Knowledge gained is highly valuable under all circumstances, especially when you are new to the Search Engine Optimization industry.
• Make a list of your SEO Competitors
The scrutinizing process becomes impossible without a list of competitors. You should know who your competitors are in the SEO industry. Identifying your competitors is both easy and difficult in an ironical way. If you own an offline business, identification process becomes easier. All you need to do is visit their websites. In other cases, it becomes daunting. Your SEO competitors could be websites that rank well or higher for your significant keywords or even direct competitors for your long tail keywords. Make use of search engines such as Google and search using your target keywords and then make your list based on companies that appear high in search results. This final list is your major competitors list.
• Analyze your competitor’s website
The second most crucial stage is the analysis and the data you infer from your competitor’s website. This gives you a direction regarding what your firm’s drawbacks or shortcomings are and help you work towards improving them. Check for details such as how professional is the design of their website is, how much content does the website portray, quality of those contents, whether they use dynamic or static URL’s etc.
• Analyze Competitors website’s keywords
SEO and keywords work in tandem. It is the success rate of the keywords that decides the fate of the website. By analyzing your competitor’s website and its related set of keywords, you’ll understand a pattern in which these competitors have worked with their keywords and why they deserve such a high rank amongst search engine result sets. This will help you to learn how to use your set of keywords and push them higher in terms of ranking to get an overall good rank for your website ethical SEO wise. Make use of specialized tools such as Website Keyword Suggestion tool and Keyword Density Cloud Tool to identify significant keywords of your competitors and also check for its keyword density respectively. You can make a detailed and efficient analysis of keywords by using specialized tools for the purpose.
• Check for Backlinks
Second most important parameter when it comes to search engine optimization is the backlinks parameter that contributes to overall rank of the website. Hence check for your competitor’s backlinks. Understand that it is not about quantity when it comes to backlinks. It is about quality links that the website holds that matters more.
• Check other SEO factors
Factors such as Page Ranks in Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, total number of indexed pages the site has with the same search engines, internal links navigational structure and many more significantly influences website’s overall rank. Check those SEO factors of your competitors.
• Competitors presence in Social Media
Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube etc has in a way revolutionized the art of SEO. Every SEO company has turned towards Social media optimization strategies for more business opportunities. Check out how your competitors are doing well in those social media sites.
• Understand how Competitors use PPC Ads
PPC simply drives good traffic for websites. It’s cheaper and efficient. Google Adwords is highly popular in this context. By opting for such PPC campaigns, you tend to increase opportunities for your business. And by using specialized tools such as Analyze Competition tool limited for only Google PPC campaigns such as Adwords, you can understand how well your competitors are doing in these Ad campaigns. You can also understand where the scope of improvement for your firm lies.