Competitor analysis is the process of determining who your competitors are on the web and how they conduct their business so you can identify opportunities to increase your profits.
Your online competition can be identified as those who are competing for the same potential customers as you. They are often those who rank highly for keywords associated with your products or services. They can also be those who are competing for the same traffic as you from sources such as paid advertising, social media and directories.
I found two really great articles from Allied Internet Productions covering Competition Research and Competition Analysis so rather than going in to depth I will refer you to them for more info.
The most important parts of Competitor Analysis are:
- Competitor Research- Determine who your online competitors are in order to analyse them.
- Benefits Analysis- What are the key benefits of their (your competitors) products that they are highlighting?
- Pricing Analysis- What are the prices of their products and services?
- Content Analysis- What kind of content do they have? Is there anything important missing?
- Targeted Search Term Analysis- Which keywords are they targeting?
- SEO Analysis- How well are they Search Engine Optimised?
- Technology/Tool Analysis- What technologies and tools are they using?
- Usability Analysis- What are the usability strengths and weaknesses of their web properties?
- Functionality Analysis- What are the primary functions of their web properties? Is their any important functionality missing?
- Overall Strategy Analysis- An overall look at your competitor's online strategy
There can be a fair amount of overlap in the research done for 'Competitor Analysis' and the research done for other aspects of your internet marketing.
Your SEO analysis should include a backlink analysis to see which websites are linking to your competitors. This information will come in useful when you come to do Off Site SEO and are looking for websites to link to you.
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