Extracting Topic Maps From Your Competition

Use The Power Of ChatGPT To Analyse Your Competition

Today I want to show you a method to analyse your competitions website and get ChatGPT to create a topic map for you based on their data.

For this article, I am assuming you have a couple of main players in your niche who are doing well and ranking for a decent number of niche-specific keywords.

The first thing we are going to need to grab is the site’s sitemap.

Unfortunately, this is not always as easy as it seems. Some webmaster do their best to conceal this because it contains a lot of useful information for their competitors. (cough cough).

If you come up against problems here then leave a comment and I will write an article on how to get tricky to find sitemaps.

The first thing we are going to do is install a Chrome extension that will read the sitemap.xml file and parse this into human-readable data which can be put into a spreadsheet.

Go here and install the extension.

Then all you need to do is navigate to the homepage of the site and click the extension and you should see something like this…

Then you can click on the post sitemap (the top one) and it will bring up a list of all of the posts on the site and you can choose to export as a csv (top right).

Once you have the downloaded CSV file you are going to need to load it into Google sheets or Excel and copy the list of URLs

Once you have done that, you need to head on over to a free site that will go and visit each of the URLs and extract the Page Title, Meta Description, and Keywords.

Here is the link

Save off the CSV file and load it up again into Google Sheets or Excel and remove the URL, Meta Description, and Keywords column as this is too much data for ChatGPT to work with. Save off the file again.

Now for the clever bit. Go to ChatGPT4+, upload the file and ask it for the following.

I want you to analyse the CSV file I have uploaded which contains a Page Title. Then I want you to build a list of Semantically Optimized topics I can create content around.

To do this you will need to 1. Extract key phrases and terms from the titles. 2. Categorize these terms into broader themes or topics. 3. Organizing these themes into a hierarchical structurex that reflects their semantic relationships.

Here is the output I got from analysing survivalmom.com

The uploaded CSV file contains two columns: "Title" and "Meta Keywords." The "Meta Keywords" column appears to have missing data (NaN), so our focus will be on the "Title" column for extracting key phrases and terms, categorizing them into broader themes or topics, and organizing these themes into a hierarchical structure that reflects their semantic relationships.

Let's proceed with the analysis:

1. Extract Key Phrases and Terms from the Titles:

   • Identify significant words or phrases from the page titles.

   • Use natural language processing techniques to extract these terms.

2. Categorize these Terms into Broader Themes or Topics:

   • Group similar terms and phrases under common themes.

   • Identify overarching topics that these themes belong to.

3. Organize these Themes into a Hierarchical Structure:

   • Arrange the themes and topics in a structure that shows their semantic relationships.

   • This could involve creating a tree-like structure where broader topics are at the top, and more specific themes and terms branch off from them.

I will start by extracting the key phrases and terms from the titles. ​​

Based on the analysis of the page titles, here are the top key phrases and terms:

1. Survival

2. Mom

3. Survival Mom

4. Food

5. Storage

6. Food Storage

7. Make

8. Emergency

9. Prepper

10. Tips

11. Ways

12. Kids

13. Plan

14. Review

15. 10

16. Prepping

17. Things

18. Kit

19. Guide

20. Skills

Now, let's categorize these terms into broader themes or topics and then organize these themes into a hierarchical structure:

Broader Themes or Topics:

1. Survival Skills and Tips: Includes terms like 'Survival', 'Tips', 'Skills', 'Prepping', 'Plan'.

2. Family and Parenting: Encompasses terms like 'Mom', 'Kids'.

3. Food and Storage: Involves 'Food', 'Storage', 'Food Storage'.

4. Emergency Preparedness: Incorporates 'Emergency', 'Prepper', 'Kit'.

Hierarchical Structure:

• Survival and Preparedness

  • Survival Skills and Tips

    • Prepping

    • Skills

    • Plan

  • Family and Parenting

    • Mom

    • Kids

  • Food and Storage

    • Food

    • Storage

  • Emergency Preparedness

    • Emergency

    • Prepper

    • Kit

This structure organizes the key themes into a hierarchy, starting with a general focus on survival and preparedness, and branching into more specific areas of interest. Each sub-topic could be further explored to create content that is both relevant and semantically optimized. ​

I then asked it

Can you create a list of sub-topics for each key theme

Here is what I got…

Certainly! Based on the key themes identified earlier, we can create a list of subtopics for each. These subtopics will help in generating more focused content ideas within each theme.

1. Survival Skills and Tips

• Prepping: Preparing for emergencies, stockpiling essentials, survival kits.

• Survival Skills: Outdoor survival techniques, basic first aid, navigation skills.

• Tips and Tricks: Quick survival hacks, everyday survival tips, resource management.

• Planning: Emergency planning, disaster readiness, contingency planning.

2. Family and Parenting

• Parental Guidance: Teaching survival skills to kids, family safety plans.

• Family Prepping: Family-oriented prepping strategies, involving children in prepping.

• Emergency Scenarios: Handling emergencies with kids, child-friendly survival kits.

• Education and Training: Educational resources for survival, training sessions for families.

3. Food and Storage

• Food Preservation: Methods of preserving food, long-term food storage techniques.

• Nutritional Planning: Nutritional needs in survival scenarios, meal planning.

• Food Preparation: Cooking in survival situations, easy and nutritious recipes.

• Storage Solutions: Efficient storage techniques, organizing food supplies.

4. Emergency Preparedness

• Emergency Kits: Building personalized emergency kits, essential items for different scenarios.

• Prepper Lifestyle: Adopting a prepper lifestyle, long-term sustainability.

• Disaster Response: Responding to natural disasters, emergency procedures.

• Skills Development: Essential skills for emergency situations, specialized training.

Each of these subtopics provides a more detailed exploration of the key themes, offering diverse angles for content creation. They address specific interests and needs within the broader topic, allowing for targeted and informative content.

There you go, basic extraction of your competitions topic clusters which is a good place to start researching your own.