As you’re going through this analysis process, the first thing to keep in mind is that you’re not
checking out only your direct competitors. You need to look at those competitors who are ahead
of you in search rankings, even if their offerings are different from yours.
Plan to spend a few hours a week on this analysis. You should look at all the sites that are ahead of
you, but specifically those sites that rank in the top five to ten position in the SERPs.
You already know what you should be looking for. Look for the same indications that you examined
during your original competitive analysis. These include:
Site rankings: Where in the SERPs is the site ranked? Make note, especially, of the top
three to five sites.
Page saturation: How many of the competition’s pages are indexed? Not every page on a
site will be indexed, but if your competition has more or fewer pages ranked, there may
be a factor you haven’t taken into consideration about how to include or exclude your
site pages.
Page titles: Are page titles consistent? And what keywords do they contain, if any at all?
How your competition uses titles can give you an indication of what you’re doing right or
wrong with your own.
Meta data: What meta data is your competition including? How is it worded? And how
does it differ from your own? Remember that you can access the source code of a web site
by selecting Source from the View menu of your web browser.
Site design: How is the competition’s web site designed? Site architecture and the technology
that is used to design and present the site are factors in how your site ranks. Learn
what the competition is doing and how that differs from what you’re doing.
A robots.txt file: The robots.txt file is accessible to you, and looking at it could give you
some valuable insight to how your competition values and works with search engines.
Content quality and quantity: How much quality is included on your competitor’s site
and is it all original, or is it re-used from some other forum? If a site is ahead of you in
search rankings, its content is probably performing better than yours. Analyze it and find
out why.
Link quality and quantity: Your competitors’ linking strategies could hold a clue about
why they rank well. Look at the link structure. If they’re using legitimate linking strategies,
what are they? If they’re not, don’t try to follow suit. Their actions will catch up
with them soon enough.
One thing you should use caution about is copying your competition too closely. Instead
use their success as a way to jump start creative ideas for improving your own web site.
Some web-site owners will fill the internal workings of their site with bogus keywords, tags, or other
elements in an effort to keep the competition from catching up to them. If you follow their practices
too closely, you could end up doing more damage than good to your own site.
Maintain your competitive analysis over time. It should be an ongoing activity that helps you stay
abreast of how those companies that rank better than you reach those rankings. Examine them
closely, and then spend some time finding creative ways to improve your rankings based on what
works for the competition.
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