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Making The Most Of An Seo Competitive Analysis
By Michael Murray, VP of Fathom SEO, Fri Dec 23rd
If you're ready to embark on a search engine optimizationcampaign, you'll want to take a close look at your competitors.Either they'll be ahead of you in the world or you'll detecttheir deficiencies and rush right past them in terms of searchengine visibility. Here are 8 key considerations. 1. Page Titles See what kind of page titles competitorsuse. Do they only include their name or a page name? How much dothey vary? Is there a different page title for every page? Dothey seem to contain reasonable search terms? Are they dominatedby keywords or marketing messages?
2. META Data Do they do a good job of providing keyword-rich METAdescriptions? What balance do they strike between mentioning thecompany's value or special offers and conveying core keywords? 3. Quality of Content How much copy is apparent in each page? Is there any emphasis onthe visible text? Can you even count 250 keywords on criticalpages? How are the headers organized? Does the company takeadvantage of text navigation? 4. Robots.Text File See what the Web site owners are telling the search engines. Aresearch engine spiders encouraged or discouraged by thedirections listed in the robots.txt file? 5. Link Building Find out how many places
are linking to the competitor. You maynot have time to determine the quality of all of the links, butsee how many they have compared to your Web site. 6. Saturation Determine how many pages of the Web site have been indexed bythe major search engines. How does each competitor compare toyour efforts to provide relevant content that can be crawled bysearch engines? 7. Site Design, Architecture and Technology Is it professional? How would you describe the design? Is itSEO-friendly? Does the site rely on static pages or dynamiccontent? Are there frames or Flash with the familiar "skipintro" button? 8. Rankings As best you can, select 10 keywords and phrases and find out howwell they're ranking on the major search engines. Do they rankwell? Can you catch up? If you need help with the assessment or whether even makessense for you, start with our complimentary KeywordMarketplace Activity Report. About the author:Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO, a search engine optimizationfirm in Cleveland, Ohio. A member of SEMPO and OSEOP, thefirm specializes in organic search engine marketing campaigns,permission-based marketing and other services for clientsacross the US. michael@fathomseo.com
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