Before you set out optimizing your site and begin the tedious work of link exchange you will want to take time to measure your competition. When measuring my competition I consider the following elements:

1. How many search results come up for the keyword phrase in Google

This basically tells me what kind of competition I’m up against. If I see over 100 million results I know I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. If there’s only a few million I know it’s not going to be too hard.

2. Do the top five competitors in the SERPs have a link exchange directory

If my competition is trading links I know I’m going to have to do a lot of catching up. And with Google’s sandbox effect it’ll probably be about 4 months before I see some good results.

3. How many backlinks do my competitors have

You can find this out by typing “link: www.domainname.com” in Google’s search box, without the quotes. This will give you most of the backlinks. This method will show backlinks that are usually a PR of 4 or above. Of course this may have changed. You can also type “@www.domainname.com”. This will give you all the backlinks in Google. Seeing the backlinks of your competitors will give you a good idea of their backlink strategy. If you see a lot of backlinks from the same domain, there’s a good chance they’ve paid for sponsored links. If you see a lot of different domains you know they’re really working the trades. Check out who they are trading with as well. If they’re trading with theme relevant sites you know you’re dealing with a SEO professional and it’s going to be that much harder.

4. Are the site’s content optimized well

When checking out a competitor’s site I’ll look for the stamp of SEO. I’ll look for title tags, header tags, bolded keywords, site maps, alt tags, etc.

5. Do they have a forum, blog or syndicated content

These are again signs of an experienced SEO expert. Forums can build huge site volume. Blogs and syndicated content can creat focused keyword rich content. And I know that Google loves blogs.

6. What is the site volume of the sites I’m competing with

If the sites have 100s or 1000s of pages this again is going to be another element I have to compete with

When you start optimizing for a new keyword phrase make sure you cover the above elements. It’ll save a lot of time and money to be well acquainted with your competition and what you’ll be up against. With proper benchmarking you can come up with a strategy that’ll work right for you.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 7:40 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.