A SWOT analysis is a framework that evaluates a business\u2019 strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The acronym “SWOT” stands for these four factors. Performing a SWOT analysis can help you make better business decisions.<\/p>\n
The analysis typically involves creating a matrix with the four categories:<\/p>\n
In this post, you\u2019ll learn how to do a SWOT analysis. We\u2019ll include examples and also give you a\u00a0free SWOT analysis template<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get to it.<\/p>\n A SWOT analysis is a valuable framework that can help you evaluate your business from different angles. And discover new ways to grow and improve.<\/p>\n By doing a SWOT analysis, you can:<\/p>\n Which means:<\/p>\n A SWOT analysis can help you make smarter decisions, plan better, and reach your goals faster.<\/p>\n Tip<\/strong>: Use\u00a0Market Explorer<\/a>\u00a0to benchmark yourself against your competitors by comparing traffic acquisition, market share, and audience data.<\/em><\/p>\n Gain Insight Into Your Industry<\/p>\n with the Market Explorer Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A SWOT analysis evaluates a business or project based on four key factors that can be divided into two categories: internal and external.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how you might think about filling out a SWOT chart based on these two categories:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at each component.<\/p>\n Internal factors are the aspects of your business within your control. They include resources, capabilities, skills, assets, and competitive advantages.<\/p>\n And they can be divided further into two categories: strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n Strengths are the positive attributes that give you an advantage over competitors. They\u2019re the things that you do well, you\u2019re proud of, and help you stand out.<\/p>\n Some examples of strengths are:<\/p>\n Weaknesses are your business\u2019s negative attributes that limit your performance or hinder your growth. They\u2019re the things you need to improve, fix, or avoid.<\/p>\n Some examples of weaknesses are:<\/p>\n External factors are the aspects of your business that are outside of your control. These can include trends, events, economic changes, and the competitive landscape.<\/p>\n And they can also be divided into two categories: opportunities and threats.<\/p>\n Opportunities are favorable situations or conditions you can leverage to achieve your business goals. In other words, things you can use to your advantage or benefit from.<\/p>\n Some SWOT analysis opportunities examples are:<\/p>\n Threats are unfavorable situations or conditions that can harm your business. They\u2019re risks or challenges you need to recognize.<\/p>\n Some examples of threats are:<\/p>\n Now that you know about the different components, let\u2019s take a look at exactly how to do a SWOT analysis.<\/p>\n Benchmark Yourself Against Competitors<\/p>\n with the Market Explorer Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s a\u00a0SWOT analysis template<\/a>\u00a0you can use to follow along.<\/p>\n Why put your results into a SWOT analysis template like this one?<\/p>\n Because it\u2019s easy to read and keeps things organized.<\/p>\n A SWOT analysis is an assessment of your business\u2019s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s also a tool to strategically advance your business.<\/p>\n And that means going beyond a simple list of facts.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to do a SWOT analysis the right way:<\/p>\n Having a goal will help you choose what\u2019s most relevant for your analysis. Otherwise, you might end up with a ton of basic information and no idea of how to apply it to your business.<\/p>\n So, set a goal.<\/p>\n It could be any major decision or change for your business:<\/p>\n What if you can\u2019t think of a goal?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a handy formula:<\/p>\n (Fill in the blanks.)<\/p>\n My business needs __________. We might meet that need by doing these things:<\/p>\n You can pick more than one goal from that list. Or just the most important one. It\u2019s up to you.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at an example:<\/p>\n My business needs\u00a0more capital to continue operating<\/strong>. We might be able to meet that need by doing these things:<\/em><\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you choose the first item\u2014raising prices.<\/p>\n The goal of your SWOT analysis could be something like this:<\/p>\n To find out whether raising prices will result in enough working capital for the business to continue operating.<\/strong><\/p>\n Again, this is just one example.<\/p>\n Whatever your goal is, keep it top of mind while you complete your SWOT analysis.<\/p>\n For\u00a0the next four steps<\/strong>, we\u2019ll walk through how to do each part of the SWOT analysis itself.<\/p>\n The \u201cS\u201d in SWOT stands for strengths. In this step, you\u2019ll list your business\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n Get started by asking some questions:<\/p>\n What should you include?<\/p>\n At this stage, every idea is a good one. So don\u2019t leave anything out.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll cover how to narrow down your list in the last step.<\/p>\n Remember:<\/p>\n Strengths are internal factors. That means you have control over them. And you can build on them.<\/p>\n Here are some examples of strengths you might list in a SWOT analysis:<\/p>\n If you need help thinking of strengths, use a competitive intelligence toolkit like\u00a0Semrush .Trends<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll help you see how you stack up against your competitors in terms of traffic, audience demographics, market share, and much more.<\/p>\n For example, you could use\u00a0Traffic Analytics<\/a>\u00a0and see that organic traffic is way up compared to similar sites.<\/p>\n Or that your bounce rate is way lower than others. Either way, it can reveal lots of things.<\/p>\n Just enter up to five competitor domains and choose your market country or region.<\/p>\n Then, compare the results to your own traffic data.<\/p>\n Analyze Any Company\u2019s Online Performance<\/p>\n with the Traffic Analytics Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Your business has weaknesses. And that\u2019s OK\u2014your goal is to make improvements.<\/p>\n Start by writing down your weaknesses. Be honest with yourself. And be thorough.<\/p>\n Here are some questions that can help:<\/p>\n Listing your weaknesses can be a bummer. But there\u2019s good news:<\/p>\n Like strengths, weaknesses are internal factors. That means you have control over them and can use them to improve.<\/p>\n Here are some examples of weaknesses you might include in a SWOT analysis:<\/p>\n Just as\u00a0Semrush\u2019s .Trends<\/a>\u00a0can help you find strengths, it can also help find weaknesses.<\/p>\n Use these tools wisely as you conduct your\u00a0competitive SEO analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Opportunities are the \u201cO\u201d in SWOT.<\/p>\n Here are some questions you can think through to uncover opportunities:<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to confuse \u201copportunities\u201d with \u201cstrengths.\u201d<\/p>\n To avoid that, keep this in mind:<\/p>\n Strengths are\u00a0internal<\/strong>\u00a0factors. They exist inside your business.<\/p>\n Opportunities are\u00a0external<\/strong>\u00a0factors. They happen outside of your business.<\/p>\n You build on strengths. You use opportunities to your advantage.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a subtle but important distinction.<\/p>\n Here are some examples of opportunities you might list in a SWOT analysis:<\/p>\n Tip<\/strong>: A great way to find opportunities is to use the\u00a0Keyword Gap<\/a>\u00a0tool. It\u2019ll help find keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you aren\u2019t. Each of those keywords is an opportunity for you to bring in more traffic<\/em>.<\/p>\n Find Keyword Opportunities<\/p>\n with the Keyword Gap Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Threats are the \u201cT\u201d in SWOT. And they\u2019re the opposite of opportunities.<\/p>\n They\u2019re external factors that could put your business at risk.<\/p>\n Here are some questions that will help you identify threats:<\/p>\n Threats evolve over time based on factors outside of your control. But you can plan for them.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re paying close attention to your industry, you probably know the major threats you face. Write them down in\u00a0your template<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here are some examples of threats you might list in a SWOT analysis:<\/p>\n You can use\u00a0Market Explorer<\/a>\u00a0in the .Trends toolkit to spot emerging competitors and trends.<\/p>\n Enter your domain to find competitors in your market.<\/p>\n Then scroll down to the growth quadrant to see which domains are rising in your industry. You can view competitors by behavior, traffic, and growth metrics.<\/p>\n Learn About Emerging Competitors<\/p>\n with the Market Explorer Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At this point, you should have a decent number of items in each of your four SWOT categories. Now, you have to narrow them down.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no set maximum number of items for each category. But keep this in mind:<\/p>\n You don\u2019t want to overwhelm yourself.<\/p>\n Stick to the most important items. Stay focused so you can make impactful changes.<\/p>\n Struggling to narrow your lists? Try the impact effort matrix.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a tool to help you decide which actions could have the greatest impact with the least effort.<\/p>\n And it looks like this:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n There\u2019s rarely a wrong time to do a SWOT analysis.<\/p>\n Bottom line:<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for clarity on a business move you\u2019re considering, that\u2019s a great time to do one.<\/p>\n Here are some other perfect times to do a SWOT analysis:<\/p>\n Now that we’ve covered how to perform a SWOT analysis, let’s put those steps to the test with some examples.<\/p>\n Imagine you\u2019re running a marketing agency that does\u00a0SEO<\/a>, social media, and content marketing.<\/p>\n You\u2019re thinking about investing a lot of time and resources into your website\u2019s blog. You know that great, search engine-optimized blog content could earn you more inbound leads over time.<\/p>\n But you\u2019re not sure whether it\u2019s the right move.<\/p>\n So, you do a SWOT analysis to help you decide. The goal is to answer this question:<\/p>\n Should we invest more time and resources into our website content to increase our inbound leads?<\/em><\/p>\n Start with your strengths. Here are the fictional marketing agency\u2019s strengths:<\/p>\n Add your weaknesses:<\/p>\n Next up is opportunities:<\/p>\n Finally, list the threats your agency faces:<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. Of course, now you actually have to do something with this information.<\/p>\n More specifically:<\/p>\n You need to see how your website content is actually performing.<\/p>\n You can use Google Search Console to measure that.<\/p>\n Go to \u201cSearch results\u201d and check the box for \u201cAverage position.\u201d<\/p>\n Scroll down to see your organic keyword rankings or positions:<\/p>\n These tell you where the website currently stands in Google search results for particular keywords.<\/p>\n In our fictional agency SWOT analysis example, your baseline organic keyword rankings would give you an idea of your starting point.<\/p>\nWhy Is a SWOT Analysis Important?<\/h2>\n
\n
What Are the Components of a SWOT Analysis?<\/h2>\n
Internal Factors<\/h3>\n
Strengths<\/h4>\n
\n
Weaknesses<\/h4>\n
\n
External Factors<\/h3>\n
Opportunities<\/h4>\n
\n
Threats<\/h4>\n
\n
Free SWOT Analysis Template<\/h2>\n
How to Do a SWOT Analysis (6 Simple Steps)<\/h2>\n
1. Establish Your Goal<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n
2. Assess Strengths<\/h3>\n
\n
3. Uncover Weaknesses<\/h3>\n
\n
4. Consider Opportunities<\/h3>\n
\n
5. Identify Threats<\/h3>\n
\n
6. Narrow Your Lists<\/h3>\n
\n
When Should You Do a SWOT Analysis?<\/h2>\n
\n
3 Real-World SWOT Examples<\/h2>\n
1. Marketing Agency SWOT Analysis Example<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n Strengths<\/strong><\/td>\n Weaknesses<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \n \n
\n \n
\n Opportunities<\/strong><\/td>\n Threats<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \n \n
\n \n