How to Quickly Spyon Your Competition

Steve Williams

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

You just surfed to a cool website. It may be a competitor’s site. You maywonder how they built it. What kind of WordPress theme is in use or whatplugins? How about their traffic volume? What are their traffic sources?Which social networks are the most prevalent?

Imagine having quick and free ways to get this information.

Here’s how to get there.

The Tools You NeedAll you need is a Chrome browser and the following five Chrome extensions:

SimilarWebSpyBarOpen Seo StatsMozbarBuzzSumo

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Let’s begin with SimilarWeb.

SimilarWebSimilarWeb is one of my favorite extensions. It provides statistics for:

Estimated monthly visits.Traffic sourcesTop referring and destination sitesTop organic keywordsSocial network sourcesTop Ads networksRelated mobile apps

Let’s examine the estimated visits tab:

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

The above example shows you estimated visits on a website. Please notethese are estimates. It gives you a good idea about how that site is active.

Next the traffic sources tab:

From that graph, you can determine where the traffic comes from.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Next, the social network sources tab:

That one is quite interesting. It reveals the social networks that bring themost traffic.

The above three tabs are the ones you should focus on.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

SpyBarSpyBar is a Chrome extension from Rob Cornish, a respected and honestdigital marketer.

Here is what you can discover with SpyBar on your competitor’s website:

WordPress Theme in useWordPress plugins in useDomain authority and page authorityInbound linksLinking domainsTop pagesReverse IPGoogle site search

Let’s see how this works. When you click on the SpyBar extension, it willdisplay the following three sections:

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

In Section 1, the WordPress theme and child theme are displayed. You canclick on the theme name to discover more. In this example from my website, the Rise theme is in use. If you click on it, it will take you to the ThriveThemes website.

Section 2 lists all the discovered plugins. Only plugins retrieved from thepage HTML code will be displayed. This provides you with a good idea of theplugins used on that site. If you click on any of these links, SpyBar will open anew browser tab to the plugin site.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Section 3 has several links. Let’s examine them:

Moz: invokes Moz Open Site Explorer. It will display metrics such as DomainAuthority and Page Authority. You will also see a list of Inbound Links. thatis, external websites that point to the website you are analyzing.

MajesticSEO: launches a new tab to Majestic Site Explorer. You will getseveral stats and graphs about external links, referring IPs, backlink history,backlink breakdown, etc.

ReverseIP: A new tab will take you to viewdns.info. It will display all thedomains hosted on the same server. In shared hosting environments, it iscommon to see dozens of domains parked on the same server. However, youmay also uncover other domains owned by the same blogger.

WhoIs: Tells you about the website’s domain registration details.

WhoHosts: Reveals the website’s hosting provider (e.g., SiteGround).

Search: This starts a new browser tab with a Google search focusing on thewebsite you are analyzing. E.g., site:www.buzzandtips.com

Download: This will download a text file containing the plugin list.

You can get SpyBar for $12.95 here (non-affiliate link).

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Open SEO StatsThe Open SEO Stats extension provides you with the following information:

The number of indexed pages by search enginesGeolocation informationSite infoPage infoPage speed

The user interface is divided in several tabs. Let’s take a look at the mostinteresting ones.

The next figure displays the SEO stats tab. On the top right, the PagesIndexed reveals how many pages were indexed. Look at Bing and Google.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Let’s have a look at the Page Info tab:

The Page Info tab reveals information such as meta description, this is whatdisplays in a Google search results. It also tells you about the number ofinternal and external links on that page, the canonical URL, etc.

The Link Stats tab (next figure) lists all links found on that page. It alsoshows whether the links are follow or nofollow. More on this later with theMozBar extension.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Finally, the Page Speed tab displays how long this page took to load.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

MozBarThe MozBar extension is maintained by Moz.com. When you visit a website,the MozBar will provide the following information:

Domain authorityPage authorityHighlight links: followed, non-followed, external, internal

NoteYou will need to sign-up for a free account with Moz. Clicking the MozBar icon will toggle one of three states: Inactive, DA modeand Full bar mode. Depending on the state, the MozBar icon will display asfollows:

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

When in DA mode, the value represents the Domain Authority score.

When in Full bar mode, an additional bar will display below your browser’sURL bar as follows:

From the above picture, you can determine that the Domain Authority (DA)is 23. The Page Authority (PA) is 34.

If you click on the pencil icon, it will display extra icons like this:

This allows you to determine whether links are followed, no-followed,external or internal. This feature is quite useful.

Now, if you select the Page Analysis icon, it will allow you to inspect thefollowing:

On-Page elements (see example below)General AttributesLink Metrics, etc.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Related readingFollow Links Vs. No Follow Links: What’s the Difference?How to Add Title and NoFollow to Insert Link Popup in WordPress

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

BuzzSumoThe BuzzSumo extension provides you with the following Social shares for agiven page:

FacebookTwitterLinkedinPinterestGoogle plus

Here is it in action:

Based on the above, Twitter and Facebook are the biggest sharers.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Key TakeawaysHere you go. You now have five quick ways to take a peek at yourcompetition. All of them are free except one. The paid extension, SpyBar, isworth its cost.

You may want to use these techniques on your website too. They will helpyou track your progress and pinpoint issues.

BuzzAndTips.com

How to Quickly Spy on YourCompetition

Learn More About MeClick on the button below to learn about blogging tips,

website monetization, how to get traffic to your website,weekly blogger roundups, product reviews and more.

Learn more

BuzzAndTips.com