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.

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.

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.

We exceeded their needs by implementing manageable news, members only sections, reader testimonials, and a complete ad management system. To add a new level of style and information delivery, the new site also includes a newsletter sign-up,  industry stock ticker, industry news feed,  and filtered article archives search. With these new features they have been able to increase their pageviews and grow membership subscriptions.

Shop-Eat-Surf is a top action sports news website read by the industries top executives from such companies such as Volcom, Hurley, Vans, Nixon, Oakley and Paul Frank Industries. They enjoy learning and writing about how people who follow their passions, build multimillion/multibillion-dollar, global companies from the ground up.

Visit: Shop-Eat-Surf

Iris serves the military and aerospace industries and needed an effective way to sell and market their technology by securing contracts. To meet their needs we implemented slideshow, e-commerce with full checkout and custom changing industry themes.

Iris Technology is a defense contractor specializing in tactical power systems and spacecraft hardware. They recently won a multi-year contract with the United States Marine Corps to deliver solar power systems for expeditionary operations. Iris also supports commercial and strategic space operations with electronics and electro-optic system components.

Visit: Iris Technology

The new website features multiple slideshows and a manageable project section. With the ability to self-update the project section and completed projects area, Spears Construction can make sure their website is always up-to-date.

Spears Construction specializes in delivering quality commercial projects for tenants and developers. Leveraging more than 35 years of diversified construction experience, the top-notch team at Spears provide a broad scope of pre-construction and construction services.

Visit: Spears Construction

The new website utilizes a home page feature, image slideshow and online donation system. Our main focus with this design was to create a soft, warm feeling through the color scheme and use photos of those affected with MPS1 to bring the site together. Seeing the children that have been diagnosed with MPS1 fueled our passion for the project and We feel it has shown in the end result. They have launched with a strong base and have already laid plans to grow into a national organization.

The MPS1 Research Foundation was founded in March, 2010 by Sarah and Greg Fletcher whose youngest son, Erik, was diagnosed with MPS1 in 2002. They are a non-profit, public charity and all donations are fully tax-deductible. Their foundation operates entirely with the assistance of non-paid volunteers. If you are interested in performing volunteer work for the foundation, please see How You Can Help.

Visit: The MPS1 Research Foundation

Optimizing Web Site Links

The importance of links as part of a search engine program should not be underestimated or overlooked. In the online search environment today it’s nearly impossible to rank highly without many high value links pointing to your web site. The reason for this is that a link is counted as a “vote” from one web site to another. You are in essence approving of the content on the linked page by displaying it for others to visit.

While many factors such as anchor text, placement, age and site trust all play a factor we will only focus on different ways that links can be acquired. Linking can be accomplished through internal and external means on your own site or others that exist on the web. While these methods alone won’t guarantee you a top spot in major search engines, it will start you on the path to receiving more organic traffic and put you in better standing with search engines.

Internal

Links that belong to your domain (i.e. www.yoursite.com) can work in the same way as those outside of your domain. If you have internal pages that are constantly linked to (for good reason) by other pages, you are letting search engines know that you want users to see the content on that page, making it valuable. If your site already holds a high rank, internal links are that much more valuable.

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link. -Google Support

Are you making the most of your internal site links? You should arrange your internal link architecture to created a clear internal navigation and share links between your most valuable pages to increase the internal activity within your site.

As shown in the example image below, the bottom of our blog posts contains a “Related Posts” area that will link you to other pages within our blog. This not only makes our articles easier to find by our visitors, but it makes it easier for search engines as well.

To make the best of your internal website links you have to set a clear objective and focus on keyword/phrase relevancy based on your goal. If we assume that www.yoursite.com is a banking company, instead of using the page title “Your Site – Home Page” it would work best to include important descriptive keywords. Leaving out less desirable words and focusing on keywords gives us the more suitable page title “Your Site – Online Banking Financial Services”. So the work stops there right? Think again, your work doesn’t stop at the page title.

If you are linking to other internal pages  from your home page in the navigation, footer or other areas you want to make sure you are targeting valuable keywords and phrases in your links. Always optimize your anchor text (the text in the link) and be as consistent as possible.

InBound (External)

Links that reside on pages that do not belong to your domain (i.e. www.anothersite.com) and link to your domain (i.e. www.yoursite.com) are external links. When considering top ranking factors external links are one of the most important and without them it will be difficult for visitors to find your amazing website.

What if you don’t know if anyone is linking to you? Here at Taylor Digital, all of our clients are setup with Google Analytics for tracking and website statistics. You can also use the quick method of searching Google with the phrase link:www.yoursite.com to see who has an indexed links for your website.

Google says it looks at more than 100 pieces of data to determine a site’s ranking. But links are where it’s at, once your search terms are clearly visible on your site and the title and description tags correctly marked. -USA Today

There are a number of proven methods for bringing traffic to your site and one way is by creating unique, keyword rich, quality content. When a site has such content, increased link popularity and exposure will happen over time if not instantly (once promoted). Inbound links will help your traffic by directing people to your site by clicking a link located on another website and by increased page importance in search engines.

In a nutshell: Google ranks sites based on popularity. If authoritative sites link to you, you must be good, and therefore you get to the top of the list. If you can’t get top sites such as USATODAY.com or The New York Times to link to you, try your friends. And what if they don’t have a site? They probably do. -USA Today

If you are interested in bringing in new inbound links in addition to having compelling content on your site you can consider the methods below.

• Provide a product or service that will be useful and become a value add for visitors of your site. If visitors like your service, they are more likely to share your website or link to you.
• Participate actively and thoughtfully in user reviews and blogs related to your business. Give insight from your perspective to help others and gain trust.
• Teach your visitors something new and interesting, uncover related news, showcase your expertise, interview industry leaders and be insightful.
• Think with common sense when creating content because it’s all about your business and services. If you are a property manager in California, write about how to maintain your properties or the top ten ways to get new leases. Those topics can become popular fast.
• Don’t over do it by overusing keywords/phrases so much that they feel they don’t belong with your content. After you have used words a few times, Google has a pretty good idea that your page has something to do with the used keyword.

Public Relations

When you keep your visitors aware of events you will be attending or are industry related, you can be counted on as a resource. By utilizing a news and events page you are able to keep in-touch with your users, update them on any changes within your company and form interest. For example, Apple Computers keeps a “Hot News” page to update the public with product launches, software updates, industry thoughts and other relevant news.

In addition to publishing news and events on your own website, you will benefit from sharing your news on other industry websites. News releases have come a long way and now include video and visual imagery. By submitting your news to websites such as PR Web or PR Newswire and you can receive placement on Google and Yahoo news.

By utilizing the value of PR companies you will help spread your news through many industry websites, RSS feeds and keep you interconnected to your industry. If follow guidelines on how to write a press release you should receive a substantial amount of traffic and visual exposure.

PRWeb’s network…an audience of more than 80 million unique visitors in the United States alone…news releases are distributed directly to an audience of more than two million visitors each month on PRWeb.com, 300,000 direct subscribers, and thousands of media outlets and journalists. -PR Web

Social Networks

When moving into social networks for increased visibility, you can look into both public networks and business networks. Today social networks real benefits are utilized market your product, share new with fans, grow your network and hire the right people.

Utilizing this technology is not only good for sales, it’s good for business.  With the growing number of businesses using social networking sites to promote their business, many sites have begin to focus on connecting entrepreneurs, business owners and other professionals together. How hard can it be, right?

When participating in social networks you can easily share photo, video and links within your community of fans and friends. When your content is posted this active community will view your content and drive a wave of traffic to your site. This wave can increase exponentially if users like the content enough to re-post it for their friends and family to see.

This wave is the most powerful and relies on quality content that will intrigue users. Your chances of being successful rely on your ability to follow the social networking rules of engagement. By becoming visible and adding value to your social network you increase your chances of success. Domino’s Pizza has decided to use social media to “capture the taste buds” of pizza holdouts by getting them to order their new pizza.

Does your company need a better Search Engine ranking and increased traffic? For a customized Search Engine Optimization program, Contact Taylor Digital Today.

In addition to a new paint job and Aluminum signage, we have added client work into frames through the office, oversized posters showcasing some of our clients and local photography of San Clemente, CA where we are located. Our intention was to create an office where we could be productive and make our clients comfortable as well.

We encourage you to stop by the Taylor Digital office in San Clemente, CA, see the remodel and let us show Taylor Digital can help you translate your business objectives into digital solutions.

After an exhaustive research phase, our team implemented a complete redesign improving user experience, functionality, and brand imagery. We immediately saw a 25% increase in traffic with a boost in keyword traffic from major search engines due to our efforts to update the sites content. With the increased traffic, EFX USA was able to secure many more subscriptions to the company’s newsletter.

The EFX USA site was implemented utilizing Magento Commerce’s Enterprise Edition platform to create a seamless integration from the corporate site to e-Commerce when all phases have been completed. Our team was able to customize the administration panel among other things, to include an FAQ and News widget that was integrated into the home page and other areas of the site.

EFX’s unique technology, currently the most advanced system available – can be embedded into a vast array of products to boost performance and wellness.

Visit: EFX USA

SocalData is dedicated to offering our clients unparalleled levels of client service and web hosting excellence. They offer a level of personal service that larger firms can not offer. SocalData have kept it simple so that the client can focus on their business and know that their internet needs are being managed effectively.

Visit: SocalData

Optimizing Web Site Code

Once you have optimized your web site content, the next item to look at is your code. To help your web site’s search engine optimization (SEO), you have to make sure that search engines can properly read the content on your pages. When your content is organized in a clean and efficient way you are helping to make any site additions easier while future-proofing your web site at the same time. Below you can find important aspects of your code that should not be looked over

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site. -Google SEO

Organized Code

Having clean and organized code architecture is key to making sure your web site is search engine friendly. When you have a clean site structure you are laying down the red carpet for search engines and in-turn making the search engine indexing process smooth. It is best to only use one header (H1) tag per page and list the other header tags in logical order.

<h1>Keyword Rich Page Header</h1>

<p>Some descriptive body text.</p>

<h2>Second Level Keyword Rich Page Header</h2>

<p>Some more descriptive body text.</p>

<h3>Third Level Keyword Rich Page Header</h3>

<p>Additional descriptive body text.</p>

The six heading elements, H1 through H6, denote section headings… documents should not skip levels (for example, from H1 to H3)…- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Standards

Simplified Code

Keep text styling out of your page and organize it within a well formed Cascading style sheet (CSS) instead. When using a content management system (CMS) make sure that you are not adding excess code by coping and pasting text from word documents. It has been shown through various testing that Google prefers CSS and that web browsers will be able to load your web site much faster. Search engine spiders want to comb through every piece of your website as fast as possible and because of that using well formed CSS is not something to ignore.

Image Names and Tags

Create descriptive, accurate, relevant file names and tags for images, so search engines can recognize images as content & even index them in image searches. The file name and alt attribute will let search engines an idea of what the image is. Because search engines do not have time to go image by image, their web crawlers rely on these attributes for indexing purposes. Google recommends pairing your file name and alt tag together for best results. Find the examples below.

Not so good:

<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy"/>

Better:

<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy"/>

Best:

<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch"> 

To be avoided

<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy dog baby  dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food"/>

Filling alt attributes with keywords (”keyword stuffing”) results in a negative user experience, and may cause your site to be perceived as spam. Instead, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context. – Google Images

Flash Image Tags

Due to the expandable possibilities that Adobe Flash has brought to the web, the text content alone is easily seen by search engines. Crawlers and spiders don’t recognize flash as content without help. You can however enjoy many of the benefits that flash brings without the heartache. When creating flash slide shows, animations, banners and web sites there are various things that can be done to help search engines recognize content. Using flash elements within an HTML web page by pasting the element code within a DIV and adding a splash of CSS is an easy task that will help your site agree with search engine spiders. In addition, making sure that you properly identify your text and image content within the flash will help you tremendously.

Google can now discover and index text content in SWF files of all kinds, including self-contained Flash websites and Flash gadgets such as buttons or menus. This includes all textual content visible to the user. -Google Flash

Error and Redirect Pages

No one likes to visit a web site with broken links and that includes search engine crawlers and spiders. In order to prevent frustrating visitors and deterring search engines you should have a informational 404 page created. This page will help users search for the missing content or refer them to other pages instead of landing on an empty non-existent page. See the 404 page that we use on our company web design blog, that redirects visitors to article archives by month or subject.

If you have permanently moved content from one URL to another you can prevent users from landing on a 404 page by doing something called a 301 redirect. You can tell your server that the old URL has been moved to a new location. This will not only help users find the new page but transfer the pages ranking. If you do not use this method search engines will think that a new page has been created.

Does your company need a better Search Engine ranking and increased traffic? For a customized Search Engine Optimization program, Contact Taylor Digital Today.