Loading ...When you’re first approaching search engine optimisation, it can be hard to know exactly what it is you should be doing. Trying to do everything at once will inevitably lead to disaster. Doing too little can be just as bad. How can you know exactly what it is you need to do?
Consulting a professional is certainly one way, and you can discuss this with us at SEO Consult Australia. Not everyone can use a professional search engine optimisation company, or want to plan ahead. If you want to get an idea of what the SEO level is in your industry, the best thing you can do is look at the sites of your competitors.
Competitor site analysis is a routine part of search engine optimization. Knowledge of what your competitors are doing might be the edge you need to get a better ranking in the search engine results pages. Without this knowledge, you and your SEO company are working in the dark.
How your competitors help
Your competitors’ sites are the best measure of what you need to do to succeed. For example, you might think that competing for four keywords is all you can handle at the moment. You might also decide that you can only add one piece of content to your site each day, and that your site really has to stay under 100 pages. A competitor analysis can show you whether these goals are worthwhile. If your competitors are updating their site twice a day, you’re going to need to rethink your plan. On the other side, if you find that your competitors are keeping their sites small and competing on only a couple of keywords each, the things you’ve set out for your search engine optimization might put your company well ahead.
The things you feel you can achieve with your site aren’t necessarily going to change when you get the results of your competitor analysis. You can only do what you can do. However, knowing the moves your competitors are making can help you plan better and more effectively. It can also help you to make decisions about what level you can afford to compete.
Step-by-step analysis
The best way to analyse competitor sites is to get a piece of paper and pen and get on a computer. Enter the site as a normal internet user would. From the start, look for obvious SEO:
- Make note of their title tags and description tag. What keywords are they using?
- Look for obvious blocks, like chunks of Flash or a non-search engine friendly navigation menu.
- Examine their link structure.
- Look at which social media widgets they’re using.
After you’ve analysed what you can see, look at their source code. Most sites reveal their SEO tactics through their code, as this is how they communicate with the search engines. Look for keywords in their header tags and whether they’re using nofollow tags to channel search engine spiders to the right pages. When examining a competitor site, always be on the lookout for tactics you can use yourself, and ones to avoid.
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