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Configuring your competitors is a key step in the Intelligence Hub deployment. It determines which sites are compared, which pages are taken into account, and ensures that you stay within the limits set by your contract.

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Who configures the competitors?

In the current version, your CSM configures competitors directly in the Intelligence Hub platform and assists you in selecting them if needed.

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Choose the right competitors

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The principle

In SEO, your “real” competitors are the sites that occupy space on your strategic queries in Google. This can be:
  • a business competitor
  • a media outlet
  • a comparison site
  • a marketplace
  • a highly visible niche player
  • 2–3 SEO-comparable sites (same topics, formats, and maturity level)
  • 1–2 market leaders (benchmark)
  • 1–2 “SEO references” (media, comparison sites, marketplaces) that capture traffic on your topics

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Best practices

  • Do not limit yourself to direct competitors: the goal is to understand who captures traffic on your topics.
  • Prioritize clarity: better to have 5 well-chosen competitors than 10 “just to see.”

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To avoid

  • Choose only “direct” business competitors.
  • Add very large domains that consume your entire page-analysis limit. Your CSM is here to help you narrow the scope of your competitors.

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Define the scope (domain, subdomain, subfolder, exclusions)

When you submit a competitor, specifying the scope precisely is essential. It’s the best lever to keep the analysis relevant and compatible with your limits. It is therefore necessary to specify whether the analysis of your competitors in Intelligence Hub should cover a subfolder, a subdomain, or the entire domain.

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Root domain

  • Example: amazon.com
  • Use this when you want to analyze the entire site.

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Subdomain

  • Example : blog.exemple.com
  • Use this when only part of the site is of interest.

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Subfolder

  • Example: exemple.com/fr
  • To be used to target a specific area, often:
    • a language
    • a country
    • an editorial section

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Exclusions

To stay focused on priority themes and topics, we can define exclusions. For example, exclude areas of the site that are not relevant: other countries, product categories you do not sell, or low-value sections (service pages, etc.).

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Example (Leroy Merlin)

Configure leroymerlin.fr At the root-domain level, a very large volume of pages can be returned (categories, product pages, tips, stores, etc.). In many cases, it is better to narrow the scope, for example:
  • leroymerlin.fr/produits (if you want to focus on the e-commerce offering)
  • leroymerlin.fr/conseils-idees (if your analysis focuses on the editorial section)
  • or a subfolder closer to your scope (e.g. a product family)
The goal is not to analyze “as big as possible,” but to analyze what is most comparable and most useful.

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Information to provide to your CSM

For each competitor, you will need to specify:
  • The exact scope to analyze (domain, subdomain, subfolder, exclusions).
  • Useful details (languages, countries and/or sections to exclude).

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What to do if a competitor has too many pages?

If a competitor exceeds your contractual limit, you can:
  1. Refine the scope
  • Switch from the root domain to a subdomain or a subfolder.
  • Example: amazon.com → amazon.com/fr
  1. Replace the competitor
  • If the site is too far from your scope or consumes too many pages

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Going further

Once your competitors are configured, you can move on to the next step: Understanding the main screens.