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Learn from your competitors

Written by: Jeremy Spiller

Article Overview: By just looking at one or all of your competitors sites, you can find a lot of very interesting things and learn a lot. This is why competitor analysis really should be in everybody's strategy. How can you stay in a market if you do not know your competitors well!

Learn from your competitors

By just looking at one or all of your competitors sites, you can find a lot of very interesting things and learn a lot. This is why competitor analysis really should be in everybody's strategy. How can you stay in a market if you do not know your competitors well!

A lot of companies tend to ignore that and just only mind their business. But if one day a competitor starts stealing their customers because they are offering a better service, something new, or simply something cheaper, then this might just crash the company.

It is vital in most cases to know what your competitors do, how they work and what they offer. Knowing that a competitor is offering a particular product or service that you do not have will surely help you counter-attack and avoid you losing customers. For a company or a website, competitor analysis has very important roles.

It is helping the company understand what are their strengths or weaknesses compared to their competitors.

It also help understand better what is going to be your competitor's strategy and how they have been working so far.

But it also help you find out what you could do to get a competitive advantage or simply see what possible return on investment you will get.

Looking at one of your competitor's site, there is lot you can learn if you look right. There are now plenty of software you can use to make the task easier. The best thing to do really is to use a software and also do it manually to make sure nothing was missed. There are things like the design or colours that a software will not pick up.

The main elements to look at in a site are which keywords are being targeted for each page and if the pages have been properly optimised. But you also need to look at the number of inbound links the site has and where they come from. By doing that you may find a few interesting sites worth asking to put a link to your site.

After that, you can also look at the services offered, the design and if there is any fun content on it that you could use. A poll or a competition on a site will certainly bring traffic and if your competitors are doing it, why not you!

It is obvious that you should not copy word for word what your competitors are doing. You need to be creative and adapt what you have seen to make it better on your site.

An SEO company will usually offer competitor analysis alongside SEO services.

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Article Tags: competitor analysis, competitors, seo



Related Forum Posts
Re: Onpage Optimisation - That is a good point and one I hope to use to my advantage with my software. I use the very latest technologies and I'm not constrained by previous versions. Having said that, I am new to the market and being better than my competitors isn't enough, I have to convince people that my software is better than my competitors.
Re: Onpage Optimisation - Yes, they are very important in onpage optimization. However, competition is main in SEO whether you are doing on-page or off-page. Suppose if any competitor is 5 years old and you started to compete that site then you would be able to us new technologies which your competitors may not have used hence it is easy to overcome the competitors.
Re: Let's talk about financial stress - Well then should an entrepreneur be more concerned about what his/her competitors are doing or what he/she needs to do in order to succeed? You could always look at it like the "glass if half full" rather than half empty. For example, if your company is struggling during the financial crisis then maybe it will help to take out some of your competitors in the process.
Do Market Analysis First - I think you should analysis of your market first, so you can come up with a business plan for yourself . You should know what is your strength /weakness and competitors/customers..... what is your strategy to get your business out beat your competitors.. The more you study the market , the better plan you have. The business plan usually include the what to do /who do it/ when will do / when finish / what's budget/ and may be contingency plans ... Good Luck!
Max's offbeat (off the wall, crazy, super) marketing ideas - okay maybe they are not that exciting but here they are: 1. forming alliances with non local competitors to streamline business processes, and share marketing information and sales success/horror stories. This will save both companies time and money and make them both stronger. 2. Taking your competitors promotions and using them against them by honouring their promotions if presented to you. 3. Using youtube video and viral marketing (especially if you sell toys) to get brand awareness and newsletter sign ups.


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