Who IS your biggest competitor?
Most businesses with a brick and mortar store have an idea of who their local competition is. At some point you have seen their ads or passed their store; you’ve heard stories from customers and friends who have been there. Generally speaking, your competition is the business that is trying to sell the same products or services that you are. On the internet, there is another way to define your competition. Your competition is the websites that are trying to rank on search engines for the same keywords that you are. Many times it will be the local businesses that you already know, and many times you will discover new competition that you did not know about. To determine your competition, you will need the list of keywords generated from your strategic keyword research. Next, you need to determine who is ranking for those keywords. A quick and easy way to do that is to do a search for that keyword on a search engine. Write down the sites that rank at the top of the result pages for the keyword.Sizing up the competition
Start a list of your biggest competitors. Keep the number manageable so that you can have the time and resources to analyze all the data you are collecting. Start an excel sheet to record all the data in one place. The excel sheet might look something like this:|
|
Keyword Phrase |
website.com |
Website2.com |
Website3.com |
|
1 |
Keyword in Title |
Yes/2 |
Yes/1 |
Yes/3 |
|
2 |
Keyword in Page Description |
Yes/2 |
No |
Yes/2 |
|
3 |
Keyword in Keyword tag |
Yes/3 |
No |
Yes/3 |
|
4 |
Keyword in Heading Tags |
No |
Yes/3 |
No |
|
5 |
Keyword in Images |
No |
Yes/2 |
No |
|
6 |
Keyword in Text |
12 |
5 |
1 |
To collect the data to fill in this chart, search for your strategically-selected keyword. Find the listing for your competitor’s site and record how they have used the keyword in the Page Title (row 1) and Page Description (row 2). The Page Title is the top bolded phrase on the search results page (see below) and the Page Description is the smaller text below it. Jot down whether the keyword appears in the competitor’s title or description, and how many times.
Next, click on the link to visit the website. Once you’ve loaded the competitor page, right click on the mouse and scroll down to click on ‘View Page Source’.,
This will display the html of the site and let you in on more secret information that you will want to log for rows 3 & 4 of your Excel spreadsheet. First, scroll down the text and look for the Keywords Tag. It will look something like this:
Then scroll down through the text and look for h1 and h2 tags. Look to see if the keyword is listed in these tags:
h2 title="Choose Your Shoes">Choose Your Shoes
If you are having trouble finding the tags, you can also use the Find feature from your browser. Simply press Control-F on your keyboard, and do a search for ‘keywords’ , ‘h1’ or ‘h2’. This will highlight the HTML section where you will find the tag.
The next step is pretty easy. Go back to the web page and see if there are any Keywords in the Images. Roll your cursor over the image and see if a text box pops up with keywords in it. This is also known as alt text and can also be identified from the Page Source (with the Control-F feature described above).
The last task is to check the number of times the keyword appears in the text content. Go to the webpage and press Control F while viewing the webpage (no need to view source for this step) to find the keywords you are looking for. This will highlight the keyword and provide a cursory count of the number of times it is used.
Making a Winning Strategy
As you are collecting data, be aware of other keywords the website may be using that you hadn’t thought of. Use a keyword density tool to see how often your competition is using the keyword, and see other keywords that they might be using. This process can also be used to help you generate new keyword ideas, and keep up with the terms your competitors are using.
Once you have collected all of your intelligence, review the information and make a plan for your intended performance strategy. And of course, don’t hesitate to emulate and improve on the techniques that your competition has used. Now that you see how they are utilizing the keyword, you can use it in a similar fashion.
