In business, it certainly helps to know what your competition is doing. By keeping your eye on your competition, you can:1) see what they are doing right and
2) see what they are doing, period.
Sun Tzu said that we should keep our friends close, but our enemies closer. There are a number of nifty tools available to legally and ethically analyze your competitors’ websites, most of which are free. Knowledge can be your best ammunition against your competition and if you know what they are doing as well as what they are doing RIGHT, then half your battle is won.
1. Xinu Returns – http://xinureturns.com
How well is your competitor’s site doing in search engines such as Google and Yahoo? How about in social bookmarking sites? You canfind out this and other technical details with this handy tool. It will also compare your site to your top five competitors.
2. WayBackMachine – http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Want to see how your competitor’s site has evolved over time? Maybe you want to see what they changed (that maybe wasn’t working) and what remained the same (because it WAS working).
This tool will let you see how your competitor’s site has changed and evolved over time.
This tool will let you see how your competitor’s site has changed and evolved over time.
3. Websitegrader – http://websitegrader.com
Wouldn’t it be handy if you could see how your competitor’s website scored in areas like SEO, traffic, social popularity and other pertinent areas? Websitegrader is a tool that can do that, even offering advice on how to improve the site in regards to its marketing ability.
4. Twittergrader – http://twitter.grader.com
The cousin to Websitegrader, gives information on your competitors’ Twitter accounts.
5. Statbrain – http://www.statbrain.com
This tool looks at a site’s Alexa Rank, backlinks and other factors to estimate the number of visitors to a site. While it does not access log files or information from hit counters, it can give you a rough estimate of what kind of traffic the site is seeing.
6. Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alertsThis is a must for your website as well as for keeping up with your competitors. You can set multiple searches for keywords related to your competitor, your competitor’s name, even key personnel within the company, then monitor their activity with alerts that come directly to your inbox.
7. SpyFu – http://www.spyfu.com
This web based tool is golden. Enter any url into the search box and get a wealth of information. Find out their paid keywords, top ad competitors, organic keywords, top organic competitors and categories. It will also give you sub domains and other domains owned by that company.
8. Compete – http://searchanalytics.compete.com
This site will give you the keywords that a site is using as well as other analytical information. There are some really cool things that you can do with this tool to see just what your competition is doing in regards to keywords and SEO.
With all of these tools in your arsenal, you will soon know well your competitors and be able to rise above and forge ahead, pushing your own business to the forefront.
Your friend in success,
Phil Jansen
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