How To Analyze The Dirty Blue Widgets Competition - By: Lee MacRae

In search engine optimization one of the things you want to do is to check out your competition and how they are doing with their own strategy. There are a number of things that you want to look at when you analyze your competition and then compare that with your own website in your own particular search engine strategy to rank for a term like dirty blue widgets.

One of the first things to do is to bring up their website in your browser and then go to "view" and then "page source". You will be given a screen of the HTML code that creates the webpage you're looking at. Take a look at things like their meta tags and title tags. Are they using meta descriptions? What keywords are they using in the various tags and titles? Are they even using the term "dirty blue widgets"? This can help you determine what search engine optimization strategy they're following. In many cases you will find they are not using any of their keywords or proper descriptions as they should be. This can make your job a whole lot easier, at least as regards to on-site search engine optimization as you employ the proper keyword strategy. You can easily check out each of their pages to see if they are making each of them unique in the use of their keywords and keyword phrases. Keep in mind that you want to determine what keywords they are trying to rank for and what market they are aiming for. Are the two compatible or do you have an opportunity here with the proper search engine marketing strategy on your part?

What kind of content are they using? Is it a blog or a standard website? What kind of resources are they offering? Do they have articles from industry experts to attract readers? Are they simply using their website as a catalog or to present their products? If you take a look at the top three or four competitors for the keywords you want to rank it, you can get a good understanding of how they are doing it, how you can copy it or possibly how you can beat it with a better idea.

Links. Type in something like links: URL and see where their links are coming from. Yes, Google and Yahoo may not show you all the links but at least you have an opportunity to do some analyzing. If you have other tools that can do a better job than by all means use them. But it is important that you determine where their links are coming from. Are they from directory listings? Are they from article directories? Are they from blog comments? Are they using social media? Are they using paid links? Are they using anchored text for specific keywords in those links back to their site? All of those questions are highly relevant and help you to determine how they are ranking for their keywords. If they have 4000 back links and you have 39 then you have a lot of work to do. Try and determine the page rank of the sites giving those back links. If they are all low PR 0 or 1 then perhaps you can offset their quantity by a smaller number of higher PR websites linking back to yours. Perhaps you could work to get back links from each and every website they already have linking to various plus a few more high PR links that you can gather for your own. By understanding the back link strategy of your competition you can have an opportunity to outdo them and get yourself higher in the search engine rankings.

By determining the keywords that your competition is optimizing for, you can analyze how and why they are ranking where they are. You can determine what you need to do to beat them. You can check to see if they have other websites that they cross-link, are they using a PPC campaign to attract traffic or are they ranking by what it termed natural, organic methods? Your analysis will never be fully complete but it will give you a roadmap to successfully compete and eventually beat your competition.

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