With today’s technology there is no excuse for being caught flat footed by a competitor’s big moves. The following list of sites and techniques will arm you with everything you need to stalk keep a close eye on your competitors every move.
Before you go all Austin Powers, take a second to think about who or what you should be spying on. A good technique is to head over to LinkedIn or Crunch Base and search for a rival company. Make a list of their important employees and their positions. I just recently read an article where a company was following around rivals key sales people and watching them check into locations on foursquare or Twitter (with geo location turned on). They would then use that data to determine which clients the competition’s sales people were talking to. Pretty sneaky indeed! You would be surprised how much info an employee might give out over Facebook or other social media channels.
Website Stalking
“I always feel like somebody’s watching meeeeee”.… Umm yeah, it’s ChangeDetection.com. These guys have been around since 1999 monitoring changes to webpages. For the low price of free you can be alerted to any changes your competition makes to their page. This sure beats obsessively checking their page 5 times a day but who does that anyway 
Also, if you are already using Google Reader you can now subscribe to updates from pages that do not have RSS feeds. So it is very simple to keep tabs on important changes to webpages.
Use the Way Back Machine to look at changes to a website over time. What you are looking for is changes they made that have stuck around. If they kept the change it probably had a positive impact.
Social Media Stalking
Social Mention is a real-time social media search engine that also includes social media alerts that can be emailed to you daily for any search phrase. The search results display a ton of data including which social media sources are generating the most buzz. You can even drill down to see conversations from specific sites as well as the top usernames at those sites.
This is a great way to see which channels are working best for your competition or brands. You can also reach out to power users in the various networks you find. For good measure you can download all of this information to a csv/excel file!
The search results can be a little slow to load and I do not really trust the sentiment calculation they use but overall this is an amazing site to collect free information.
Topsy is a social media search engine with some great sorting options so you can see conversations by the hour, day, week and month. A really nice feature of Topsy is that you can search within a specific domain or a specific Twitter account etc. Example: “site:domain.com” or you can do “site:domain.com from:TwitterUsername” and it will search for those specific Twitter conversations.
Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create your own custom “buzz” page around any topic. Each source they display has its own box that you can toggle off or on under the available sources menu. Bookmark the page and it remembers your settings. This is a great way to have the information you need, displayed in a clean and efficient manner.
How Sociable measures brand visibility across the web and assigns a score to each channel such as Facebook or Twitter etc. It is very simple to use and compare yourself to competitors to see which channels you need to improve in. You can also setup email alerts which is handy.
Check User Names is a great service but one sneaky way to use it is to enter in known usernames of your competitors and or their employees. The service quickly checks over 160 social networks to tell you if the name is available. Keep track of all the taken names and you can see where your completion is engaging on the web and where you can go to follow/friend them from an account they won’t suspect.
Google Stalking
As you know Google is a great source of information. Make sure you are getting the most out of it though. Using the new left menu updates, discussions, blogs, and news sections are really great for staying up on the latest information. Being able to sort by hours, days, weeks, and years is also a really nice way to filter out old information.
Example Search – [domainname.com -site:domainname.com] So that you show mentions of a site from external sources. Or add (&as_qdr=d (past one day) to a query string to get searches in the past 24 hours.
I have read that people search for PDF files on competitors sties hoping to find something juicy but it is a harder one to get results on. Try something like (site:domain.com filetype:pdf “plan” OR “roadmap” OR “timeline” OR “strategy”)
Google Alerts is a very simple way to spy. Simply tell Google what you what to be update about and how often and it will email you whenever there is new information. You can also create an RSS feed with it as well.
I suggest putting quotes around your “keyword phrase”. Pretty much any search you can do on Google you can setup an alert for. So get creative.
Google Ad Planner will give you estimates of unique visitors, their interest, keywords searched and sites they also visited simply by typing in a competitors URL.
Google Insights & Google Trends are a great way to track brands over time.
You can input a URL into the Google Keyword Tool instead of a keyword phrase to see what keywords your competition focuses on.
Also, if you enable it you can use Google Analytics Benchmarks to compare your site to similar sites in your niche although the data is anonyms.
Stalking Demographic Data
It is always nice to get an idea of your competitor’s demographics as well as your own. Use the sites below to develop a profile of your competitions customers. You can learn their gender, age, race, education level and even salary ranges for free.
Quantcast
Compete Site Analytics
Alexa
Keyword Stalking
Before you start an SEO or PPC campaign you need to know what your competition is doing in both of these areas. The tools bellow will help you to see which keywords your competitor is running advertisements on Google and what keywords they rank for organically.
These sites give limited data for free but offer a lot more for monthly subscriptions. They all really do the same thing so find the one with the best info for your niche and start spying.
SEO Stalking
The two best things you can and should be doing to stalk the competition is to go to Yahoo site explorer (download the csv file) and the Open Site explorer from SEOMOZ and to grab all of your competitors backlinks. Use this data to snipe links from that they have that don’t link to you. I recently mentioned how to do these in a previous article.
Honorable Mentions
Below are some sites that are really good but you should only focus on them after using the other services I mentioned.
Kurrently is a real-time search results from Twitter and Facebook. The conversation stream updates live which is really nice for following a trending topic. It also enables you to control the flow so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Besides having a killer domain name Twazzup is another real-time search service worth giving a look. You can follow a conversation stream and see how the top influencers are for that particular keyword. If you hover over a particular user it gives you their stats, location etc. without having to click on anything.
BackType is another good place to find conversations and influencers of a competitor’s domain. In that past they had more functionality but they seem to have scaled back the free version of their service.
You can also, type a rival’s Twitter name into Klout and it will tell you who they influence and who influences them.
Ok by now I am sure you are itching to begin stalking. If you know of any great sites or techniques I didn’t cover be sure to leave a comment and if you if found the post helpful be sure to stalk follow us on Twitter @authoritydomain and RT.
One of the first things I do when conducting an SEO site review is to check a sites major keywords VS its top ten competing sites in Google.
Two recurring problems I find are a lack of keyword rich links from unique domains or way too many keyword stuffed links being built. Both of these situations can wreak havoc on your search engine rankings.
People spend a lot of time picking out the keywords they want to rank higher on Google. However, they usually assign arbitrary goals for how many links they need to acquire for each keyword.
This is a huge mistake but one you can easily avoid or correct. There are many free tools that can get you the information you need I recommend http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ and http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/ but there are plenty of others out there.
Both tools are free although you need a paid account to get all of the data from Open Site Explorer but the free data is available instantly and easily exportable to excel.
Simple Steps
1. Make lists of the top 10 Google results for your major keywords.
2. Run one or both tools on your own site as well as your competition. Make sure you filter out internal links. (Open Site Explorer even has a way to filter out no followed links which is nice)
3. Once you have your list, filter out duplicate urls. Google is not going to count 500 links from the same site. So the best way to do this is to act like site wide links are all just one link for our purposes.
4. Sort your anchor text by unique occurrences and be sure to count things like “SEO” and “seo” as the same word. (Do not worry about capitalization)
You should now have everything you need to compare your anchor text density to your competition. This is great information because these sites are already doing well for the keywords you are targeting. The perfect anchor text density is whatever Google is already showing you it likes.
This will eliminate you simply guessing how many links you need for each keyword. However, there are a few things to watch for. Sometimes you will see people ranking with very few keyword rich links. So they may have a super low density and still rank. In these cases just build up links slowly but don’t worry if your density is 6% and there’s is .02% etc.
Sometimes nobody in a niche is actively building keyword rich links and you can reap the rewards. You just don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb and have your anchor text density be 45% while everyone else is in the 3 to 10% range. The key is to have a natural looking anchor text keyword profile.
All links are not created equal so if you are in a situation where you cant have too high of an anchor text density to be successful make sure you use POWERFUL links for that keyword because you won’t be building as many.
Do not worry about having a high density for your company name or url. That is actually pretty normal and can help bring your other anchor text densities down to a natural looking range.
Use your discretion because each niche will have wildly different acceptable percentages but whatever you do, stop guessing when it comes to anchor text density and develop a customized strategy.
Bonus
The list you just put together is linking to your competition. Why are they not linking to you? Simply run their results VS your domain’s backlinks and now you have a highly relevant list of sites to target for link building.
If you’re reading this, then you no doubt realize how important the online world is in establishing and maintaining your authority. Regardless how big the offline portion of your business is, online is the key to your future success. But let me ask you: how are you measuring your online success?
It’s a difficult question – and there’s no one single answer for everyone. But there isn’t a business (or individual, for that matter) out there that can’t benefit from using an analytics tool to help track, measure, and improve their online presence. I specifically reference Google Analytics, because it is free and best in class, but really any package will do the same thing. What does analytics measure, anyway?
How do people find you?
Wouldn’t it always be nice to know how people find you? You can ask everyone who ends up being a buyer, but when it comes to website customers, you can even find out about people who just came to browse as well as those who make a purchase.
Analytics holds a scary amount of detail about each and every person that visits your website, including:
- What country they’re from (and in some cases, state/province, or city)
- What browser they’re using
- What website (banner ad, director link/etc) they used to find you
You can use the tool to segment these visitors into different groups, and understand the buying patterns of each better. Does your site seem to resonate more with Germans and less with Americans? Is that banner ad a waste of time, whereas the premium directory listing sending in lots of leads? All here, just waiting for you to have a peek.
What do people really think about your website?
In the old days (read: less than a couple years ago), you had to ask customers for their opinion, and hope that enough people took you up on your offer and actually told you what was on their mind. Something of an inexact science, to say the least. Now, you can see your online buyer’s behavior without them even knowing. Consider the statistics that analytics provide:
- Do people linger over your sales pages, or immediately turn away when they find them?
- Do you have key content that nobody ever manages to find?
- Are there popular pages and content that is missing a strong call to action?
These are all fairly easy problems to fix, but only if you know about the problem.
How’s your search engine optimization?
You know how important getting backlinks is. Maybe you’ve researched your keywords and maybe you’ve done a little outreach to get your website more visible in search. But do you measure the traffic search engine send you?
Google Analytics provides data from all the major search engines (not just Google). With this information you should be asking yourself two key questions:
- Are the search phrases you expect to see actually sending traffic?
- Any surprises on keywords you didn’t know you were ranking for?
After all, it just goes to say: you cannot tweak performance if you aren’t measuring.
Andy Hayes is the managing director for Travel Online Partners, a travel online marketing firm. Don’t miss their popular Google analytics ebook, a simple yet effective resource to keep your own authority in check.
Twitter sent people into a panic today when they set everyone’s followers count to 0. This was in response to a hack that Gizmodo outted:
http://gizmodo.com/5535298/how-to-force-anyone-to-follow-you-on-twitter
People were using the hack to make famous people follow their account. It is pretty shocking when you see how vulnerable your online information really is.
Everything seems to be back to normal now but remember when you put your information online anything can happen so only put things out there you don’t mind being exposed to others!
Follow us on twitter @authoritydomain now that you can again lol.
To Brand or Not to Brand
First and foremost you have to decide what is right for you. If you’re more concerned with branding and don’t get as excited about the traffic you could potentially receive from a high value exact match domain, then exact match is less of an issue. You should also take your competition into consideration. Is your niche saturated? Are the people in your niche generally SEO savvy or have they not caught on? One way to find out is to type your topic into Google and analyze the results. You can easily do this with a tool such as SEO toolbar from SEOBook. When you have the SEO toolbar installed and you perform a search on Google, the results show up with all the important information you need to determine how competitive your marketplace is. This tool allows you to see the volume of your competitor’s backlinks, whether or not they are listed in important directories such as DMOZ, what their Alexa rank is, and other valuable information listed directly below the result.
Keyword Selection and Domain Brainstorming
Once you get a better understanding of your market and determine whether or not you can devote the time necessary to move perform well in this niche, the next step is to locate available domains. Start brainstorming and write down several variations of the top 5 or so keywords for your market. Plug these variations into keyword research tools such as Google or Wordstream to see traffic estimates and remember to specify exact in the search. If you’re pleased with the amount of search traffic that particular keyword phrases yield, start checking if they are available for purchase or if they are already taken.
Premium Exact Match Domains May Cost a Pretty Penny
Typically, popular keyword phrases are not available, and if they are, the price for a premium exact match tends to be significantly higher. There are various places to look for premium domain names and some of the sites to utilize are Buy Domains, Sedo, and Flippa. Don’t be discouraged if all of the names you’re looking up are already taken, and don’t rule out a .net or .org extension. In terms of SEO, .com, .net, and .org are all eligible for an exact match bonus.
If all of the extensions are taken for the phrases you’re typing in, you might want to consider using a catchy name with only one of your major keywords in the title. Although you won’t be eligible for the exact match bonus, you still have a keyword in the domain and it might actually work out better for you in the long term if you focus on a catchy name that is good for branding rather than exact match traffic.
Exact Match is not a Sure Thing
Remember exact match traffic is not a sure thing! If you think you can buy a domain name that gets a ton of exact match traffic and sit back and get rich, you need a reality check. Just because you buy an exact match domain doesn’t eliminate the hard work that it takes to actually start ranking for your keywords. This is especially true in a saturated market. Buying an exact match only increases your chances of ranking but remember, it doesn’t guarantee them.
Guest post by Sarah Harris, of Zen College Life, the premier directory for online schools. Find out more information about criminal justice degrees.
You may have heard Google is rolling out “Brand Links” suggestions for a ton of generic keyword searches.
So far I have heard a ton of whining about how this is going to kill mom and pop shops (again!). Where others see despair I see opportunity. Here are 4 ways to use Google brand links to your advantage.
SEO/Link Building
- Search Google for as many generic terms that relate to your products as possible.
- Write down all the various brands that show up.
- Sort your list between brands you carry and your competition.
For the brands that you do carry make sure to check your search engine rankings. Concentrate your link building efforts on your brand pages that are lagging in the search engine. Maybe do a contest giveaway for brand x. That always nets some good links.
Also make sure you take a look at your on page optimization. Could you internally link to that brand page more? Are your internal links to that brand keyword rich? Would a new title tag be more effective than the one you have?
Content Creation
I know some of you are thinking…but I only sell MY brand not my competitor’s brand and this new Google feature is going to kill my organic traffic. First, the longer you complain and envision the sky is falling, the longer you put off doing something about it. Second, although generic searches can yield a lot of traffic they rarely offer high conversions. These searches represent someone at the start of the buying cycle, not the end.
A simple solution would be to create a landing page for each of these competing brands and compare your widget to their widget. Be honest and show the pros and the cons and why you think you come out ahead. If you do not want to host a review on your own site then leverage the domain authority of a site like squidoo and do reviews of brand X and compare it yours.
Drive some links to these review pages and you can get them ranking in no time. Especially by leveraging web 2.0 sites like squidoo if your domain is not an established authority.
As a customer gets closer to the end of the buying cycle they start doing brand searches and comparing widgets. By positioning your site to rank on the various brand searches Google is suggesting, you will keep yourself in front of the customer and do some positive branding of your own. This will be huge for your site if you do it right.
PPC
I tend to skip biding on generic traffic like “laptops” because it converts poorly and is usually bid up too high by people with “broad match” turned on. Google brand links gives you an opportunity to gobble up some quality traffic by bidding on their suggested brands.
Again, you don’t have to sell that brand to put up a PPC ad for it. You will have to test but from my previous experience you are likely to see a nice ROI on those branded searches.
Also, getting your ad there now before everyone else figures it out can help you to establish your click through rate and account history for that keyword, which is huge for adwords.
Research
Looking to expand your product offerings? Take a good look at all the brands Google is suggesting in your niche because that is where you know additional traffic is going to be headed. I have seen some rather small brands showing up for high volume search queries. Jump in and start carrying that brand and establish your site before your competition does.
I also find these links extremely helpful when researching a new product. Simply do a generic search and Google shows you some popular brands. You can quickly build a list of who you would want to start out carrying or who you would need to beat in that sector.
I hope this sheds some light on the possibilities this new feature brings. While everyone else is complaining, take action and get a leg up on them!
If you have additional ideas please post them in the comments.
According to some estimates, about 75% of all online shopping carts are ditched before the sale is closed. Is shopping cart abandonment costing your business money? Do you wish you could stop hemorrhaging customers?
The first step to reducing shopping cart abandonment is understanding why your customers aren’t completing their purchases. Here are the 6 most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment.
- Forced registration—Online customers don’t like being asked to register for an account before making their purchase. It’s time-consuming, and to put it plainly, it’s pretty annoying. So, if you make customers register on your website, you can bet you’re losing out on a lot of sales. The solution? Let them buy without registering. It’s really not that complicated.
- Shipping prices are too high—High shipping prices are actually cited as the most common reason for shopping cart abandonment. Customers factor in shipping rates in the overall cost, so if your shipping rates are too high, they may take their business elsewhere or just buy the product locally. One thing you can do is to offer multiple shipping options so shoppers can find the rate that best fits their budget.
- No guarantee—I hate to break it to you, but customers just don’t trust you. When people shop online, they’re always on alert to make sure they aren’t being ripped off. For you, this means you need to find ways to eliminate risk for customers. Offering a money-back guarantee puts shoppers at ease because they know if the product doesn’t meet their expectations, they’ll get their money back.
- Really long checkout process—Your customers are in a hurry. They don’t want to spend 15 minutes trying to buy your product. Try to minimize the number of steps required to complete the transaction. You should also put a progress bar at the top of the page to let customers know how close they are to finishing checkout.
- It’s out of stock—Is there anything more frustrating than getting to the end of checkout only to find out the product is out of stock? Ugh! Either let the customer know up front that it’s out of stock or hide the product until you replenish your inventory.
- What’s next?—Pretend your customers are all aliens who aren’t familiar with the internet. Never just assume they know how to checkout. You need to make it very clear what steps they need to take to complete their purchase. Put a big “Next” button at the bottom of each page to guide them along.
What are some other reasons customers ditch shopping carts? Share your experiences by leaving a comment!
Eric Brantner offers freelance copywriting services that have helped hundreds of clients achieve online success. Beyond writing for the web, he also provides brochure copywriting and other print copywriting services.
There are several benefits for finding exact match domains for a website. There are probably many business owners with websites who are completely unsure about what the term, ‘exact match domains’ even means. This means that one should make certain that the domain name or web address of their website matches their business name or most targeted keyword. It is not a new method and is certainly one that is recommended. Regardless of the products or services that are offered, it is important that a good domain name is used.
It has been known for years that the name of a company should describe exactly what it does. If a company name is confusing, it deters new customers. The same is true when online. The domain name should describe quite briefly what it is that the website in question specializes in. This helps customers feel confident when clicking on the web address. This helps customers to remember the domain name. This helps customers to not have any confusion whatsoever.
Customers need to have an easy time finding what it is that they are looking for. By having exact match domains, they are able to search for the item they want and easily find the solution since there is no confusion. The average consumer is not professionally trained about how to do internet searches. That is why it is critical to make finding the website of any company one that will be easily found and understood. While it is important to avoid confusion, make searching easy and describe what the company does in an exact match domain, there is also another reason it is such an important choice to make.
The simple fact of the matter is that having exact match domains helps websites’ search engine rankings to be much better. Search engines use algorithms to decide which websites should be put at the top of the search results. These algorithms are based on a variety of factors and change continuously. Something that has been discovered, however, is that exact match domain names have proven to have better results with search engine optimization. That’s why a website that sells DISH Network, for example, should have the term, ‘DISH Network’ in the domain name if possible. Indeed, there are several benefits to having exact match domain names. So be sure to do that when selecting the website domain name for any webpage.
This is a guest post by Eric Rea.
The XXI Olympic Winter Olympic Games are also being called the “Social Games.” Based on sponsors clever ways of gaining the spotlight, more consumers will have their eyes glued to their iPhone and computer screens, than the actual broadcast on TV. If major sponsors can motivate 500 million Internet transactions as a result of the Super Bowl (a one-day event), can you imagine what sponsors, apps, social networks and search engines can gain from sixteen days of sporting events in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics?
Reaching out via social media, this Olympics may rival China in attention, if not in spectacle. On the months leading up to the event, the marketing teams of a hundreds of brands have been strategizing as to the most effective means to advertise its product and services using social media distribution. Both social networks will be covering the events in Vancouver closely and may prove to be a more informative source than even TV.
With Twitter’s more than 23 million hits and 1.2 billion tweets per month, Twitter will no doubt have a direct effect on Olympic information and viewership in 2010. Another feature released by Twitter just in time for the Olympics, is a Verified Tweeting Olympians resource page where you can cross-reference what the athletes are tweeting about in real-time from one source. Presently this site is following 100 athletes from Apolo Ohno to Joannie Rochette.
On Facebook, the International Olympic Committee has created an Olympic Games Page, which already has more than 1.2 million followers. The page plans to feature updates, photos and videos submitted by the athletes. The International Olympic Committee is also using Facebook to conduct a fan photo contest, awarding free tickets to events to winners, and has created an Olympic Mini-Games on their social network.
So the Social Games are in full swing in the social media space and it will be interesting to see how Vancouver fares as a result. Eighteen months after the spectacular opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, the organizers of the Winter Games in Vancouver are challenged to top the Chinese. Stated as the first-ever “Social Games” the excitement created by social media might be the stepping stone to make the opening ceremonies and subsequent competitions stand out from previous Olympics.
As a result of all of us getting social, let’s hope the 2010 Games are one of the best organized and most enjoyable Olympics ever. So rev up those mobile phones/ laptops and let’s hit the slopes!
SEO has come a long way since its early days in the 90’s. Back then website owners woke up to the idea that having highly visible sites in the search engines brought valuable business results. Today we continue to see that importance and SEO continues to expand past its horizon. New tools are driven from the demands it creates and it continues to deliver the results. SEO has an endless ground for expansion and growth. Here are some possibilities of what we may expect for SEO in 2010…
Google’s Real-Time Search will disappear. It’s still too buggy and distracting, not to mention cannon fodder for spammers. We’ll be seeing less of it in 2010.
The value of links from status updates is increasing. Influencing factors will likely include relevance and reputation of the link source(s).
Personalized Search is the new reality. Get used to it. Branding is more important, it’s harder to gain (and lose) rank, and there is no such thing as “normal ranking” anymore.
It’s a two-engine war in 2010: Google and Bing. (The battle begins!)
SEO tools from Yahoo! (such as Site Explorer) will disappear. When the Microsoft-Yahoo! agreement goes full throttle, these handy tools are unlikely to stick around.
Spending on search marketing and SEO will go up. As businesses become more aware of the importance of SEO — in terms of Strategy, Engagement and Optimization, rather than just old-school link building and on-site optimization — we’ll continue to see a trend of them turning to agencies and consultants for help.
There’ll be more focus on conversion.
Many queries won’t result in traffic driven to your site. Google and Bing are doing a fair job of including referential content in the search results directly. Weather, flight times, sports scores… questions that were previously answered on individual sites will now be answered within the search engine itself.
