Competitive Research

What is Competitive Analysis

• Competitive Analysis is the process of learning about your competitor’s online marketing efforts, as well as, learning about both their strengths and weaknesses

• Competitive analysis should include both SEO and pay-per-click advertising research (assuming your marketing budget allows for PPC efforts)

• This is an important element to online e-marketing success.

Who Is The Competition?

• The brick-and-mortar store across the street may compete with you directly off-line, but online it is an entirely different ball game.

• Your SEO and PPC competitors online are those companies/ businesses that are ranking high for your targeted keywords.

What’s Making Your Competitors Successful?

After your true competitors are determined, you should pay attention to 7 important factors to look at when performing a competitive analysis:

1. Page Rank

2. Inbound Linking Domains

3. Indexed Pages

4. Overall Meta Data Optimization

5. Navigation Structure & Calls-to-Action

6. Social Media Efforts

7. PPC Efforts/ budget/ keywords

1. Page Rank• Google describes Page Rank as:

“Page Rank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher Page Rank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search.”

• This is a number between 1-10 that will show you (in general) how well your competitor’s websites are performing in the search engines (in comparison to your website)

2. Inbound Links• It is important to look at how many

inbound links your competitors have and to understand exactly what domains your competitors are linking to.

• Understanding your competitor’s overall link building strategy can help you determine where to start your own link building efforts.

3. Indexed Pages• Next, it is important to

understand the number of indexed pages your competitors currently have.

• Say you only have 20 pages indexed within Google, and your competitors all have thousands of pages indexed, then you will get a better understanding of the content strategy/ effort needed to keep up with the competition online.

4. Meta Data Optimization• Pay Attention to which

keywords your competitors are optimizing for, as well as, how their meta data is written (this includes the keyword tags, title tag, and description tags).

• The title tags of competitors can also show which keywords they are trying to emphasize over others.

5. Navigation Structure & Calls to Action

• Understand the overall layout of your competitors websites.

• Which pages are they deeming more important in the navigation structure of their site? What is their main call to action and how are they getting their visitor’s attention?

6. Social Media Efforts• Does your competition utilize

blogs? Twitter? Facebook?

• If so, overall how is their social media following?

• In today’s world, social media is becoming more and more important, so pay attention to how your competition is interacting with followers/ fans/ etc. on social media platforms

7. Pay-Per-Click Research• How much money are your

competitors spending on PPC advertising and how many clicks are they getting from this ad spend?

• Also, what keywords are your competitors bidding on and how are their ads written?

This information can help you make an informed decision about whether PPC is right for your business and your overall marketing budget.

How To Get Started With Competitive Research

Two options for competitive research:

1. Do-It-Yourself: There are hundreds of competitive research tools on the web (both paid and free tools). Do some research to see what tools others have recommended.

2. Hire A Professional: By hiring a professional company, like Bayshore Solutions, to perform a competitive online marketing assessment, you are sure to get a quality, accurate, and informative assessment that will get you started down the right online marketing path.

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