Internet based companies in direct competition.
One thing you can very successfully do on the internet is monitor your competition. As much as they would like to keep things under the radar – it is perfectly observable and traceable.
Once you know who is competing against you and where they stand, keep a close eye on their actions. Trends do make the difference in offline and online worlds. If they are the first ones to unveil something unique or hot – you better catch up.
Here are some techniques on monitoring your competition online.
Exploring their website is essential, however as you probably already know, you must do it from a strategic perspective of why, how and for who. Knowing exactly their placement and on site marketing strategies is key to doing it better.
On-site is just one piece in a puzzle. They might have some discounts, programs or responses ready to target unsuspecting visitors, but where do they get those visitors from?
Time to investigate their off page referrals.
One of the most effective ways is to explore their inbound links. If someone has a relationship with them, they must be linking to their website. Lets copy the URL and explore the search engines. Do the following.
Copy their address and paste it into:
Make sure to leave out the http://
It is important to do it on all major search engines since their indexes differ, so will the number of incoming links. Study their affiliations one by one. If the linking site includes primarily information, you can take a shot and ask the webmaster to either link you or even better swap the link to yours. If some affiliate programs are in place, analyze them, see if you can get something similar going for your company. The key is to see what competition is doing and counter react with more effective strategies. In some cases it is possible to minimize their impact by directly affecting it.
In terms of search placement and PPC you can try a number of “spy” services which provide valuable intelligence.
A bit of snooping here and there wouldn’t hurt and though some of the services are pricey, the info very valuable.
Good luck.
