Once you have all of your fundamentals out of the way, your search engine rankings are all going to come down to your content and your inbound links, but it also comes down to what your competitors are doing too.
For our clients, we use and highly recommend these two tools for competitive analysis, and we’ve been subscribers to all three for years. Without them, we couldn’t do our jobs.
SEMrush
SEMrush is a remarkable product that includes Analytics reports for organic research, paid search ads, display advertising, product listing ads, keyword research and even competitors. They offer a keyword difficulty tool and a domain vs. domain tool, plus various charts, position tracking, and even a site audit.
Want an SEMrush Promo Code that gives you six weeks for the price of four? Use SEMRUSH-J947236W (or just Click here )
SpyFu
Spyfu offers various tools for internet marketers, including leads & contact info for domains, a “Kombat” tool for comparing up to three domains at a time, a SmartSearch for keyword discovery, a complete PPC Ad History, weekly rank tracking, and the “Keyword Groupie”.
They also offer historic rankings since Spyfu first began, a backlink builder, and SEM Top Lists. Their Recon Files reporting tools are simply astounding, for both Organic SEO and for PPC reports.
Bright Local
Both SEMrush and Spyfu are great for medium to large websites, but we’ve found that they lack data for smaller businesses. If you don’t have thousands of visitors monthly, there’s only so much they can tell you.
That’s where Bright Local comes in, and at only $20 per month, we put every single local client we service into that platform. They offer ranking reports, an on and off page site analysis, citation tracking, and they even a citation listing listing service available.
If you’re a “do it yourselfer” with a local business, you’ll find an incredible value with Bright Local.
You Have to be Bettter
You have to have more and better content than the next site, and the same thing goes for your inbound links, where quality matters much more than quantity.
You have to know what your competition has in their arsenal in order for you to fight this war. You need to know how many pages they have in the index, how many inbound links they have, and exactly where those links come from. By knowing that, you can determine how valuable each link is to their ranking.
Armed with that knowledge, you can begin to be competitive, by going after their link partners directly, and getting them to link to you also, or in some cases, link to you instead.
Most SEO experts agree that once your structure is in place, there’s no more powerful strategy than going after your competitors most valuable links.
If you’re engaging in pay per click advertising, it’s also important to know what keywords your competition is bidding on, how much they’re paying for those phrases, and which are their best performing ones.
At Search Commander, Inc. we perform a detailed competitive analysis of your bidding competitors for all of our monthly consulting clients. Once you’re armed with this knowledge, there’s nothing you can’t rank for, and at the best possible price.
Note:
Effective 9/2007 we are no longer providing these competitive research services a la carte, and are ONLY doing them for our monthly consulting clients.