Know and Monitor Your Competition
<<continued from Know and Monitor Your Competition
Knowing how to beat the competition requires learning al you can about your competitors.
Exactly Who is Your Competition?
When researching the web utilize tools that make collecting information easier.
"Who is" Inquiries
"Who Is" inquiries enables you to search for the owner of a particular domain name. They are not only a good may to collect contact information, but names and email addresses of similar businesses for joint ventures and link exchanges as well.
Searches like these do not incur a cost. Most registrars provide a "who is" inquiry.
NOTE: When searching a "Who is" on a competitor you'll discover the Internet address of the server which hosts their site - called an "IP address". Take the IP address, go to Whois Source [ www.whois.sc ] and do a reverse IP look-up. This will show you what other sites are hosted on the same server your competitors are running on. If they use a hosting company, not all of the site may be theirs, but it may help tip you off to a competitor running multiple sites.
People Finders
Need a name, address or phone number? Online phone directories are a great place to start:
Who's Linking?
Would you like to find out exactly who is linking to your competition? Two free sources:
a. LinkPopularity.com
When using this tool you'll find out how many sites are currently links to yours in AltaVista, Google and HotBot and exactly which sites they are. Finding out who is linking to you and your competition is useful information. Many sites that gave you competitor a link will be happy to give you one too - all you need to do is ask.
b. Alexa
Alexa is a free web service providing essential information about each site you visit, each company you consider purchasing from, and all of your competitors.
The Alexa Toolbar provides powerful information, such as:
- Traffic: The traffic rank feature tells you how much traffic the site you are viewing receives, based on the number of visits made on the site by Alexa users.
- Contact Info: The contact information of the site owner is provided.
- Site Stats: Popularity and speed ratings, the number of links pointing to a particular site and third-party ratings and reviews.
- Related Links: As you surf, Alexa suggests relevant links to the page you are viewing based on collective actions of those who "surfed" before you'll know exactly where people are going after they visit your competitor's web sites.
- History: Alexa also links to the WayBackMachine. This shows you archived screenshots of your competitor's sites so you can see how they have changed over the years.
Of course, with a simple addition to your robots fiel - all this information can be stopped, so your competition won't know about your site.
Most of this information is available on Alexa.com, but with the toolbar it is right at yoru fingertips. http://download.alexa.com .
NOTE: To keep tabs on your competitors sign up for the free service at ChangeNotes.com. http://www.changenotes.com . Put in your competitors url and you will receive an email every time they change their site! You'll never miss another promotion, product or change again!
Measuring your Site's Performance Against Your Competition's
Take a look under the hood of your competitor's web sites. Using NetMechanic's free toolbox for competitive research, http://www.netmechanic.com , you'll discover:
- How long it takes for their sites to load
- How many bad links they have
- Problems with their HTML
- Browser compatibility
- ..more!
Comparing results with your own site you'll discover where you need to make changes and improvements to ensure your site is user-friendly.
NOTE: If you visit a competitor and they have a free traffic counter, try clicking on it. You'll often be able to access their web site traffic statistics and see exactly how much traffic they're getting.
How do you Rank with Your Competition?
You and your competitor are trying to attract the same search engine traffic, so you need to know your ranking. WebPosition Gold software is a great tool to help you monitor this. It generates reports showing exactly your site ranking in each search engine for specific keywords and phrases enabling you to make improvements and increase traffic.
WebPosition Gold also allows you to monitor your competition! Knowing where your competition has outranked you enables you to take corrective action.
WPG is also a huge time saver. It automatically schedules each report to run on a time frame you specify. If one of your pages is slipping in the rankings you can quickly identify and correct the problem.
Conclusion:
Take the time to research your competition on a regular basis.
- Find out exactly who your competitors are and where they are located;
- Purchase and sample their products and services;
- Carefully study their sites, sales copy, classified ads, banner and other forms of advertising.
By gathering this invaluable information and making improvements to your marketing campaign you'll be able to position yourself as the best - claiming a larger portion of the market.
Analyze your competitions and learn from their mistakes - using this information to your advantage. Model their winning ideas and avoid the problematic areas.
The fastest way to succeed is to emulate those who are already successful. Make simple modifications to improve the formula and you'll be more successful.
|
