Thinking about adding an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to your advertising and marketing campaign this year? Before starting your program, it is important to first know who your online competitors are and what kind of online marketing strategies they are already doing. You will want to take some time to research and analyze your local and national competitors online…before they analyze you first.
Here are some guidelines and questions to consider while performing research on the Internet about your competitors:
Website Design and Layout
· Are your competitors using a search engine friendly Web design, like a basic HTML or ASP site?
· Are they using JavaScript, a dynamically-driven site, frames, or tables that will prevent search engines from properly indexing their sites?
· Are any Web sites built entirely in flash?
· Are their sites easy to navigate with a professional look and feel by using the same font styles and sizes and similar color schemes throughout?
· How heavily are the graphics on the Web site?
· How many Web pages total does each of your competitors have on their site? Does your site need improvement on the amount of content-rich Web pages you have?
· Does the entire Web site focus on one central theme alone?
Placement of Keywords
· Where are your competitors using their chosen keywords? The META title tag? The META description tag? The META keywords tag? In ALT tags? What about in link text and headline tags? The page URL? Image names?
· How often do those keywords appear on each Web page?
· Where does each of their keywords first appear on the pages of each of your competitors sites?
· Are they achieving good rankings for their chosen keywords online in Google, MSN and Yahoo!?
· What is the keyword weight and density of the entire content of your competitors’ pages? Are they keyword spamming?
· What are their chosen keywords being targeted on their sites? Are they single words or long-tail keywords with 3, 4 or even 5 keyword phrases?
Off Page Factors
· Check your competitors Alexa traffic rank and compare with yours. Do they receive more or less Web traffic to their sites, according to Alexa.com?
· What is their Google PageRank? Again, is it higher or lower than yours?
· Go to a reputable link popularity checker online and compare the number of incoming links your site has versus your competitors. How much improvement in link building, if any, does your site need to effectively compete online?
· What types of incoming links are they receiving, how top quality are these links, and how much traffic does a link from these sites generate for your competitors each month?
· Are any of your competitors registered with any popular link directories, like dmoz.org, Yahoo! Directory, Business.com or other similar high traffic directories online?
· Do they have a sign up box for an industry email newsletter on their sites?
Use of Spamming Techniques
· Is the competitor’s site using any spam or unethical search engine practices? If so, what are they?
· Do any of these sites have doorway or gateway pages?
· Do they have same color text on a same color background?
· Are they blatantly keyword spamming?
· Are these sites publicly listed or affiliated with gambling or adult-oriented sites?
About the Author:Wendy Suto is president and CEO of Search Circus, offering trendy, hot natural SEO services. Suto is a certified search engine optimization consultant, and gives SEO seminars throughout Cleveland, Ohio.
wendy@searchcircus.com
Got a Question? Ask.
Ask the community a question about this article:
Q&A Powered by:
Latest SEO Articles
Search Engine Marketing - Do Your Business Online by PPC
By: Darwin Sheild | 15/10/2008
Search engine marketing is an online business technique. Search engine marketing will help with the web site's ranking positions in search engines and create more traffic to the web site and converting the visitors in sales.
What You Know Before Going for Search Engine Optimization
By: pntglobal | 15/10/2008
If you are owner of a web site, you should think for Search Engine Optimization. It is time consuming job and need patience but in the long run Search Engine Optimization is the most beneficial thing for your web site. It gives life to your web site on cyber net and keeps your web site working for you.
The Importance of Seo
By: gurujitwo | 15/10/2008
Concentrate on the internal and analysis areas of the optimization for Google. I will review 3 essential areas. Let’s start:
Why do you need to use Google Sitemaps.
If your site has hundreds of pages, then a compressed version of the file can be created. You are required to create an account with Google in order to take advantage of this feature. Two things to consider before uploading the sitemap file are to verify that your robots.txt allows Google to craw the site for this to work in the
Web Analytics Technologies
By: pntglobal | 15/10/2008
There are two main technological approaches to collecting web analytics data. The first method, log file analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.
How Can You Start Your Own Video Blog?
By: gurujithree | 15/10/2008
Video Blogs have an appealing affect to the people who see it and who sympathize with its content. They are a phenomena, and here to stay. Mainstream entertainment is wired with video blogging. Here, in Blog world, you are the director of your own video. Commonly referred to and known as vlogs (short term for video blog), contents usually contain simply scenes of everyday life.
SEO and Website Design Methods to Follow
By: WebmasterM | 15/10/2008
SEO is all about receiving the sites with top privileges on the major search engines with the core intension to strike the definite consumers. You can publicize the website by utilizing different tackles, procedures and search engine optimization approaches.
A Few Things to Notice if You Want Convertible and Stable Web Traffic
By: Jefery Smiles | 15/10/2008
In most of the cases when working with SEO service providers, to be competitive they will offer very attractive service charges and to build up fast satisfaction from the clients every “kind” of internet marketing techniques are going to be used.
Developing Recommendations for Optimization
By: Deepti Bansal | 15/10/2008
By focusing on the search terms your customers actually use, search engine optimization (SEO) helps ensure your website attracts customers, not just browsers.And increasing business while keeping costs low is the aim of every marketing strategy.
More from Wendy Suto
I Am a Small Business Owner, so I Don’t Need a Web Site
By: Wendy Suto | 09/03/2008 | Internet Marketing
I am a small business owner, so I do not ever have any need for a business Web site. Did I mention I am also naïve, ignorant and just down right behind the times, unlike my local competition? After all, do I really need a Web site?
Back in Time to Learn the History of SEO
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | SEO
There are many theories of how search engines and search engine optimization (SEO) initially began. Learn the history of SEO.
How to Survive and Thrive your Business Online
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | Online Promotion
More than ever, success is now measured in speed. Today it is
about thriving in an ever-evolving world where everything changes so rapidly - and that applies to any business.
Choose Pixel Advertising Sites Wisely, and Know Who All Profits
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | Online Promotion
A new form of Internet advertising has recently exploded and it is receiving a lot of response lately - pixel advertising.
10 Not-so-obvious Ways to Promote your Web Site
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | Online Promotion
Just because traditional media has been around for so long, doesn’t mean they still aren’t effective when it comes to providing more opportunities to promote your Web site. While many business owners still use traditional media advertising, sometimes simply placing their Web site URL in their paid advertising isn’t as obvious as one might think.
Google’s Advanced Search Operators to Assist SEO Efforts
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | SEM
In order to find more detailed information about your Web site for marketing and research purposes, Google offers handy advanced search operators to make your searches more precise and to obtain more useful results.
Designing a Search Engine Friendly Web Site for SEO
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | SEO
There are many factors that hinder search engines from ranking Web sites for many keywords. When web development companies create Web sites, often they do not create Web sites for the search engines. Usually, they design sites strictly for Internet users.
Add Corporate Blog Marketing to your SEO Toolkit
By: Wendy Suto | 03/05/2007 | Online Promotion
Want to increase your company’s presence online quickly and stand out as an industry leader? Start a corporate blog campaign with your company. When maintained properly, a corporate blog allows CEOs and other business executives the opportunity to connect on a personal level with prospects, increase sales and reach out to endless media representatives.
Internet 
