HTML Search Engine Optimization: Competitor Research

By Taylor Digital Friday July 30, 2010

This article is the fourth in our series “HTML Search Engine Optimization“. Over the next few weeks we’ll be explaining more about how to better optimize your web sites HTML code and how it can help your ranking in major search engines. In this series we will cover such topics as content, code, links, competitor research, web site submission, and pay per click.

Competitor Research

Whether you are implementing a new web strategy or revamping an old strategy, it is essential that you understand what your company is doing and how it compares to your competitors. No one should go into battle blindfolded.

While you may have your company’s future already planned for the next few quarters, completing some competitor research will help you move forward and adjust your web strategy as needed. Are you ready for some legwork?

Mile High Overview

With the ever changing landscape of business on the web, some proper competitor research will help you answer very important strategic planning questions. You must first evaluate yourself, before you can properly evaluate the competition. Whether new to the web or not, you will want to consider:

What advantage do your competitors have over you on the internet? Do these advantages exist in the offline market? If not, what changes can you make online to remove these advantages?
What is my current/expected Return on Investment (ROI)?
Who are my perspective readers and customers? What do they like?
How do I stack up to the competition in search engines?

Don’t worry if you don’t have all of the answers just yet. Before you begin to identify your competition, you should first determine if you will be attacking industry giants or a more specific sector of your industry for web superiority. If you are just starting out, it may be a waste of efforts to attack a global company with a multi-million dollar budget. You know what I mean, those large companies that have been around for years, have thousands of visitors and have huge websites with a lot of content. I am not saying you should bow-down before big business, but rather picks your fights.

Business on the internet works at much faster speeds so it is best to find several paths to success and travel them with your goals in mind. Lets not forget, you aren’t traveling alone. Identify your web competition and keep a close eye on them. Not sure who your competition is just yet? Some research will help solve that problem.

Identify Your Keywords

This is where you will really start to hone-in on what other people in your industry are doing on the web and start to figure out how to surpass their efforts. There are many “do-it-yourself” free and paid tools available to help you put together a complete competitor’s report. The more details you can gather, the better you will understand your niche online. We will assume that you already have a grasp on your market and operate an existing website. If you are working on an emerging website, most of the following information will still be relevant.

Before we start anything else, we want to first identify what keywords we would like to use and rank high for in a search engine results page (SERP). If you are a Southern California watch company, you may only initially think you want to use the keywords “gold watches, silver watches, swiss watches, tag heuer, movado” to start. By using the resources below you can find keywords you may not have though of and build a more refined keyword list. Remember, the more specific the better especially with lower competition.

By using the Google Keyword Tool you can type in words that you have in-mind and see the global/local monthly searches, search trends and the keyword competition.

Google-Keyword-Tool

Using the keyword tool we now have hundreds of filterable recommended keywords from the five words/phrases we started with. We were able to discover such high search, low competition gems as “silver ladies watches, men swiss watches, classic mens watches”.

For further detail you can click the magnifying glass icon next to the word to be redirected to Google Insights for Search where you can view a breakdown by region for better identify strong keyword opportunities.

Identify Your Web Competition

Once you have identified your top keyword list, now it’s time to identify your direct keyword competitors and plan out how to surpass their efforts. By sticking with our watch company analogy and taking the list of keywords we previously identified (silver ladies watches, men swiss watches, classic mens watches) you want to create a report of the competition. You can wither use an automatic tool, or compile the data yourself. Gathering the data yourself is not only more flexible to your needs but will help you gain a greater understanding of where the data comes from and what it actually means. Take all of your newly discovered keywords and identify the following:

Competition Frequency
On a scale from low to high, track how many competitors are currently using your refined keywords. The search term “silver ladies watches” will display a medium to high frequency.
Global Monthly Searches
This will display the approximate 12-month average of user queries for the keyword on Google.com and the Google Search Network. The search term “silver ladies watches” will display about 110,000 results.
Local Monthly Searches
If you specified a country or language for your search, this is the approximate 12-month average number of user queries for the keyword for those countries and languages. The search term “silver ladies watches” will display about 27,100 results.
Overall Results
Your goal search engine (Google for example) will display the approximate number of results when typing your keyword in the search. The search term “silver ladies watches” will display About 5,650,000 results.
Top Result
Within the overall result search, you will want to track the top result for your specific keyword. This will help you locate the most popular result.
InAnchor Results
You will determine how many results use your keyword in a linked text.
InTitle Results
You will determine how many results use your keyword in a page title.

You can use your favorite search engine in combination with the Adwords Keyword Tool top collect most of this information. To save time and gather greater detail you can use the SEOMoz Keyword Research Tool. After you have compiled all of this information for your keyword list you will want to pay special attention for the sites that are often ranked high in Google for your keywords.

Mount Your Attack

Hopefully at this point you are more aware (after doing some initial legwork) to better understand what your company is doing and how it compares to your competitors on and offline. By completing some competitor research you will be able to take what you have learned and adjust your web strategy as needed. If you haven’t yet, go back and spend some more time which in-turn will help your company be more successful in the future.

Competitor-Research

You should now be considering what steps you will take moving forward and how much effort it will take to accomplish your future goals. Do you fully understand your industry? Can you write your own relevant content and manage your own online strategy? Can you reveal your expertise to your customers through unique, relevant and though provoking content?

If you are not starting a new strategy and have a current website up and running, you may find it useful to use some of the same tools on your own site to see how you stack up. If you have had sleepless nights trying to figure out how the competition is always one step ahead, this may shed some light on the issue.

Maybe your competitors site is better formatted for search engine readability or they have more keyword rich content. Perhaps more people link to their site through articles or press? In any case, you’ll have a better idea of what you need to do to improve your site’s visibility in a search engine results page (SERP) and ultimately increase traffic or otherwise accomplish your goals.

Free Research Tools

Alexa – Contains an unparalleled database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more.
Google Analytics – Will help you identify when keywords you have selected, appear in newly published web pages and blogs.
Google Alerts – Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Google Trends – Compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.
Google Insights – Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
Google Traffic Estimator – Search the estimate traffic results for a specific keyword or set of keywords.
SEM Rush – Uses 35 million most popular and expensive keywords. If the keyword you are looking for is not presented in our database, that means that the word isn’t included in this 35 million according to US version of Google.com.
SEO Trifecta – Measures metrics to estimate the relative popularity and importance of Page, Blog or Domain. Trifecta replaces SEOmoz’s Page Strength tool.
URL Trends – View vital search engine information about any url that you enter. The Trend Report will allow you to see the Urls link popularity, PageRank, Alexa Rank, keywords that you can find the site by and more.
Yahoo Mindset – Applies a new twist on search that uses machine learning technology to give you a choice: View Yahoo! Search resultssorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).

Paid Research Tools

Adgooroo – Helps you to get more traffic by finding traffic opportunities, PPC monitoring, and more.
Compete.com – They analyze what consumers do across the entire web, not just what they do within a particular site, and that marketers can use this rich information across the entire company, not just for online media planning or site design decisions.
Hitwise – The leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 65 countries.
KeyCompete.com – KeyCompete is a keyword research tool that recognizes the keywords your competitors use in their pay-per-click campaigns and also reveals the competition that is bidding on your keywords.
Market Samurai – In addition to keyword research, it provides tools like a rank tracker, finding content, and analyzing the competition.
Next Stat – Paid online analytics to help guide experienced users to take control of the information and utilize the technology for self-benefit.