Scoping Out The Competition
Here is a wonderful post submitted in by a guy named Owen who runs a blog titled, The Linux Blog. Some pretty good strategy about assessing and dealing with your competition. I am sure you’ll enjoy it. My family and I are going to Disney World in five days and will be gone for five days. If you’d like to see your posts go live on GCDC you can register for an account and write your post. Simply save your post and “Submit For Review”. I’ll then review it and schedule it for inclusion.
In business knowing your competition is vital for staying in business. The same goes for your website or blog, if you want to make it to the top you should scope out your competition to aid in your success. In this article I am sharing some tips in checking out your competition.
Firstly you have to know who your competition is. Performing searches on your keywords is a good way to find out who your basic competition is. Searches in Yahoo, Google and MSN will produce different results. Take note of all of the sites that are listed for the keywords that you want to be listed for. You can choose to include every result from each engine, the results that appear in two or more or just those that appear in all three.
After getting a list of sites that are competing with me I generally browse to the pages by copy and pasting the URL into my browser so that the owner does not get any more statistics on the keyword I used to find them.
Once I am at the competitions website I determine the quality of the content, design and navigation so that I know the quality of the product I need to produce. Sites with hard to find content, bad designs and navigation are annoying to the end user so they are more likely to move on (hopefully to your site.)
Note the age of the competition, how long have they been in the game? Are they new in this business or are they a seasoned expert? If it is a blog a post date is a good indication but for a site or to get a specific date check out Whois records and the Internet Archive. Performing site searches on the domains in major search engines will give an idea of how many pages they have indexed, how many links they have and the last time they were cached. For Google try the following:
site:thelinuxblog.com
link:thelinuxblog.com
cache:thelinuxblog.com
Knowing how many pages are in the cache for this site, how many links they have and the last cache date is useful information to have. You will have a better idea of how many pages need to be indexed, how many links you have and the quality of the content.
DomainTools.com have some great information on sites. They give you some good information for free but want some money for detailed information. Check out: http://whois.domaintools.com/<target domain>
Other sites your competition may own are easy to scope out and you shouldn’t need to pay for the information DomainTools provides in their detailed report. Once you find the IP address of the server (found from domain tools) go to windows live search (live.com) and type the following:
IP:<site ip>
This will list all of the websites that are hosted on that IP. Whois all of these domains and see which ones are owned by your competition. Note: this will not work 100% on shared hosting.
Check out how well the competition is optimized for search engines. Manual assessment can be used or tools like http://builtwith.com/ and http://www.domaintools.com/seo-score/
Some people may scoff at these next two tips but I believe that it is also good information to have.
The first is Google Page Rank or GPR. This has some effect on how you are ranked in Google so you might as well take a quick look at your competing GPR.
Alexa Information. I know its not all its cracked up to be, but you can at least get some additional information from it.
I hope that this information helps you climb to the top with your ventures in on the internet.
- Owen.
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9 comments
Any one else have any tips on scoping out the competition?
When you provide such an extensive article like this… it doesn’t leave much left for people to chip in their input. I think you got all the bases covered. Very nice article dude… thanks for taking the time to write it and place value in my blog by publishing it here.
You got the green light to publish more content here for everyone to read… I am sure many will agree with me.
Nice work man!
Well, I do think I left one thing out, and that is Micro Niche Finder. I’ve purchased it and have to say that it is really good software for the money. It has really helped me boost traffic on some of my niche sites. I’ve had some problems with the software but the support for it is awesome. I’ve had every single issue with it resolved. Whats the URL for it again Garry?
Here is the URL:
http://www.garryconn.com/mnf
I am sure that everyone including their grandmother knows that link by now! This URL redirects to with a referral so that I can get credit for the sale.
If for some reason you do not want to purchase Micro Niche Finder while using my referral, you can get to the same page by going to http://www.micronichetool.com/
This URL Pays Me: http://www.garryconn.com/mnf
This URL Does Not: http://www.micronichetool.com/
Both URLS reach the same destination and both URLS link to the product that cost the same.
Great article and tips.
I may have to reconsider it, but I don’t typically look at anyone as being in competition with me. I go after a keyword, and I don’t look at what the other sites are doing.
It’s a lot different than dealing with Brick and Mortar type business. I am in competition with myself to get my blogs read and have the best SERPS for particular keywords. How many pages or how good someone else’s PR is, has no bearing on it for me.
IMHO
David Good Point
Some times in online business it is good to know what they are going after so that you don’t go after exactly the same thing when there is a wide open market for another keyword.
@ David,
By default there are 10 results show per SERP page, unless you go in and change that display option. What do you mean by you’re in competition with yourself? Are you implying that you knock the competition completely off page 1 and compete with yourself on that respect? I’d enjoy reading more details about this if you’d be willing to provide.
Owen, I just do it different, I don’t care what anyone else goes after. I am trying to get a good listing for a keyword or phrase that fits my site(s).
Garry, You know better than that, lol. I just mean I do not see it as a competition with other sites. I am doing what I do, and I am doing it to the best of my ability. I use MNF to verify my title and phrasing, I may not be in Top 5, but I usually get results across several terms that deliver.
I’ve had good success and I owe it to scoping out competitors. I get as much nitty gritty as I can. In order to be successful you need luck or ingenuity, and to be honest the former isn’t in most people’s favor. I can’t reveal all my secrets but I can tell you I go as deep as possible gathering whatever I can on who my competition is. It may sound odd but I try to flag out what kind of person they are, what they eat, what they dream of, who they are basically. With that info there’s a lot I can do including anticipate their reaction.
It sounds crazy, but it works although it requires lots of time and resources but honestly it pays off. I have a finger in all my competitors proverbial pies, and what keeps them in check is that they know I know more about them then they do on me. I’m a fair guy, I’m quite nice and I don’t like to play hardball – I help my competitors whenever it doesn’t hurt me to do so, but in having this information it secures my ventures because my competitors know not to try anything slimy on me.
I could go on, but I’m planning on creating a free blog about this kind of stuff.So I’ll save it for that.
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