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How to Analyse Competitor Google Ads using Semrush

Whether you are running an online Ecommerce store or you are a local business trying to get leads from Google, you will have to run an online ad campaign to kickstart sales or lead generation at some point of time. And, this will compel you to analyse competitor Google ads also. You cannot always give excuses about depending on the organic ranking, because it takes time. There is no harm in optimising your website for organic visibility but if you are looking to bring some action in a quick manner, it is always advised to run mild paid ad campaigns.

Many people end up spending huge amounts of money in Google Ads just because they start without any guidance. But, if you will do some research before initial research using specialized tools, there are high chances that you will spend your marketing budget in the right direction.

One of such most widely used tools to analyse Competitor Google Ads is Semrush.

SEMrush

Although the tool gives you the power to do deeper research of the competitors, keywords and traffic data, in this article we have focused mainly on its ability to help you do some observation of your competitors activity in the paid marketing space. This whole power of detection comes at a price for sure. They have got different marketing plans. But, without worrying about it, lets first try to understand the reason to purchase this tool for yourself.

Step 1: Choose your competitors.

We have covered this trick in another blog here.

Step 2: Utilizing Advertising Research Feature.

Now, once you know your competitors, open Semrush tool and go to Advertising Research Option. Enter the URL of your competitor.

Analyse Competitor Google Ads

As soon as you will the data for your competitor will load up, Semrush tool will show you an overview of the ad campaigns run by your competitor.

Step 3: Choose Region for competitors Ads analysis.

For an International brand, choose the Specific Country where you wish to analyse the PPC ads of your competitor. For instance, this brand is not running any ad campaigns in the United Kingdom. But, they are heavily investing in the United States region.

Analyse Competitor Google Ads

Step 4: Choose Device Type

The data can be different for both desktop and mobile paid traffic campaigns.

Step 5: Utilise filter by keyword feature and Advance Filters

You can always use the advanced filters to analyse specific information about your adwords competitors. For example, here we can filter the data to see competitors paid marketing efforts only for the “french cuff shirts”.

Step 6: Analyse Competitor’s Paid Keywords, Paid Traffic and Paid Traffic Cost data.

Now, lets understand the first set of data of your competitor’s advertising activities.

Keywords: The number of keywords that are bringing users to your competitors website via Google’s paid search results.

Traffic: The Number of users expected to visit your competitors website in the following month on the condition that the average amount of monthly paid traffic stays relatively the same.

Traffic Cost: The estimated average monthly cost to rank for the listed keywords in Google Adwords.

Step 7: Analyse Competitor’s Paid Search Trends

This graph allows you to measure the changes in paid search traffic, keywords and Traffic cost.

Step 8: Analyse Competitors Paid Search Positions.

This table shows the positions that your competitor has achieved in Google’s paid search results and the keywords for which it is getting ranked. (A domain can get multiple positions with the same keyword)

Feel free to sort this data according to different parameters. For instance, in the above analysis, we have sorted it according to the Traffic parameter.

Step 9: Check Position Changes for the Paid Keywords of your competitor

This bar allows you to monitor changes in the number of new and lost paid keywords over time.

Step 10 : Find paid Competition of your competitor

Using this graph, you can also see the strength and weaknesses of your competitor’s presence in paid search results.

Step 11: Check Competitor’s Ad Copies.

This report displays unique ad copies of your competitor in Google Paid results.

Step 12: Check Competitor’s Ad History

This report shows how long an ad has been used by your competitor over the last 12 months and its positions in paid results.

Step 13: Spying Product Listing Ads of your competitor

If you are running an Ecommerce store, then this data can be very helpful to you. As you must know, just like paid ads have got ranking in the google search results, in the similar way, paid product listing ads also have ranking in the google shopping platform.

In the positions tab, you can check our three things,

Keywords: The number of keywords for which your competitor’s PLA ads appeared in paid search results.

Ads: The number of product listing ads of your competitor.

PLA Trend: This graph allows you to monitor how many positions your competitor has earned and how many product listing ads it ran over a specific period of time.

PLA Positions: It shows the positions that your competitor’s ads are getting in Google’s paid search results and keywords for which PLAs appear in search results.

Step 14: Check PLA Competitors

It shows the list of domains that your competitor is competing against in Google’s paid search results with product listing ads.

Step 15: Check Product listing Ad Copies of your Competitor

Step 16: Spying Display Advertisements of your Competitor

Using Semrush, you can check the total number of display ads of your competitor, the number of publishers of your competitors ads, the number of times competitor’s ads, Display Ads copies of your competitor in different formats ( Image, , HTML, Text), Top Publishing Categories, Display ads countries,

Conclusion

Using these methods, you can do your competitors PPC ads spying very easily. The best thing about this method is that you can know how much your competitors are spending on your paid traffic. This will allow you to focus on the right keywords and save your hard earned money. Rather than testing and trying, it is always suggested to make use of these automated tools.