Loading ...‘Know thy enemy’ is a very old piece of advice indeed, and it is something to be heeded when you compete online. Knowledge of your competitors can often help you know what to do for yourself in business, and it is no less true for an SEO plan than anywhere else.
One of the best things about operating business online is that there is nowhere to hide. Your competitors cannot prevent you from seeing how they work because everything is there in their site. You can find out everything you need to know about a competitor’s aims, resources and attitudes simply by reading the signs. Here are some of the signs your competitors provide you with, and how to read them:
- Design: The design of your competitors’ sites can give you a lot of information about their attitude to business, and also who they’re aiming for and what they want to achieve. First of all, examine the style of their design to assess the sort of business image they’re projecting. Are they going for a professional look, a modern or a friendly one? Look at their colour choices as well to see what sort of mood they want to put their site users in.
- Language: Language is always a bit of a giveaway, and it will provide plenty of clues as to what your competitors want from their site users. The sort of words they use and the depth in which they explore concepts are both clues about how they feel about their customers.
You can analyse this very article for an example case. It is written in a conversational tone, meaning that it wants to put writer and reader, or essentially business and site user, on the same level. It talks about occasionally technical issues without using inappropriately short words, meaning that it assumes that the reader has a certain level of knowledge about SEO, or at least is able to research further. At the same time, it’s instructional, so it is dealing with an area of knowledge the reader might not be familiar with. It frequently refers to ‘you’, to create a fairly personal tone, but often talks of business. All of these things add up to a fairly clear picture of both the reader and the site itself.
- Keywords: The keywords your competitors choose may not differ much from your own, but there will be some differences. Keeping an eye on the different keywords your competitors use can help you to see which direction they’re headed, and predict what they’re after for the future.
The information you gather from your competitors can be used in all sorts of ways, from determining specific angles of attack to general campaign planning. As you should know from your SEO analysis, your competitors can provide you with some interesting search engine optimisation ideas, and you can discuss this with us at SEO Consult Australia. Knowing which area of the market your competitors are trying to corner, and knowing their strategies, can help you to plan your own attack.
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Tags: about seo, Keywords, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO Consult
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