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Why Reinvent the Wheel:
The Simple Way to Beat Your Competitors
by Ross Dunn, StepForth CEO, September 01, 2004
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Why reinvent the wheel? We have all heard this statement time and time
again, and all too often it is from an annoying critic or a cheesy salesperson.
In the case of Internet Marketing, however, it doesn’t seem so silly
since there are not many reliable options for keeping up to date with the
latest techniques. After all, you could spend hours in SEO forums, read
the plethora of do-it-yourself books and you could still end up with dated
material or suggestions that don’t apply to your industry niche… or
both! So what is the answer? Look for examples of companies that are currently
successful and find out why they are! This can be easier said than done;
however, there are definitely some tricks of the SEO trade that can make
this type of analysis easier. Since competitive analysis is a major portion
of my job as CEO at StepForth Search Engine Placement, I have developed
enough knowledge out of my research to provide my clients with enough information
to make a serious dent in the competition. Now I am going to share with
you an outline of how to do your own competitive analysis and how to understand
it. This will only provide the basic data, however, I assure you that the
following tips will provide you with the information to take more informed
decisions with your search engine campaign.
To begin you must choose a viable competitor. Many of you may already have
a clear idea of who your competitors are which will make this simpler. If
you don’t, then run searches for your most important keyword phrases
on Google (or the search engine of concern) while noting any competitors
who appear more than once. With luck you will have quickly identified your
competitor(s) of choice to move onto the actual analysis.
If You Can’t Beat Them… Improve on Them!
This competitive analysis will require 4 stages of research; position
reporting, search engine saturation, design critique, and link popularity
research.
Stage 1: Position Reporting
Now that you know who your competitor is it is time to really get an
idea how well they are doing! First write down the first 30 major keywords
and phrases that appear in the Meta tags found in the Source (select “View
Source” from ‘View’ in Internet Explorer) of the competitor’s
Home Page. Now take that list and go to Google and type in each query
to see if the competitor has top rankings anywhere within the Top20. I
recommend using Excel to document this, it will make analysis easier.
After you have compiled the results note which of the phrases are continually
appearing in the Top20. 10 to 1 the rankings will all contain a similar
keyword or variation. Now you know what the main keyword targets are for
your competitor’s Home Page! To further discriminate their most valued
phrase, just look at their Title tag. Often it will include at least one
incidence of their core target Keyphrase.
This is a huge advantage because now you have the key to unraveling their
marketing tactics. This can be compared to being given a decryption key
to read a document… now you just have to read it and understand what
you are seeing.
Stage 2: Search Engine Saturation
Just how much of the competitor’s web site has been indexed (read
and included) by the search engines? This question is important because
the degree of saturation plays an important role in Google’s algorithm.
To put it very simply the more pages your site has indexed, the better your
chances for top ranking.
To obtain this important statistic, type in the following syntax in Google’s
search bar:
"site:www.competitorswebsite.com"
Stage 3: Design Critique
This is the most technical stage of all and it will likely require a
great deal of time but you will be amazed by the benefits. This stage
demands that you consider the method of design, layout and navigation
for the competitor’s site. In most cases when reviewing each element
of their site you will find telltale signs of optimization such as:
- The first text seen by the search engines is a well-worded description
of their web site and it will be created using one or more of the
Keyphrases you identified earlier.
- There will be a navigation menu in text format
so that search engines can easily spider their site.
- The links to pages
within the web site from the text menu will be created using a Keyphrase
relevant to the destination page. This adds
significant credibility to the destination page and the site as a
whole.
- Alt
Tags have been added to linked images or complex navigation menus.
The Alt Tags will be short, and optimized using the Keyphrases for the
destination page.
- The Title Tag will be short but carefully targeted to
obtain rankings for their core Keyphrase.
- There will be a good balance
of body text to images on the page; this denotes a careful optimization
of the balance of words versus
Keyphrases within the written text.
- Incidences of important Keyphrases within the
written text will be linked to internal pages within the site. Such
links are called “inline
text links” and can significantly bolster the relevance of both
the page with the outbound link and the destination page (as long as it
properly
reflects the topic that was linked to it)
- The site will often include
a very simple and carefully optimized sitemap accessible from any
position within the web site.
While considering these techniques, carefully note any these elements that
appear to be present. Remember we are trying to find the ‘mix’ that
your competitor is utilizing so that you can consider implementing the same
while improving upon it.
Stage 4: Link Popularity
“
How many pages are linking to your competitor’s web site? How many
are their own pages? ”
Link Popularity (LP) is a crucial consideration when analyzing a competitor.
Essentially LP has the power to make or break a web site. The more links
pointing to a web site from other related web sites, the more credibility
Google perceives the site to have. In this case, the method for basically
analyzing the LP of your competitor is to simply type in the following:
"link:www.competitorswebsite.com"
What you will likely end up with is a number of external sites linking
to your competitor along with many of their own pages showing up as well.
In this case it is important to consider just how many of the pages are
actually their own. I have seen incidences where nearly 75% of all pages
were their own! This is a symbol of the search engine friendliness of their
web site. Once you have a good idea of their external back links (links
pointing to their site), consider contacting each of the sites and requesting
a link from them. To do this you will require a links page within your web
site where you can place reciprocal links to the agreeable link provider;
this is generally expected by webmasters.
Summary
Now that you have identified the various techniques your competitor is
using, try to incorporate the ‘mix’ into your current web
site. Pay special attention to the Home Page and focus on these elements
in this order of importance: Title Tag, optimization of the first text
within your page, implementing a proper Description Tag, carefully remove
all barriers to the Spider navigation of your site, and increase the incidences
of the Keyphrase(s) within the written copy visible on your page.
By establishing the position of your competition and the techniques
used, you should now have a much better concept of what works and what
doesn’t when obtaining rankings within your niche. If you have
not found the information that you need or you wish to learn much more
about your competition please don’t hesitate to contact StepForth,
our research services are designed to strip bare the techniques that
your competitors are using. An advanced competitor analysis can make
all the difference in the world for your web site and it will save you
the money involved with repetitive SEO because you will know what works!
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