Free Website Content - Spy on Your Competitors; 10 Tips
To Monitoring The Competition
The old adage, "keep your friends close,
and your enemies closer", is applicable not only to personal
relationships but business relationships as well. While
I'm not suggesting that you befriend your competitors, it
is important that you are cognizant of your competitors'
business ventures and methods.
It is important to realize that while monitoring
your competitors is essential, it could easily become an
obsession. Therefore, it is crucial that you strike a balance
when incorporating it into your business plan. There are
several ways to conduct successful stealth competitive intelligence
operations. While it is fanciful to imagine yourself as
a secret agent or spy, none of these techniques are difficult,
hidden or secretive. In fact, most of them are tools or
services available to all businesses.
1. Ego Searches What are ego searches?
Ego searches are keywords or keyword phrase searches for
a specific brand, product, or company name. Ego searches
are a great way to monitor mentions of a competing product.
You can automate the set up of ego searches using RSS, so
anytime a competitor's product or brand name is mentioned
in the news, blogosphere, or print you receive notification
and the details in an RSS feed.
How to Setup Ego Feeds - http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm
Create RSS Ego Searches - http://www.rss-tools.com/ego-search-feeds.htm
2. Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence is defined as the process of gathering
actionable information in a competitive environment. Competitive
Intelligence is researching the business environment or
techniques that another business uses. Competitive Intelligence
is often used to influence a strategy for business development.
First, it is necessary to know your competition.
Background research can be conducted using the tools at
DNS Stuff http://www.dnsstuff.com
, and various other websites. The DNS stuff website
will allow you to do a whois lookup. A number of other research
tools are also available on the site.
3. Google Alerts
Receive notification via email on the latest relevant Google
search results (web, news, etc.). Define the Google Alerts
using a competitors company name or product name. http://www.google.com/alerts
http://www.googlealert.com/ (3rd party tracking
service) - Google Alert is the web's leading automated search
and web intelligence solution for monitoring your professional
interests online. It tracks the entire web for your personalized
topics and sends you new results by daily email.
4. Meta Tags
Have you ever considered what keywords or phrases a competitor
is targeting on their website? Have a peak at their meta
tags by simply viewing the webpage source. Pay particular
attention to the header tags that include title, description,
and keywords. Are these keywords part of your marketing
mix?
5. Information
Arm yourself with information. The Googspy website is particularly
useful when used properly. Enter a keyword, company name,
or domain, click the results and view the companies top
25 competitors. If any of those websites are using pay per
click on Google, you will also be able to obtain a partial
list of the adwords they have purchased. The website gives
you a glimpse inside competitors, but the list they provide
is by no means exhaustive. http://www.googspy.com
6. Incoming Links
There are a number of ways to determine who is linking to
a competitor.
A simple search can be conducted in Google
and MSN for "link:domain.com" (replace domain.com with competitor's
domain). In Yahoo enter a search for "linkdomain:domain.com"
(again replacing domain.com with your competitors name).
The search will produce all webpages that provide a link
to your competitor. Ideally you can request links from the
websites as well.
Other BackLink Tools - http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/
Search for Places to Submit to; this site
auto-generates http://www.webuildpages.com/search/
another tools that works in a similar way - http://tools.seobook.com/general/link-suggest/
; simply enter the keyword and a list of sites that will
allow you to request links appears.
7. Alexa Ranking
Use Alexa to determine not only who is linking to a competitor,
but also to determine what sites are related (list yours)
. Alexa monitors web traffic trends, and a list of similar
websites. Alexa also has the ability to show a website's
popularity trends. http://www.alexa.com
8. Website Monitoring
It is generally a good practice to monitor competitors,
and you can do this using a tool like CodeMonitor. CodeMonitor
takes a snapshot of a websites' HTML and notifies of any
changes. The differences in the web pages are highlighted,
making it easy to discern what changes occurred. CodeMonitor
is a free online tool, that can be found at: http://www.emarketingperformance.com/tools/codemonitor/
9. Comparison Tools
MarketLeap has some great search comparison tools that allow
for you to compare domains and ranking. Marketleap's Trend/History
report gives you a view of how you or a competitors website's
Search Engine Saturation has performed over time. It also
verifies search engine placement based on keywords so you
can quickly discern a competitors ranking for various phrases
in the top search engines. http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
10. Other Useful Spy Tools
Domain tools has a mark alert that allows you to monitor
the use of a trademark. They also have a number of domain
tracking and monitoring tools that can be helpful. http://www.domaintools.com/
Keep in mind that while you should be aware
of the direction a competitor is moving. I do not advocate
copying a competitor. These tools above are to assist businesses
in monitoring their competition. I am not suggesting that
you replicate, duplicate, or copy anything that a competitor
does. Use the competitive intelligence to make sound business
decisions about the direction you want to take.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and
podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage
http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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the issue or a link to any online posting would be greatly
appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
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