How to do competitor website analysis - #CompeteSEO

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I would like to share my learning from Competitor’s SEO Program, I must say it was very detailed analysis and it has added to my current way of analyzing a website. We all know how to do website analysis but what Marios Alexandrou spoke about was a value addition to what we normally know.

Before starting any job we must ask four basic questions. What, Why, When, How.

• What are we going to do?  Its pretty simple, we are going to analyze a competitor’s website.

• Why we are doing it? We are doing it to motivate clients to do SEO for their websites, we want to show them where their competitors are standing and how they can also avail the same market share as their competitors are having.

• When to do it?  That’s up to you. You can do it when you get a new SEO enquiry, you can do it for you current SEO client.

• How to do it? Well this is quite long answer, so here we go….

The First step is to find out who are your client's competitors. How are you going to find it? Quite simple, ask you clients who are their competitors, do a Google search for their keywords & find out who are the market leaders and which businesses are competing with your client.

Once you have a list of competitors go to compete.com, check for their monthly traffic and find out where your clients is standing vis-a-vis the competitors.

Now zero down on one of the competitors, and then start the following analysis –

Technical -

• Crawl the site, find out total number of URLs, internal linking structure, how the link equity is been distributed.
• Do some analysis on Title of the pages, what are they emphasizing on, whether its Brand name, product name or commodity name?
• In the next part view page source, compare Google view with text only, find if canonical tag is been used in the site. Find out automatic injection of internal link building is being used.
• How many pages has Google indexed for their website, page speed of the website?

On page –

• Quickly scan through the website pages & look for the quality of content, keyword usage & what kind of keyword they are targeting.
• Check out how images are being used, Alt tags are filled or they are empty, do they have blog, if yes how they are utilizing it, what benefits is the blog providing them.
• Are they using videos, how they are promoting their website through video content?
• How content is helping them to generate traffic for their website, how quick they are adding content to the site or blog. 

Off site- 

• This section is for doing link research; find out the domain trust, domain authority, page authority.
• Find out total number of links they getting, what quality of links they are, use majestic seo, open site explorer.
• Find out what all link building activities they are doing, how many links they getting from articles, are they using badge linking.
• How active are they on social media, what initiatives are they taking and how much audience is involved with them. Check out their Facebook, twitter, digg accounts.

After doing all this, I am sure you will have a clear picture of how strong your competitor is.

I hope you enjoyed the article. I would love to hear your suggestions, please do share them via the comments section below.…

How to write effective blog content

Image by jjpacres via Flickr

1.     One of the most important things you need to keep in mind when you are writing a web copy is to hold your readers attention from the start of your content. Your title should be very attractive and catchy which force visitors to click on your post to know more about it, apart from post title, your initial post should be able to hold visitors interest in the post, you can try telling about some facts or about a recent research which will gain their interest in further reading.

2.       In body, try to explain what your target visitor must be looking when it came to your website. What is the thing which pulled him to the website; explain it using chart, diagrams, or pictures.

3.       Make your message very clear to the audience, don’t use jargons.

4.       Do proper formatting of your article, research has shown when the copy looks clean more no of people intend to read it.

5.       Use small paragraphs, don’t go on & on, take a pause after every conversation.

6.       Use headlines, use bold, italics, underline wherever required.

Related articles

• 10 Steps for Writing an Effective Blog Post (marketingtechblog.com)

Build online contest to gain more Facebook fans & twitter followers

Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

Every business seeks to promote its products / services online. To improve the efficiency of their website and the resultant sales, these businesses approach SEO Company to get search engine optimization done for their website.

However in today’s competitive environment, only SEO is not enough. Today you need to reach out to your customers, in their offices, homes and sometimes right in their bedrooms!!! Yes. It’s no more about just selling, today you need to build a connect, a relation with your customer. Social media optimization offers the best platform for this.

Strategizing is the keyword. Every business needs a Social Media Strategy, which will aim to maximize its reach. You need to go out and interact with the customer, and socializing is the best way to build better relations. With internet, you can socialize right from the convenience of your office, social media platforms are the best place to interact and engage your customer.

Websites are a passive medium, they offer all details about your product/service and the customer can browse through it, but social media is alive and kicking, and everybody loves a healthy discussion. Social media is fun and interactive, and you nee to make sure your strategies are best designed to harness the power of this media.

One of my personal favourite strategy using Social Media is something that will excite and invigorate your customer about your products or services. Its - A Contest!!! You got it right, running a well planned and interesting contest, can work wonders for any business. It can generate enormous buzz and fresh interest amongst your customers about your business.  
 
Enough of all this theory, now let’s talk about the how you should go about designing the perfect contest, to engage and excite your customers

Pre-requisites to Design a Social Media Contest:–

1.      Your target audience: Clearly define your target audience, demographically and geographically; whom you intend to target for this Contest

2.      What is your goal: Every Strategy has a goal, so also with your contest, having a clearly defined goal is very essential; what is the final outcome you  are seeking from this contest in terms of no of fans, sales etc

3.      Cost: Clearly defined budget helps in keeping the expenditure in check. What is the amount you are willing to spend on this contest? Will it be sufficient to attract your audience? So on.

Once these parameters are defined, go about designing the perfect Contest. Now once designed, it’s all about getting the contestant for your contest. Spreading the word far and wide is what will attract your customers and make your contest worth its money. Our suggestion, don’t make your contest Social Media friendly, make it right on the Social Media!! Here’s how:

How to use Social media to Design the Perfect Contest


Facebook is the perfect launch-pad for your Contest, so ready and launch a Facebook campaign - 

• Create & update contest on Facebook, use an attractive title which will intrigue and draw visitors to join your contest.
• Utilize the Facebook updates application and be sure to send all your existing fans the latest about your new Contest; and call them all to join in.
• Run ads on Facebook about the contest.
• Send newsletter to your existing customers about this contest & encourage them to join your contest.
• Encourage the participants of the contest to share the contest details with their friends.
• To keep the contest fresh and interesting, persuade the participants to keep commenting on the wall of your contest page.
• Participants must like your updates on the contest.

Don’t forget the power of Other Media’s like Twitter, Stumblr, Delicious etc…

• Promote your twitter account to your contest participants.
• Get your contestants to follow you on twitter. The more the merrier.
• Encourage them to retweet your messages & comment on the updates.
• Get your contestant to go social and share your contest page via all the mediums like Stumblr, Delicious etc….

Get going, implement all ideas, and see them work their magic for your business. While focussing on the big things do not overlook the smaller details. Create a proper landing page for visitors to join this contest, use good images & attractive language.

All these small points are very important. Keep them in mind.

All the Best!!!