They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and there is no exception when it comes to Web SEO.

When embarking on a Web SEO campaign it is important to know who your competitors are – not only the usual ones you know offline, but also your online or ‘keyword’ competitors. There are a lot of factors that go into determining your competitor’s Search Engine ranking but by analysing their on page and off page SEO, you can improve the optimisation of your website and improve your Search Engine position.

Determine who your competitors are

You are searching for your online competitors who may rank highly on Search Engines. These companies do not necessarily command the biggest chunk of market share in your industry although the two usually do follow. Choose two of your primary keywords or industry relative searches that you want to rank for and jot down the 5 or 10 sites that come up on page one of Google.

Create a benchmark

Once you have a solid list of competitors, you can then set about comparing their Web SEO. Remember Search Engine rankings may change depending on your website and competitor’s website activity so make sure you take note of the date that you created your list. You now have a benchmark to work from to compare your results to your competitors.

Comparison techniques

Onsite or On Page SEO: Study your competitors’ websites. Choose the one or two sites that come up on both your searches performed above, and study the sites in detail. This is what you will be looking at:

• Title Tags, Page Headings (the headings in the content itself) – check what keywords they are using
• Meta description tags: right click on the pages and select “View Source” and find the “Meta Description” content at the top of the page – although not used completely anymore, this description is what would make a user click on your listing.
• Images – how are they used, do they have alternative text (if you move your mouse over them, does text pop up)

Keyword density and content: There are free and premium keyword analysis tools on the market that will be able to tell you what keywords that your key competitors are using. You will not always be able to rank highly for competitive keywords but there may be longer tail keywords or missed keyword opportunities that you can use to optimise your website.

Backlinks: Yahoo Site Explorer, Google and Open Site Explorer by SEOMOZ are all good at finding the links that your competitors have used to improve your Web SEO. Open Site Explorer is probably the best as you can export the data into excel where you can find valuable links that you should build for yourself. Here you are looking for quality links, those that appear first – the top 10 or 20, external links, are of interest to you.

Google Places: If you are in the tourism, hotel, retail or trade industry, you can use Google Places to see what reviews and links your competitors have as well – and aim to build similar links for your website. These may be links on suppliers’ or manufacturer’s websites, industry related links, business networking groups or directory links that your website should also be linked from.

Site map: Look for a sitemap link on the website and see how many pages they have – Search Engines like Google, prefer websites with a lot of pages and if you update your site regularly with new pages, it can only help with your Web SEO. If the website doesn’t have a sitemap, then type into the Google search box the site:www.competitorsurl.com.au command to see how many pages have been indexed. However, use this only as a guide.

Age of Domain: Check the age of your competitor’s domain. You can do this by visiting the Whois Database – this gives you free info on the domain name of a website and shows the age of the company and who the registrar is. The age of your competitor’s domains does factor into their ranking as they can be seen to be more authoritative and trustworthy sites in the eyes of Search Engines.

A detailed competitor analysis should be done by an SEO company before embarking on an Web SEO campaign. Analysing this data before you start your SEO strategy can help you get a better understanding of your competition, where you should focus your efforts and help map out the strategy for the campaign. Contact us and we’ll show you how we can give you the competitive edge and structure a Web SEO campaign that is targeted to your business to boost your Search Engine rankings and increase your ROI.