Competitive Analysis: Looking at Rival Search Engine Positioning Strategies

You've spent the time and money to develop a sleek new Web site, which functions like a well-oiled machine. Yet to stay relevant and fresh in the constantly changing environment of the Web, you know that your site must continue to evolve.

But where should you begin?

Look to your competition. Determining where your competitors' sites have a leg up can show you where to focus your future efforts.

And examining a site's source code to see how it's optimized for search engines is a great place to start (assuming the competition is optimized at all). Look at the keywords and phrases they're targeting for search engine placement. Check a few search engines to see if those words and phrases are working. If they rank well for a particular phrase your company finds useful, improve on their techniques (or just use the phrase yourself) and leapfrog them in the rankings. If you think nabbing ideas from the competition is a dirty trick, then think about it this way: Do you think your competition would hesitate to do the exact same thing to you? Exactly.

Competitive analysis also reveals valuable information related to search engine positioning. For example, do your competitors have online alliances and partners? Driving traffic back and forth between a partner's site and your own is a great way to increase your site's popularity in the eyes of search engines, resulting in a higher ranking. How high are your competitors' popularity ratings? Are they using alternate URLs or sub-domains? Are they driving traffic to their site in other ways? Maybe they have a subscription engine through which they blast out recent news on their company.

Ultimately, winning the search engine battle requires covering all your bases. Sure, you need more links pointing to you than anyone else. But you also need to neutralize your competitor's advantage by using every relevant key word and joining every alliance, directory, trade network and news site they've joined. And then add some unique ones of your own. In the end, it's not about reinventing the wheel; it's about improving on it.

Now, setting out to do a quality analysis on each of your competitors' sites may seem like a daunting task. And it is. Fortunately for you, PixelMEDIA doesn't daunt easily. Contact us today and see how we can help.