What Is Your Competition Up To?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Do you know what your competition is doing online? If not then you should probably do some competitive analysis. And there’s more to analyzing your competition than just clicking on “View Source”. Much more.

Some of the information that you should analyze about your competition include:

• Search engine optimization and pay per click advert keywords lists
• Top referrers
• Top search queries
• Search engine rankings
• Meta data analysis
• List of subdomains
• New products and services
• Social presence

These are just a few of the things that you can collect data on and measure regarding your competition. It makes sense to keep up with who your competitors are what they are doing – beyond subscribing to their blogs and RSS feeds or following them on Twitter. When you perform your competitive analysis, don’t just focus on one company. Compare yourself to your top three competitors as well as a few that are at or below the same level as you in the marketplace. You want to keep an eye on up-and-coming competition too because you never know who will emerge as a market leader and where they will come from.

Competitive analysis is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Don’t leave it out!