Using Competition Research To Your Advantage
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the core of a fully developed internet marketing scheme. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about what SEO is and many frustrated website owners who don’t understand why they can’t drive traffic to their sites. Often they omit an important step in the process: competitor analysis.
Break Away From Your Competition?
The first step on beating your competition is identifying who your real competitors are. When marketing online you may ask yourself, “Why are my competitors out ranking me?” or “What do I have to do to rank ahead of my competition in the search engines?” WebBizIdeas competition analysis will help you determine if & how much it will cost to surpass your competition.
What Are Your Keywords?
The concept of keyword optimization is easy to grasp. When someone types a phrase into a search engine, if that phrase isn’t on your site, you aren’t going to appear in the results. Unfortunately many people think that’s all there is to SEO.
Part of the problem is discovering the right keywords to target for your industry. Many business owners do their own competition research and believe they uncover the full range of keywords important to their industry, but they usually reveal a tiny fraction of phrases they should be targeting. A more in depth competitor analysis will uncover ten or twenty times as many phrases to be targeted, and every one missed means customers lost to other businesses.
Who Are Your Competitors?
The first step to proper competition research is determining who the competition is. Competing on a global level means it can be difficult to see who your actual rivals are. A few of the big players will be obvious, but there are also countless small sites that may be diverting traffic from your business.
Comprehensive competitor analysis requires a thorough understanding of search engine mechanics. Search engine companies are careful not to release information on how their applications work and are constantly changing them to make it hard to optimize sites for search engines. Only an SEO firm on top of today’s search engine algorithms can find the links to lead them to your real competitors.
How Should You Compete?
Once a list of competitors has been compiled then competition research can really begin. Some SEO firms try to push the same strategy on all clients but that doesn’t work. Each industry presents unique traffic patterns. Even within an industry, each business will benefit from different marketing strategies.
Competitor analysis will reveal what your rivals are doing well – and what they aren’t. By analyzing their sites and traffic an SEO expert can see what their strengths and weaknesses are. After comparing those to your own company’s assets and liabilities, a plan uniquely tailored to your industry and your company can be formulated. This is a strategy that will fit you and nobody else and will provide you with the maximum competitive edge.
This is why two different sites can try the same SEO techniques and one gets a boost in traffic while the other gets nothing. Truly successful search engine optimization goes beyond what you might pick up in a book or on forums. Only when part of a marketing plan that includes competition research and specific strategies for your situation does SEO start to pay off.
Keyword Discovery Case Study
Mykonospa.com competition research proved strong at first. We found over 1,000 different companies selling pandora Jewelry in the Americas, Europe, and Australasia. After discovering that vendors in each region can only sell within their location, 95% of our competition research turned into our client’s potential link partners. So far we have determined over 200 international linking partners!
