearance in search engine results, SEO data also provides valuable clues for discovering keyword gaps and opportunities in your own content strategy.
Furthermore, as the SEO landscape shifts in the age of AI-generated overviews and AI-based search, SEO metrics on competitors’ presence in AI results can help you spot Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) opportunities, ensuring your business shows up where audiences are looking.
When scrutinising a competitor's website, it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your shared target audience. Pay attention to the flow of information on and between pages, how your competitors build trust, and what they want users to do next.
Consider whether their site is intuitive and easy to navigate for someone looking for solutions like theirs (and yours!), if there are clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that make getting in contact seamless, and if the site is mobile-optimised and fast-loading?
Depending on your experience of their user journey, you might gain some insights into where your own could be improved.
There is a wide range of powerful tools that can help you analyse them. To go beyond basic information and garner useful insights, you might need a suite of different tools and techniques to turn your analysis from guesswork into a structured, data-led process.
Some of the best competitor analysis tools include:
Once you’ve thoroughly reviewed every competitor's website and gone through the findings with a fine-tooth comb, it’s time to make the data you’ve gathered actionable.
Start by updating your keyword strategy to include the search terms your competitors are ranking for but you’re not. Also, consider refining your website’s messaging based on what’s resonating in the market; do any of those priority keywords need to be placed front and centre on key pages?
Then, hone your content strategy by filling any noticeable gaps or covering topics more comprehensively; maybe it’s time to experiment with different content formats or channels. Also, highlight your unique positioning across content to stand out from what others are saying.
From a technical point of view, benchmark your UX and website speed to ensure your site performs optimally, and review mobile optimisations at the same time.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and to fall into traps when undertaking a competitor website analysis project. Here are the common pitfalls to keep in mind:
In the digital world where competition is just a click away, leveraging competitor insights can make all the difference in your success as a contract manufacturer. By understanding your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and strategies, you can refine your marketing approach, capitalise on opportunities, and mitigate potential threats.
At Equinet, we help brands turn insights into action, crafting data-led digital experiences and growth-driven design approaches that outperform the competition. If you’d like help benchmarking your site and building a strategy for growth, get in touch.
Editor's note: This blog post was originally published in January 2022 and has been updated in June 2025 for relevance and accuracy.