Competitive Analysis for Web Marketing

There are a growing number of excellent tools and services – most of which are free for the basic versions – that can help you to determine how you stack up relative to your competition.  This includes everything from PPC campaign intelligence, to SEO, to social media attention.

Knowledge is power.  Take some time to understand where you stand relative to your competition; consider everything that you’ve learned; and then set out an action plan overcome any deficits you may discover.  Our Yield Web Marketing Suite can help you take action toward this end, including optimizing keyword lists and bids relative to what you’ve discovered your competition may be doing.

What follows is a list (which is by no means complete) of Web-based services that can help you understand the Web marketing mojo of your competition:

Google’s “Site:” Operator – Do a Google search for “site:competitor’sdomain.com” to get results for how many pages Google indexes and might therefore display as search results. By doing this, you can learn how big your competition’s site is and their ability to show up in multiple natural search results.

Google’s “Link:” Operator – Similarly, do a Google search for “link:competitor’sdomain.com” to learn the number of links Google is counting for your competition. While the list won’t show every link Google considers valid for calculating any one domain’s “link love”, you can get some great insight for what you may need to do build your own link love.

Compete – Offering a free version for their basic service, Compete shows how you stack up against your competition using their web site and traffic analytics tools.

Quantcast – Like Compete, Quantcast offers a free basic service that enables you to determine audience data, such as demographics, geographics, etc., for your own and your competitors’ sites.

Alexa – Alexa was among the first in the website analytics game and they’re an old favorite.  They show you website traffic for your own and your competitors’ sites, how those metrics have risen or fallen over time, and show you what other sites visitors went to.

SpyFu – Like the name implies, Spyfu peaks inside PPC campaigns to the extent possible to provide an estimate of how much your competitors are paying in their PPC campaigns. It also provides a snapshot of organic and paid keywords your competition is ranked for.

Google Alerts – This service is another old favorite.  Google Alerts are a great way to keep track of a competitor – what announcements they’re making, whether they’re included in press coverage, etc.

TweetDeck – This fun little Twitter dashboard service allows you to set up and save multiple searches for your own and competitor’s brands to see who’s tweeting what about each.  (You can also keep track of all your followers’ tweets and add your own from this great Adobe Air application.)

TweetVolume – Like Compete, Quantcast and Alexa, this service let’s you put in your own URL and those of your competitors to see how you stack up in the Twittersphere in terms of the share of voice your brand enjoys.

Technorati – enter the full URL of a competitor into the Technorati search box to get a sense of what the blogosphere is saying about them.  Then, do it for yourself and look at the differences.  If key bloggers writing about your market segment are paying attention to a competitor and ignoring you, this is actionable intelligence!

I hope these resources are useful to you.  If you have other suggestions for the list, send us a tweet via Twitter at @YieldSW.