Video Script:

With its quick content analysis, and keyword based filtering - SpyFu’s new Top Pages section is a game changer for content creators.

*intro*

Hi this is Patrick, today let’s learn how to use Top Pages to quickly
1. Find your competitor’s top content, so you can emulate it

2. Find content in your niche, for backlinking opportunities

3. How to audit and optimize the content structure on your own site

Let’s show you around!

Competitor’s Top Content
First, let’s use Top Pages to find the most popular content from your competitors.

Start by logging in to SpyFu.com

and then hover over the SEO Research tab.

In the dropdown menu click ‘Top Pages’





Now let’s type in the name of a competitor, or someone in your niche who you would like to emulate, or better yet, improve on!

You can either use a top level domain, like spyfu.com, or


Or a path like spyfu.com/blog.



Paths are incredibly helpful if you’re wanting to dig into a specific part of a site.
For example a blog, or product section  - we’ll cover that in just a moment

But for this example I’m going to use a top level domain, Houzz.com


They have a total of 388 thousand pages,

with their total clicks adding up to over 2 million.

SpyFu will list out those top pages,

prioritized by the amount of SEO clicks that they receive.

It makes sense that their homepage is taking the top spot,
but let’s go down a little bit and dig into some of their content.


Here’s the page title,

And a link to the URL here.
Feel free to click on the go to icon to open up the actual page in a new tab.


On the far right is the keyword dropdown,

where you can view the details of all of the keywords this page is ranking on.

Click on the small down arrow to expand this page’s keyword list:


Here are the ‘top keywords’ for that page, along with a bunch of handy metrics, about those keywords.

You can sort by any of these when you click on the column headers.

I usually stay with the default sort, “Clicks”
These are the keywords that are probably driving the most traffic to this piece of content.

Now that you have the top page for this competitor, and the top keywords that the page ranks on, you could easily adapt that content for your site, in order to help you rank on those same keywords.

But the real magic of top pages is that you can also filter by a keyword, and it will return all of the top pieces of content based around that keyword.

I’m going to type in “counter”



When you filter by keyword, you will find all of the content that they rank on for that particular keyword. I mean look at all of these articles just based around counters.




You can even mash a few of these together to create something new and improved for your site!
And possibly beat this competitor at their own game.


Let’s take this one step further before moving on.
I notice that Houzz has three main paths, at least when it comes to counters:
Products, Photos, and Discussions



Any one of these could be enlightening, based on what your business is.

In this example let’s say our business is prodructs, specifically based around counters.

So, I’m going to type Houzz.com/products into the search box.

This will help us dive into this site’s product section, and push aside the other results that are less useful to our goal.  



Here are the top pages on the product path of Houzz.com.

Since I’m still interested in ‘counters’, I’m going to enter that filter in again.



So many articles, just around the product of counters!
Meaning more content and keywords to be inspired by.
I could get even more specific for example filtering by ‘countertop’ or ‘granite counter’


Keep diggin in until you find the content and keywords that are best for your site and products.

Of course, there’s always another route you can take when looking at your competitors…


Backlink Opportunities
You can use Top Lists to find backlink opportunities from sites in your niche.

It’s the exact same process that we did before, but instead of emulating their top content, you reach out to them and request a backlink to your site.

If you have a similar article or product, something that relates to the content on their page, they might be happy to send some traffic your way.


This is also where those paths can really come in handy.
Houzz.com/discussion seems like it’s some kind of forum.



Some sites allow links to external pages inside of their forums. We generally recommend not to be spammy with this, because posting irrelevant and unhelpful links could get you flagged.

So let’s filter by ‘counter’, one more time, and see what people are asking about.


And here, in an instant, is our focused list.

Engaging in the discussions based around your specific product or service, has never been easier.

Content Audit

Now let’s talk about how to use Top Pages to improve your own site!


You can do this with a top level domain, like Houzz.com; the tips and strategies I’m about to lay out will be exactly the same.


But I thought it might be fun to show you exactly how we here at SpyFu have been using Top Pages for our own content.

So let’s go back, and type “SpyFu.com/blog” into the search box.



These are SpyFu’s top pieces of blog content.
I’m going to click on the dropdown of this top article and see what keywords it’s ranking on.



These are big keywords for us, and for our most important piece of content.

The first thing we want to do is make sure that the top keyword or keywords are in the title.
Also in the URL
And finally, I’m going to open the actual article and make sure it’s also in the H1.


Whew, we cleared that for this article.

Now I’m going to take that top keyword, and put it into the keyword filter.



These articles, especially the top and most relevant ones, should all have a link leading to this top page, and the top page should also have links back to them.

You can’t do this in Google Analytics.

They will give you a list of your pages, but identifying and filtering by keyword is where you can find these incredible cross linking opportunities.

This is also a great strategy when posting a brand new piece of content.

Right away, you know where to cross link them, based on the keyword that you’re trying to target.


With Top Pages, SpyFu set out to make the best content analysis tool in existence.

Use it to find top articles in your industry - to either improve on, or gain backlinks from.

Or, use it to audit your own content structure so it’s optimized for the google algorithm and a potential customer.


As always, thank you for watching.