Friday, July 14. 2006
Spying on the competition
Whether your website exists to inform, amuse or sell to people it will be competing with other websites attempting to do the same. In such an environment it is vital to know what the competition is doing if you are to build your website and busniess.
Mention spying to someone and they are likely to think of James Bond movies and unrestrained violence. This is not what I'm suggesting, when I talk about spying I'm talking about market research and protecting your copyright and reputation.
Mention spying to someone and they are likely to think of James Bond movies and unrestrained violence. This is not what I'm suggesting, when I talk about spying I'm talking about market research and protecting your copyright and reputation.
Why Spy?
Whatever niche your website exists in you want to keep up with the latest news. If you are selling a product you need to know as soon as possible if a competitor releases a new product or if they are promoting a product in a new way. If you run a community site you need to know if your competitors are using any new enticements to bring in new members or if they are suffering any setbacks which you need to prepare for in case they begin to affect your site.
If you have any sort of content on your site it is worth watching your competition to ensure that they aren't stealing your material. There is a perception with some people that the internet is a lawless land where anything goes but an email to a webhost should be effective and you should not have to tolerate people stealing your hard work.
Hopefully you are selling good quality products or running a particularly informative content site and as a result of this developing a good reputation. This reputation is worth protecting but as you get more popular so the likelihood that someone will try to damage your reputation increases. By watching your competition you will be able to identify derogatory remarks aimed in your direction quickly and hopefully deal with them in a way that further enhances your reputation.
Preparing to Spy
The first thing you need to do is find out who your competition is. You probably identified at least some of your competitors before you even started creating your website but now you need to make a more thorough search. Your best starting point is just to go to your search engine of choice and throw in the keywords you are optimising your own site for. Your search shouldn't stop there however, it should also include web directories, review sites if they exist and other keyword combinations pulled from sites such as the overture keyword suggestion tool.
Spying on the Competition
Once you have collected a list of your competitors you can begin analysing their website and their business. Hopefully you'll be able to collect a lot of information so before you start you may want to consider how you will store it all. Being able to quickly access information on each of your competitors will allow you to chart their progress in a month or a years time in comparison to your own progress.
Firstly I suggest you start with a thorough analysis of how they promote their website, questions you should consider include:
- Where do they rank in the search engines for the keywords you are interested in?
- How many incoming links do they have?
- What sort of links are these? Reciprocal? Adverts? Content pages?
- What keywords are these links using?
- How does the site rank for these keywords?
Next I suggest you look at their products. If they have a mailing list, sign up (using an email address they can associate with their competition), if it's an information site browse their content and if they are selling a product buy it. It may feel wrong to be sending your competitor business but it is the only way to see their complete order process and fully analyse their product. If you buy their product you can find its strengths and weaknesses and can plan your ad campaigns and promotional literature accordingly.
If they have a forum find out how many members they have and what they are talking about. If they have a complaints or suggestions section browse through it for hints on how to make your own product better.
If they have an affiliate program sign up for that as well and take a look around to see how much support they give their affiliates. If they have sales figures for their top affiliates even better.
Once you have carefully looked at what your competition is doing at the moment it is worth taken a look at what they were doing in the past. You can do this by consulting this website which archives the web and allows you to inspect websites as they appeared in the past.
If your competitor is an incorporated company you may be able to request their accounts, in the UK this can be done from companies house for a small fee, and can provide a lot of information on their sales figures, profit margin and marketing expenditure. Quite often companies operate a website the name of which is completely unrelated to the name of the company and so it could be very difficult discovering which set of accounts you need. Hopefully they will have an 'About us' or 'corporate information' page but if not you may be able to find out their details by looking up who owns the domain name by consulting a whois directory.
Spying on your competition should not be a one-off activity but should be repeated at regular intervals. You want to be looking for differences, if a competitors search engine ranking increases you may be able to discover how to increase your ranking by making the changes they have made. If the earnings of their affiliates appears to fall then let your affiliates know and praise what a brilliant job they are doing.
Hopefully by carefully watching your competitors, copying their successful tactics, avoiding their mistakes and coming up with a few ideas yourself you will be able to improve your market share and steadily grow your business.
Whatever niche your website exists in you want to keep up with the latest news. If you are selling a product you need to know as soon as possible if a competitor releases a new product or if they are promoting a product in a new way. If you run a community site you need to know if your competitors are using any new enticements to bring in new members or if they are suffering any setbacks which you need to prepare for in case they begin to affect your site.
If you have any sort of content on your site it is worth watching your competition to ensure that they aren't stealing your material. There is a perception with some people that the internet is a lawless land where anything goes but an email to a webhost should be effective and you should not have to tolerate people stealing your hard work.
Hopefully you are selling good quality products or running a particularly informative content site and as a result of this developing a good reputation. This reputation is worth protecting but as you get more popular so the likelihood that someone will try to damage your reputation increases. By watching your competition you will be able to identify derogatory remarks aimed in your direction quickly and hopefully deal with them in a way that further enhances your reputation.
Preparing to Spy
The first thing you need to do is find out who your competition is. You probably identified at least some of your competitors before you even started creating your website but now you need to make a more thorough search. Your best starting point is just to go to your search engine of choice and throw in the keywords you are optimising your own site for. Your search shouldn't stop there however, it should also include web directories, review sites if they exist and other keyword combinations pulled from sites such as the overture keyword suggestion tool.
Spying on the Competition
Once you have collected a list of your competitors you can begin analysing their website and their business. Hopefully you'll be able to collect a lot of information so before you start you may want to consider how you will store it all. Being able to quickly access information on each of your competitors will allow you to chart their progress in a month or a years time in comparison to your own progress.
Firstly I suggest you start with a thorough analysis of how they promote their website, questions you should consider include:
- Where do they rank in the search engines for the keywords you are interested in?
- How many incoming links do they have?
- What sort of links are these? Reciprocal? Adverts? Content pages?
- What keywords are these links using?
- How does the site rank for these keywords?
Next I suggest you look at their products. If they have a mailing list, sign up (using an email address they can associate with their competition), if it's an information site browse their content and if they are selling a product buy it. It may feel wrong to be sending your competitor business but it is the only way to see their complete order process and fully analyse their product. If you buy their product you can find its strengths and weaknesses and can plan your ad campaigns and promotional literature accordingly.
If they have a forum find out how many members they have and what they are talking about. If they have a complaints or suggestions section browse through it for hints on how to make your own product better.
If they have an affiliate program sign up for that as well and take a look around to see how much support they give their affiliates. If they have sales figures for their top affiliates even better.
Once you have carefully looked at what your competition is doing at the moment it is worth taken a look at what they were doing in the past. You can do this by consulting this website which archives the web and allows you to inspect websites as they appeared in the past.
If your competitor is an incorporated company you may be able to request their accounts, in the UK this can be done from companies house for a small fee, and can provide a lot of information on their sales figures, profit margin and marketing expenditure. Quite often companies operate a website the name of which is completely unrelated to the name of the company and so it could be very difficult discovering which set of accounts you need. Hopefully they will have an 'About us' or 'corporate information' page but if not you may be able to find out their details by looking up who owns the domain name by consulting a whois directory.
Spying on your competition should not be a one-off activity but should be repeated at regular intervals. You want to be looking for differences, if a competitors search engine ranking increases you may be able to discover how to increase your ranking by making the changes they have made. If the earnings of their affiliates appears to fall then let your affiliates know and praise what a brilliant job they are doing.
Hopefully by carefully watching your competitors, copying their successful tactics, avoiding their mistakes and coming up with a few ideas yourself you will be able to improve your market share and steadily grow your business.
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