SEO Competitive Analysis

When people search for something on the Web, they want to find it quickly. If you’ve done a good job of making your website friendly to search engines, someone looking for what you sell may find you right away. If not, a seeker may turn to a competitor.

How do you ensure that your product reaches customers who are looking for it? You need to understand how your customers use search engines, and how the results challenge your business. You need to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, what to copy from them and what to do differently. You need to see this information through your customers’ eyes.

edit A Plan For Assessing Your Competition

You need to have a plan to understand your competition. First you need to know how your customers will be likely to find you. To come up with a list of competitors, try the following:

• Search for your products using the terms you anticipate your customers would use on popular search engines, such as Google. Look at the search results and list your rivals.

• Go to websites that your customers frequently visit, such as industry organizations’ sites, blogs, social networking sites, magazines or even general information sites. See what resources are listed there, and who’s advertising there.

• Talk with your customers and find out who they think has a strong Web presence in your industry.

• Note which sites your customers link to from their own sites.

Once you have a list of competitors, you may want to analyze which keywords they use on their website and which keywords they rank well for in search engines. This could be a good time to do some keyword research of your own. (Note: You can use the AboutUs Site Report to track how well you rank in Google for your 20 most important keywords over time. You can also track how your competitors are doing on those same keywords.)

Check out how your competitor presents their website content, and what they do to make it easy for their customers to find what they need. Try to find who hosts their site, who built their site, and whether they mention any technology partners. Much of this information can be seen at the bottom of a site’s home page.

If this analysis seems cumbersome or too time-consuming, you may wish to hire an analyst to provide you a high level summary of your competition and their strategies.