When targeting a keyword and checking out your competitors in Google for that keyword. Should you analyse the backlink's on their whole site or just the page that they're showing in Google results? e.g The one page on their site about 'financial control' or their homepage? I'm assuming it's only the specific page they rank for on that keyword, but just want to clarify before I do loads of research. thanks!
You can analyze the page which interest you. Some sites ranks well for inside pages but they might use the same keywords for their home page. So you can check the main base for the analysis. Google ranks better other pages from their unit, because that page might offer more relevant information for that particular keyword.
I understand what you mean. Specifically, I am talking about huge sites which I couldn't compete with as a whole - but I may want to compete for a keyword that only one of their pages rank for.
You should analyze each page individually, not the whole domain. Sometimes it's hard to make an accurate impression, if their internal page has a link from the high authority homepage, that will make it difficult to asses how much link juice that passes, but generally google ranks "pages" individually not "domains". Even when you see a "domain" ranking, it's actually the homepage of that site that is ranking.