Competitive Intelligence:
Increase Your Search Engine Rankings by Investigating Your Competitors

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Search Engine Optimizing always begins with an analysis of the competition. Effective Search Engine Optimization isn't a struggle with the search engines, but rather a match with your competitors who are following similar goals by focusing on similar search terms.

When analyzing your competition, the following questions need to be posed:

1. Is it feasible that I can beat our competitors by investing a reasonable budget and effort?
   
2. What can I learn from our competitors?
   
3. Do our competitors play by the rules?

The following points will help you answer these questions:

1. Linking

Websites such as Amazon aren't necessarily found among the top results because they specifically have optimized their site for keywords such as "book" or "books". The more important factor that determines ranking here is the linking paradigm - the fundamental assumption that a web site that has many incoming links must be relevant.

Search engines such as Google take this a step further and analyze the environment that surrounds these inbound links. Amazon, for example, has multiple inbound links - links that point back to it from other external sites. And if these links originate from an environment where the word "book" appears frequently (i.e. a page of links to book reviews) these contextual links will further help Amazon score higher in the search engine rankings for the keyword "book". Thus it isn't simply the quantity of links but more importantly the quality that will make the difference. Link quality is defined as a link coming from a well-linked external web site that bears a thematic relationship to your own web site.

If you would like to see your company site appear in the top of the results for certain search terms, you must be able to beat your competitors' linking strategies or at least approach their level. Your online competitors aren't defined in traditional offline terms such as market penetration or revenue, but instead through their online penetration or search engine rankings.

How do you locate your online competitors? Type in the search terms that you would like your company to be ranked for and they will appear. If you are a headset manufacturer, you would want to check "headsets", "phone headsets", "cordless headsets", "wireless phone headsets", "blue tooth headsets", etc. to verify which web sites consistently appear in the results.

These web sites, by definition, are your online competitors. You will need to focus on their link strategies and beat them. Use the following criteria to analyze your competitor web sites:

1. Google PageRank: This metric defines quantity rather than quality. A site such as www.amazon.com has a high PageRank. But it would easily be outranked by a web site with a lower PageRank for a search such as "bay area real estate" as long as this other site has a better thematic (i.e. real estate) link structure. The best way to use PageRank as a metric is within an industry.
   
2. Number of links: By using a command such as "link:http://www.domain.com" in Google, you will be able to determine which sites link back to www.domain.com. A similar command will also work in Yahoo to display your backlinks: "link:http://www.domain.com -site:www.domain.com ". Even if these results are often incomplete, they still give you an indication for the degree of linking.
   
3. Link environment: It is very work intensive to determine how well a web site is linked thematically. The best approach is to use software and to analyze each link manually. This will also give you a good feeling for the quality of the links. Were the links grown organically over time? Were the links purchased in bulk from "link farms"?
   

The result of this analysis can be very depressing: Depending on the level of competition, it is not unusual that an SEO project will be deemed unrealistic. But this competitive intelligence will always increase the effectiveness of your marketing mix. Whoever is linking to your competitors can also be a good linking candidate for you.

2. Ethical Search Engine Optimization

The expression "ethical Search Engine Optimization" defines all procedures that don't violate search engine policies. Fundamentally this entails optimizing the contents of a web site according to the keywords your potential clients are searching for. You can only achieve good rankings for "blue tooth headset" if this term actually appears within the content of your site. "Cordless headset" might mean the same thing, but the search engines won't be able to determine a match.

1. Meta tags: Even if meta keywords are ignored or deemed inconsequential by search engines, they can be a good indicator that a company has performed Search Engine Optimization. If there appear to be only very unfocused terms such as "internet", "cheap" or "bargain" this can mean that the project was not managed by professionals. If you are able to find very specific and focused keywords that make sense to target within the industry, this probably indicates that your competitors take Search Engine Optimizing seriously. Take note of these keywords, they might be worth targeting yourself.
   
2. Title: Take a look at the titles of each of the web pages. If you don't find any relevant search terms, i.e. "Webster Group - Where the client comes first" or "Untitled 1" this also can be an indicator that Search Engine Optimization was no priority. Compare this with titles such as "Blue Tooth Headsets - Offered by the Webster Group" where the focus is much clearer.
   
3. Content: If you discover that the titles target reasonable search terms, you should also verify that these terms consistently appear within the content of the web page. This is not only logical for your visitors but also vital for effective Search Engine Optimization.

The result of this analysis will be twofold: First you will discover if and to what degree your competitors are involved in Search Engine Optimization. Second you will frequently be able to peer over your competitors' shoulders and get good ideas for your own target search term. At the same time you may find out that your competitors aren't yet targeting certain groups of keywords. This means that you will have a higher success rate at achieving better rankings for them.

3. Tricks

Tricks or search engine spamming are techniques that directly violate the policies set forth by the search engines. This can mean white text on white background (invisible text) or doorway pages (thousands of automatically generated pages that are optimized but contain little good content). Since the search engines are motivated to offer their visitors the most relevant results possible, they are understandably irked by spamming techniques and take tough action against these violations. The lines between ethical behavior and spamming can be blurry at times, so it is always better to err on the safe side. If it just doesn't look right to you or your visitors, it probably isn't ethical.

Not all of these subversive techniques, however, are easily uncovered. Sometimes it is as simple as selecting Ctrl-A (select all) on a web page to display invisible text. But more conniving agencies might use clandestine methods such as CSS to serve keyword-saturated content to the search engines while showing pretty images to the human visitors.

Many tricks can be uncovered by comparing the search engine results with the content on the actual web page, or even by comparing the size of the indexed page with the actual page. The search engines usually show a content snippet of the web page in their descriptions. If this snippet cannot be found on the actual web page, this might indicate spamming. A successful analysis requires high levels of experience, best delivered by a professional Search Engine Marketing Agency, since they will be aware of current spamming techniques and they also possess the technology to uncover them.

The results of this analysis can be used to report gross violators to the search engines who will deal with them. Search Engine Optimizing only makes sense if everybody is playing by the rules.

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