The Ultimate Guide to Writing Competitor Comparison Landing Pages

Your competitors are actively seeking opportunities to outperform your business. 

One of the ways they may try to do it is by creating a landing page on their website that compares your platform with theirs.

They'll make sure to point out all the features they have that you don’t and all the benefits that customers will get by choosing them over you. 

While some of your competitors may highlight one or more of your platform’s plus points to appear impartial, don’t forget their end-goal is to attract the same audience you are targeting.

To avoid this, it’s a good idea to create competitor comparison landing pages yourself.

But for these pages to work, they need to be well-researched and must seem impartial.

This guide offers a deep dive into competitor landing pages. I’ll also show you how to build powerful competitor landing pages for your business.

But first, let’s see, what according to me, a competitor landing page is.

What is a competitor comparison landing page?

A competitor landing page is a specific type of web page companies create and host on their websites to compare their software/business with one or more of their competitors. These web pages usually include information like feature comparisons, pricing breakdowns, and more.

The primary aim of a competitor landing page is to provide a detailed yet concise comparison of their software solution with one or more of their competitors. Some companies also create a competitor landing page where they pitch two of their competitors against one another. 

With these pages, their intention is (usually) to highlight their competitors’ shortcomings and highlight how their product or service serves as the superior choice. 

Here’s an example of a great competitor comparison landing page hosted by Asana, where they pitch their project management software against Monday.com:

Competitor comparison landing pages target keywords like “x vs y” or “x alternatives.” These keywords are often searched by potential customers who are in the consideration phase of their buying journey.

So whenever a potential customer searches {“your brand name” vs “competitor 1”}, they might come across the dedicated competitor comparison landing page targeting the keyword. 

There are different types of competitor comparison landing pages:

1. Direct comparison landing pages: these pages directly compare your product/service with one of your competitors’. 
2. Direct multiple competitor comparison pages: these pages directly compare your product/service with two or more of your competitors’. 
3. Indirect comparison landing pages: these pages compare two or more of your competitors’ product/service against one another, and then introduce your product as an alternative. 

Competitor comparison landing pages are very different from competitor comparison blog posts. 

The main difference lies in the intent and structure. 

Competitor comparison blog posts are usually more detailed and informative. Whereas, comparison landing pages are more visually-appealing, present information in the form of bullet points and are considered as a sales tool aimed at conversions.

Key features of a powerful competitor comparison landing page 

Some key features of a powerful comparison page are:

• Clear, concise, and engaging headlines and subheadlines: the headlines and subheadlines should clearly communicate the purpose of the landing page and different sections while also being concise. Make sure everything flows naturally and keeps your readers engaged. 
• Helpful content: keep in mind why the user landed on a competitor comparison landing page. They want to know whether one product is better than the other(s) or how the features vary. They’re at the consideration stage and need an impartial comparison, so it’s very important to write helpful content that offers a genuine side-by-side comparison. 
• Visual aids: use charts, tables, and infographics to visually represent the differences and advantages. At the bare minimum, include a visually appealing, side-by-side comparison table that highlights how two or more software vary in terms of features, integration, support, and other relevant factors. 
• Impartial comparison: your target audience will see right through a biased comparison. And while you may want to shout out loud that your product/service is the best, you need to make these landing pages seem impartial. So, make sure to naturally talk about and highlight your product’s strengths rather than weaknesses. Also, if possible, highlight specific use cases or scenarios in which your customers should choose your product/service over your competitors’ vs when they should choose the competitors' product/service.
• Pricing comparison: pricing drives purchasing decisions. So, it’s essential to highlight your product/service’s pricing vs your competitors’. In case your product/service’s pricing is higher than your competitors', emphasize the added value or unique benefits users receive when they choose your offering.
• Social proof: adding social proof like customer testimonials, case studies, trust badges, and displaying notable companies that use your product/service can increase your chances of conversion. Deian Isac, Head of Agency Success at Service Provider Pro believes social proof is one of the most important elements of a competitor landing page. He states, “Social proof is very important, especially if your tool is not that well-known and competing against major brands with a much larger marketing budget. Prospects want to be sure that they are not opting for a tool that might not exist a few months from now.”

Now that I’ve highlighted the key features, let’s learn a few common mistakes companies make while creating competitor landing pages.

The most common competitor comparison landing page mistakes you should avoid at all costs

I’ve seen many companies make several mistakes while implementing competitor landing pages. In fact, I have also seen many of these pages being unpublished later due to backlash from competitors, customers, and C-level executives because of their unhelpful nature, misrepresentation, and lack of alignment with the company's core values and messaging. 

Such blunders can tarnish a brand's reputation, strain relationships, and even lead to legal issues.

Here are a few mistakes you should avoid:

1. Focusing solely on your offering: I understand that you want to sell your product/service. But if your potential customers landed on your comparison page, it’s because they genuinely want to read a side-by-side comparison rather than a sales pitch about your product. Overemphasizing your product without giving due credit to your competitor's features can seem biased and might turn potential customers away.

2. Lack of collaboration with other internal team members: You have a reputation to uphold. Taking shots at your competitors can tarnish or damage this reputation. Hence, while building competitor landing pages, it’s important to collaborate with internal team members. A lack of collaboration between the marketing department, product team, and C-level executives can lead to inconsistencies in messaging and even potential misinformation. This is a big reason why many competitor comparison landing page projects are put on hold or are unpublished later. 

3. Using duplicate content: Using the same content across different web pages or copying content from other sources and directly publishing it to your website can damage your SEO. And it can also undermine the credibility of your competitor comparison landing page. This is especially true if you use Programmatic SEO to create these pages. You can avoid this problem by using an AI-writing assistant like Wordtune to write original content for these pages based on your unique insights and research.

4. Not writing helpful content: Don’t create these pages just for the sake of creating them. Most marketing teams don’t realize what’s at stake. By putting poorly created content in front of their potential customers, they’re making a bad impression; ultimately decreasing their chances of converting them. It’s important to realize that most people reading these pages are in the consideration stage of their buying journey and are very serious. They don’t want to read BS content. They're looking for genuine insights, honest comparisons, and clear reasons to choose one product over another. Publishing shallow, generic, or biased content can not only diminish the user's trust in your brand but also reflect poorly on your product's quality and credibility.

Aside from this, there are several other mistakes you should avoid, like bad-mouthing your competitors, using your competitors’ branding elements, not implementing clear and straightforward call-to-action and more.

That being said, let me show you how to build impactful competitor comparison landing pages. 

How to create effective competitor comparison landing pages

Follow this step-by-step guide to create competitor comparison landing pages:

1. Prepare a list of your top competitors

Don’t pick competitors randomly. 

Instead, it’s ideal to research and prepare a list of your top competitors: both direct and indirect. 

Otherwise, you risk creating competitor landing pages nobody searches for or wants to read.

For example: I work closely with the content marketing team at Gigasheet, a big data cloud spreadsheet platform. Their competitors include MS-Excel, Google Sheets, Zoho Sheet, Rows.com, etc. 

Now, if I were to build competitor comparison landing pages for Gigasheet and picked lesser-known platforms like Rows.com or Equals, I’d risk creating pages that might not have search demand or interest.

The point is, we don’t know if people are searching for terms like “Rows.com alternative” or “Equals Competitors.” 

Instead, a good idea here is to prioritize creating comparison landing pages for well-known spreadsheet platforms like Excel and Google Sheets. However, the downside of targeting these platforms is that they might be incredibly competitive in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Making it hard for your pages to rank.

How to find your competitors?

• Use search engines: Just use a search engine like Google to identify the top competitors in your industry. Upon searching the term “best spreadsheet platforms,” here are the results I came across:

• Use Wordtune: Just ask our AI-powered writing assistant who the top competitors in your space are, and you’ll get an immediate answer.

It’s also a good idea to find competitors based on specific use cases. 

For example, Gigasheet is a big data cloud spreadsheet platform. I asked Wordtune’s AI-writing assistant which spreadsheet platforms support large datasets.

You can also perform a Google search to identify competitors based on specific features.

2. Conduct keyword research

This is a very important step in the process. Once you’ve prepared a list of your competitors, the next step is to discover what terms potential customers are searching for on search engines. And other information like how many people are searching for these terms, how difficult it is to rank for them, what the cost per click for these terms is (if you want to run paid ads), etc.

What’s the best way to perform keywords research?

Use SEO platforms like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz. 

To give you a practical demonstration, I’ll show you how to perform keyword research on Semrush. 

One of Gigasheet’s top competitors is Excel. 

Just type in “excel” inside Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool.

Select your preferred country (for example, US) and click “Search.”

The tool will instantly provide you with a lot of related keyword ideas. 

But these are not competitor keywords. 

To find competitor keywords, let’s use the “include words” filter. 

I added the words “alternative,” “versus,” “vs,” “competitors” to filter our list.

And here are the results:

For each keyword, you’ll see its monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, global volume, and cost-per-click (CPC).

Similarly, you can perform an analysis for other competitors. For example, “google sheets,” “zoho sheet,” “openoffice calc.”

Aside from using SEO tools, I highly recommend using Google’s Search Console. The Google Search Console can help you discover less popular competitor keywords based on Google’s actual data. 

SEO tools typically show keywords that have a noticeable search volume. Since Excel and Google Sheets are highly popular, many of the keywords associated with them in SEO tools likely have significant search volume. 

But that doesn’t mean people are not searching for terms associated with less popular spreadsheet platforms like Rows.com. 

Google Search Console can help you discover keywords associated with lesser-known platforms and more information about them like clicks and impressions.

Just type in a prompt like this:

And Wordtune will instantly present a list of relevant results in front of you:

Again, it’s important to manually evaluate these keywords and add the right ones to your comparison landing pages.

3. Build your game plan

Once you’ve identified competitor keywords to target, it’s time to plan your strategy. This involves:

1. Prioritizing keywords: analyze keywords with a good/decent search volume and low keyword difficulty. Once you’ve got a good list of promising keywords to get started, create tasks in your project management tool. Take into consideration the resources at your disposal and manpower available, and plan these tasks accordingly.
2. Collaborating with internal stakeholders: creating competitor landing pages is tough. You need to position your product/service as a better solution, while also making sure you don’t fall into any legal trouble, provide accurate and unbiased information, and don’t damage your brand reputation. Hence, it’s important to get everyone onboard and collaborate with internal stakeholders like C-level executives, the product development team, people from other departments with deep product knowledge, and the legal team.
3. Conduct thorough research: creating helpful content is the key. To write such content, it’s a must to conduct thorough research about your own product/service and your competitors’. If possible, try out their product/service over a span of time to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Talk with someone from your product team or relevant people in your company to see if they have this information already available and how your product/service stands out. Also, talk with your competitors’ past customers who made the switch to your product/service. Lastly, scour review sites like G2 or Capterra to gather user feedback on your competitors’ product/service.

Once you’ve done the research, the next step is to work on the design and the structure of your landing pages. This includes outlining different sections like the header, why choose us, use-case scenario, feature comparison, testimonials, and more.

After the design and structure are finalized, it’s time to move on to the next step, i.e....

4. Create content for your competitor comparison pages

The next step is to start creating content for your competitor landing pages. This includes: landing page copy and graphics/illustration/visuals.

While creating the landing page copy, follow the best copywriting practices to not only catch your visitor’s attention but also keep them hooked and ultimately convert. This includes headlines, sub-headlines, feature comparison table, pricing comparison table, benefits section, FAQs, etc.

Try to keep the information as concise yet valuable as possible. 

Also, work with the graphic designer to create stunning visuals for your landing page. To keep your readers engaged. 

If possible, capture screenshots and add annotations to these screenshots to show how your product/service can serve a specific use case better than your competitors’.

Lastly, gather testimonials and add trust badges to add to these pages to boost credibility. 

Alongside this content, also create on-page SEO content like title tags, meta-descriptions, and alt-texts for these pages. For better search engine rankings. 

Once everything is in place, it’s time to publish these pages. Make sure you focus on other elements like mobile friendliness, responsiveness, load speed, and the overall user experience.

5 competitor comparison landing page examples for inspiration

To give you some inspiration, I’ve put together this list of five well-crafted competitor landing pages:

1. Twist Slack Alternative: by Twist

2. Drift vs. Intercom: by Drift

3. Close vs. HubSpot: by Close

4. Butter vs. Zoom: by Butter

4. HelpScout vs. Intercom: by HelpScout

Conclusion 

When executed right, competitor comparison pages can genuinely help you pull more customers towards your business. 

One of the most important aspects of these pages is writing genuinely helpful content that seems impartial, is informative, and provides readers with everything they need to make a decision. While also positioning your product/service as the superior option.

To create such content, you can use our AI-powered writing assistant. Wordtune makes it a breeze to write high-quality and engaging content (with enough context provided) and editing it to the point that it’s ready for publishing.

But don’t take my word for it.

Take Wordtune out for a free test ride.