Loading ...Most businesses will know who their real-world competitors are. They’re fairly easy to spot. If you’re a consulting company, your competitors will be handing their business cards around at conferences. If you’re a store, your competitors will have their own store fronts around your neighbourhood. Your competitors are in your industry, and make themselves nicely obvious.
When you go online, however, the competitor landscape changes. The people you compete against in your local area might not even be online yet, and if they are, they could be in a completely different league to you. Your online competitors will be a different group, and they will need to be researched as part of your search engine optimization.
Finding your competition online is generally even easier than finding it in the real world. Any SEO expert will tell you. All you have to do is Google your major keywords. The sites that appear around your listing are the sites that you need to compete with. When you want to increase your level of competition, all you have to do is look closer to the number one spot.
Sometimes, though, a concentration on SEO can blinker site owners from looking for the full range of their competitors. For businesses that want to prepare for the future, finding out competitors has to get a little more involved. Googling your keywords, or even all of the keywords in your industry, will only tell you who you’re competing with today. It also only tells you who you’re competing with in search. It won’t tell you who you’re competing within a few weeks’ time, or who is getting direct marketing business.
If you’re consulting a search engine optimization company for your site’s optimization, they should help you to identify your main competitors. You can discuss this with us at SEO Consult Australia. It also helps to know how to seek out competitors on your own. Here are a few things to bear in mind:
- Online competitors look and behave differently. As most businesses realise as soon as they mount an online campaign, the internet is a completely different world. Although it’s fairly obvious that the way that business works is going to be different, it’s often hard to predict how competitors are going to react. The initial analytical stage of SEO is a great opportunity to study your competitors. Keeping tabs on them can help you predict their behaviour over time.
- Look beyond search. Some sites have enough direct traffic to not be bothered with SEO. Just because a business doesn’t appear in the search engine results doesn’t mean they’re not competition. Look around the net for a broader idea of which sites are doing well in your industry. Online review sites can tell you what the search engines can’t.
- Search isn’t everything – but it can help. It’s important to remember that Google isn’t just an opponent to deal with through SEO. Google is an excellent tool for any business, particularly after some initial research. Look beyond the first few pages to find details on the full range of your competitors.
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Tags: Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Consult, SEO expert
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