Beating your competition on the Search Engines can be a difficult task especially if the competitor has an established and well ranked website. The trick is to understand how your competition stays on top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can do this by analyzing different SEO factors and by using SEO Tools to compare your website with the competitor site.
The purpose is not to exactly copy what your competition is doing, but to get ideas by researching different competitor websites and make a plan of how you can improve your website and get links to it. The more you analyze different websites, the more ideas you will get for the promotion and improvement of your site.
Analyze their website
One of the first things to notice about your competitors is their website and to identify the reasons which make it different from yours. These reasons could be giving their website an edge over your site on the SERPs.
Is their site Search Engine Friendly? - One of the most important factors of Search Engine Ranking is a Search Engine Friendly website structure. If they are using keywords in their URLs and are linking to their pages using keyword rich anchor texts, then it is most likely that they developed their website considering SEO.
When developing a website, SEO should be considered as the first step, instead of an after-thought. Normally, web developers do not pay much attention to making a Search Engine Friendly website, which can cause problems later on. Changing your website to make it Search Engine Friendly at a later stage is both time consuming as well as costly.
Are their pages optimized? - Optimized web pages normally have keyword rich Titles, Meta Tags and use Heading Tags. They also have keyword rich content, so that search engines can identify them and help them rank high on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for their targeted keywords.
If SEO is not considered as an important factor while designing or developing a website, all web pages can end up having the same Title Tags and Meta Tags, which is normally the Business Name. Unique Title Tags using keywords are beneficial for SEO. Moreover, websites designed and developed without considering SEO may use elements like Frames, Flash or JavaScript Menus which can cause problems with the Search Engine indexing.
How much content do they have? - Websites and web pages made for the Search Engines normally have more content on them. Generally, the content is divided into headings and sub-headings to make it easy for the users to read it as well as for the search engines to pick keywords from the headings. Websites doing SEO also have more pages, especially in the form of articles or a blog.
If you plan to optimize for search engines, adding fresh content to your website can help improve rankings. Search Engines feed on content and good quality, unique content added regularly to your website keeps the search engines coming back for more.
Identify their web promotion methods
Once you have analyzed the website, the next step is to identify the promotion methods which the competitors might be using to drive traffic to them. Web and Internet Marketing promotion methods include paid advertising, which include Pay-Per-Click services, Banner Advertising, Promotional Press Releases, and sending Newsletters and Ezines to their subscribers. A quick look at the competitor website and its back links can tell you exactly what your competition might be doing.
Paid Advertising - PPC Advertising, also known as Pay-Per-Click allows you to list your website on the first page of Search Engines by bidding a price for your target keyword. You should check if your competition is advertising on the Search Engines. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators for paid advertising. Querying keywords related to your competitor business will show several results, and you can check through the sponsored results to see if they are doing any kind of Paid Advertising on the Search Engines.
Properly managed PPC campaigns can drive targeted traffic to your website and can help boost your business. PPC also provides a quick way of getting on page 1 of the SERPs to attract instant traffic to a website. If your competition is doing PPC, they are attracting customers to them, which could be coming to you if your website ranks on page 1 on the Search Engines.
Newsletters / Ezines - Many websites and businesses use other traditional advertising methods which include email marketing, newsletters, ezines or by sending news or feeds to their readers and subscribers. These methods are easy to identify by looking through the competitor website.
If your competitors are using any techniques to promote their website on the web, then you should look for similar techniques to drive customers and users to your business.
Analyze their links
Link Building is one of the most important factors considered by search engines to rank websites. Google especially pays importance to quality links from authority sites. Good quality links are collected over a period of time and can never be obtained in a few days or months. Analyzing your competitor back links can give you an idea of the kind of links you need to start ranking high on the Search Engine Result Pages.
Link Analysis is an important step to consider if you want to compete with other websites on the SERPs. However, this analysis is not intended to blatantly copy their linking strategies. It is intended to give an idea of how you should plan your links campaign to improve your rankings.
Are they listed in DMOZ / Yahoo Directory? - One of the first things you should check about your competitors is if they are listed in popular web directories like DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory.
Search Engines give importance to websites which are listed in DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory, as hundreds of other search engines and web directories, including Google directory, take feed from them. Browser add-ons, such as SEO for Firefox, allow you to quickly check websites displayed on the SERPs if they are listed in DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory or not.
What anchor texts are they using in their incoming links? - A backlink anchor text analysis is also necessary to identify the keywords which are used by the linking sites to link to your competitor websites. SEO Elite is a useful software to check anchor text for incoming links. BackLinkWatch and Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool by SEOMOZ are also good tools to analyze incoming links to websites.
Do they have links from Social Media sites? - Links from Social Media Websites can also help boost traffic and rankings for a website. A back link analysis will help you identify if a website is getting links from high traffic social media websites. Some of the most popular do-follow Social Media websites are Digg, LinkedIn, Technorati, Flickr, Kirsty, Propeller, 9Rules and more..
Analyzing the different factors listed above can give you an idea of how much work you need to do in order to improve your website and compete with the sites appearing in the top of the Search Engine Result Pages.
September 12th, 2008 at 6:15 am
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