SEO Recap – Competitor Analysis

We have discussed thorough and complete website analysis as well as the different factors we have to take into consideration for website analysis. Next you must focus on competitive analysis as the next step to full optimization. While the main focus of concentration in website analysis was on our website, now the main concern is the actual website’s ranking in reference to competition with other websites in the search engines.

In SEO, the word competition has a slightly different connotation in terms of our business competitors, and must be properly understood. Business competitors can indeed be part of the competition that we are discussing here especially if  they are affecting your position in the search engines. However, if your business competitor does not have a website then he is not to be considered part of your online competition.

If your website is a brand new website then you will be starting from scratch and will have no search rank history. If you are revamping or relaunching an old site, you will have search engine history which will be your starting point or point of reference for the work to come.

When performing competitive analysis, you must start with your main keywords and check your position in the search engines and the top 10 websites that are listed for the same keyword or key phrase. Even if these are not local business competitors, they are still your competitors for that specific keyword. They may be offering the same or similar services that your or offering or selling the same product that you are selling. In rare cases, they will be in an entirely different field.

When performing competitive analysis, you must first do a complete website analysis of your competitor’s website, similar to the one you have already performed on your own site. If you notice that your website is deficient or inferior in a number of factors, you can address them before moving forward.

If you used a lot of flash, neglected your meta tags, didn’t use unique page titles or failed to use image descriptions, you can catch that now and fix it. A common mistake is having the same page title and meta keywords for all the pages. You should be having unique page titles for each page that are keyword rich. Your competitive analysis should be able to document such differences between your website and a competitors’ and help you make your own site better.

Of course, you must also compare your link building efforts with that of your competitors. You can discover the number of sites linking to your competitor’s website by making the following search in Google: “links: xyz.com” and replacing xyz with the competitors website name. Then find the links for your website using the same search by just replacing xyz.com with the domain for which you would like to check the back links. Often, simply by reinforcing your link building efforts, you will be able to get better ranking in the search engines.