One of the biggest questions I get asked is, How do I compare to other people in my business area? It’s a hard question to answer unless you happen to deliver services for a number of organisations within a specific sector. This would then pose a question of ethics as to whether you shared this information with you client. The main point is to ensure that your taking note of what your competition is up to by carrying out a number of standard tests.
Checking out your competitors – How to do it……
1. Identify the people within your target market.
You have a number of keywords that you would wish to position for within the search engines. The starting point is to carryout a search in Google for the indentified keywords and record the top 10 results and rank these against some of the suggested factors;
- Size of Business.
- Position within the market – are they an A / B player (e.g – lots of budget and people available for SEO services) – is it possible to take over their position within the index.
2. Analyse the Competitor sites
Take the list of competitors and look at their websites and identify the Page Titles and Descriptions being used within the site. In addition look at the sites they are mentioned on within the search indexs and any inbound links to the site. These are standard queries within the search engines and they are shown below.
- List Pages & Description for the site. The following command in Google: site:www.domainname.com
- Identify Links within the Google index & Yahoo. link:www.domainname.com
- Find sites that talk about the website. When running take out your own website. “www.domainname.com” -site:www.domainname.com
Replace www.domainname.com with your specific domain name.
3. Record the figures and track over time
Make sure you have a plan and data to work from. As you put time in it’s important to ensure that you’re improving the site and moving it forward. Targeting key search positions is a goal, however remember that search listings are localised to the users location and search history will heavily influence a users search from their local machine.
