In: Categories » » Search engines optimization » Identify Your Top Five Competitors
Today you're going to choose which competitors to review in depth. To keep this week's tasks manageable, we recommend that you limit the number of top competitors you examine to five. This allows you to choose at least one from each of the three categories in the list that follows, and it leaves you with enough bandwidth to really dig in and dissect their strategies. If one of your biggest competitors doesn't have a website, then give them an honorary mention on your list. But for the purposes of this week, we want you to choose five competitors with at least some web presence. Your review will be the most meaningful if you select your “Big Five” from the following categories:
Business Competition Even if you know who the major players in your field are, you should check with your sales and executive team members to get the backstory that you may not be aware of. For example, there may be different competitors for different products or target audiences. There may be a “new kid on the block” who's poised to enter a space that you're currently dominating. Or your company may have just lost a big job to someone in particular. Ask your colleagues to prioritize their competitors based on current issues, goals, and grudges.
Search Competition With last week's rank check fresh in your mind, you should have an excellent grasp of who's who in the top spots. Who did you see in the top ranks frequently enough to make you take notice? Whose listings were not only visible, but also well written? Whether these companies hold a candle to your organization in real life isn't relevant here. Even if they're just a blip on your business radar, if they're attracting the eyeballs that you want, you need to find out how they're doing it. Paid Search Competition Even though sponsored ads and organic listings are different animals, they are displayed in direct competition to each other in the search engine results. So if there is a company out there who is showing up in the sponsored links for your targeted keywords, you may want to add it to your Big Five.
Search Results Competition
The Left Brain and Right Brain have different ideas about monitoring who is taking those coveted top spots in the search results. The Right Brain says, “This is one of those SEO tasks that you can let flow over you. Search for your target keywords, browse the results, and you are likely to see some patterns emerging.Maybe there is a certain site that never shows at number one but has lots of results on the second and third pages of the search results. Maybe another site is consistently in the top five for several of your top terms.
You would be right to include these among your Big Five search competition.” The Left Brain says, “When I used to grade papers in graduate school, I sometimes noticed my standards getting stricter and stricter as the hours passed. Pity those kids with tests at the bottom of the pile! The same thing can happen when you use a ‘hunch' approach to choosing your competition: After an hour of reviewing search results, your opinions are likely to creep.That's why I think you should choose a simple numerical evaluation method:Your potential competitor gets a point for every time their site shows up in the top 30 for your keywords and five points for every time in the top 10. Check your searches, add up the points, and there you have it:Your search competition rises to the top.”
As you're going through your search and PPC competition, be on the lookout for “left field” competition. These are listings that are displayed for the same keywords that you're targeting but have no connection to your organization's focus. For example, the directors of the Green Acres Day Camp in Toronto are going head-to-head with trivia sites about the old Green Acres TV show. Whether you choose to review one of these sites is up to you. But if you're finding a lot more “left field” competitors than you expect, you may need to rethink your keyword choices.
legal notice
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Web-articles is a free articles resource.
Suggestion: If you need fresh, daily updated content for your website, feel free to use our service. Click here for more information.
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above.
related articles
Monetize Web Site Traffic You may not have an e-commerce Web site that has an obvious monetization method. Instead, you may have a great Web site with unique, well-written content that generates a lot of traffic, and you may wonder how you can effectively monetize your traffic. The Internet opens up the door to making lots of money without having to actually sell anything. In fact, with revolutionary money-making models such as affiliate marketing, contextual advertising, and ad widgets, many Web sit...
2. Quality score optimization or QSO
Quality Score Optimization Quality score optimization, or QSO, is a set of strategies for improving quality score. Quality score is a principal ranking factor that search engines use to determine your relative ranking and pricing for a particular keyword listing. In today’s PPC advertising environment, the highest bidder does not always win. Instead, Google and other leading search engines rank Web sites based on numerous quality factors, and use your designated maximum cost per click as only one of many...
3. How to create Create Pay per Click Campaigns
Create Pay-per-Click Campaigns With search-engine optimization (SEO), your goal is to rank for free within the organic search results for target keywords related to your Web site. In contrast, with pay-per-click (PPC) your goal is to pay for placement by competing with other advertisers for ranking within the sponsored results section of search results. There is no charge when someone clicks your organic listing, but you are charged every time someone clicks your PPC listing. PPC listings are t...
4. Social media Web sites include social news Web sites
Social Media Optimization Social media optimization, or SMO, is a form of online marketing that focuses on participating on various social media Web sites to generate traffic, buzz, and links back to your Web site. Social media Web sites include social news Web sites such as Digg, Sphinn, and StumbleUpon; video sharing Web sites such as YouTube and Revver; and social network Web sites, including MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Various recognized SEO and SMO pundits have referred to SMO as “the new SEO”...
Build Links If creating large amounts of original, well-written content is considered King for search-engine-optimization purposes, building quality links back to your Web site might be considered the Holy Grail. You must have more than just quality content, because Google and other major searchengine algorithms evaluate the number and quality of Web sites that link to your Web pages as a primary and fundamental component of ranking your Web site over another. Search engines conclude that Web sit...
6. Track Google Analytics links peporting and keywords
Track External Links When constructing your Web site, you are likely to have links that are both internal and external. Internal links refer to the links that send the visitor to other pages within your site, and external links refer to the links that send a visitor to a Web site other than your own. Google Analytics can show you how your visitors navigate your internal links, but what if they leave your site by clicking an external link? By tweaking the way you construct your external links, Google An...
7. Googles current relationship with SEOs and webmasters
Google Basics Simply stated, Google is the standout leader in search today. It has the most traffic and the most new trends, and it's the only search engine with its own entry in the dictionary. Once a search-only entity, Google now offers e-mail, maps, feed readers, calendar, web analytics, and webmaster tools, not to mention a diverse menu of specialty search options, including news, video, image, blog, and local. Google has been an all-out trendsetter in the evolution of the search space. Link popu...
8. Organic ranking factors and paid listings
Organic Ranking Factors You already know that search engines use complicated secret formulas, called ranking algorithms, to determine the order of their results. You even know that some of the most Eternally Important factors are your web page text and your HTML title tags. Now we're going to wrap what you already know into an organic optimization cheat sheet that you can peek at next time someone asks you, “What do search engines care about, anyway?” But first, a disclaimer: There are radically differi...
9. The Challenge of SEO Team Building
You're busy, and SEO isn't your only job, so we're pretty sure you won't be thrilled to hear this: Your SEO campaign will incorporate a wide variety of tasks: writing and editing, web page design, programming, ad copy creation, research, web analytics, and interpersonal communication for link building. If you're doing this all yourself, bravo! You're just the sort of multitasking do-it-yourselfer who thrives in SEO. If your entire company can't ride to lunch on the same motorcycle, we're putting you in charge o...