Your performance will always be judged based on your counterparts, be it any discipline. We all adhere to the rank system and Search Engine Optimization is no exception. It is vital to keep an eye on your competitor’s strategy and be aware of their whereabouts. Competitive analysis has often been deemed as a part and parcel of the company’s strategy.

A few tips for effective competitive analysis:

1.                      1.   Know your Competitors - Decide who your competitors are. It is necessary that they have to be your counterparts. In case you have opened a small online website that sells books, you cannot expect it to rank ahead of Infibeam or Flipkart. You must target sites in your niche and the ones that rank well for your key keywords. This analysis may give you a long list of competitors whom it is impossible to monitor. Your competitors can be the ones who appear topmost on Google’s search list when you search in Google with your target keywords.

       2.  Examine these sites - Once you are done with identifying them, you need to visit these sites and study them carefully. Have a proper understanding of their content (quantity and quality), the nature of URLs (static or dynamic), their design, their title tags, meta description and URL naming convention. You must also try to study their authority on the online turf other than just pondering on the organic SERP.

3.                      3.    Analyze the keywords that your competitor’s employ - SEO mechanism revolves around keywords. Know why the site ranks ahead or below you. Irrespective of belonging to the same niche, their keywords may differ from yours. This can help you grasp with a completely different perspective. Tools like Website keyword suggestion tool can be used to compare your and your competitor’s keywords,  and determine their efficiency.

4.                            4.     Research on the backlinks they bank on - Backlinks act as a nucleus for SEO rankings. Probing into the study of their backlinks will help you understand their approach towards SEO. Incase you find them to be of good quality, you can contact them too. A few tools you can use to analyze the same include Backlink Summary and Backlink Anchor Text Analysis.

              5. Consider Other SEO factors - Think beyond keyword analysis. Check their ranking on search engines other than Google like Yahoo and Bing. Also, check the number of indexed pages in the site.

                      6.  Study their Social Media Presence - At present, presence in social media is indispensable. Start your ranking with social bookmarking. Check their status and updates on trending social bookmarking sites. If they are highly popular on social media sites and garnered good response, try to comprehend the reason for the same.

                      7.   Peek into their PPC strategy - PPC is one of the most effective means to drive traffic to your site. With tools like Analyze Competition by Google, you can directly compare your PPC performance with your competitors.

 While this may seem to be eating up a lot of your time and energy, it will definitely make you aware of a different perspective and approach. You can learn both from their correctness and from mistakes.

Summary: Your competitor is the best person from whom you can learn. Examining their sites and its feature and comparing it with your site will make you aware of your strength and weaknesses. Understanding their strategy with respect to PPC, keyword, backlinks will acquaint you with a few ideas and techniques that you could employ in your site.?yola-link-is-coming=true

About: This article is written by Convonix, a leading internet marketing firm and the first dedicated firm to offer SEO in India.Convonix regularly disseminates research content on the dynamic field of Search Engine Optimization.