SEO Competitor Analysis – Why is it Important for You

Posted by Vaibhav

August 18, 2008

The biggest ever fact about most of the businesses in the world is that they cannot escape ever from the deadly, unforgiving and long-lasting clutches of competition. While the term ‘competition’ is often used by many as a sign of warning and caution, what is rather important is how a business can understand the competitor-customer relationship and adopt competitive strategies to create a stronger impact in the people’s mind.

Like many businesses, competitor analysis forms a critical part of SEO to identify the market trend, customer behavior and popular keywords. However, when it comes to a website’s appeal, it is not only SEO that matters, but also how well you understand your competition, target market and the changing market trend.

So, to start with the competitor analysis, you first need to identify who your competitors (existing as well as potential) are. Next, find out their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their website content, services, site layout and design, keywords, and links. Once this is known, find out who your customers are and what do they need.

With this study, there are several things that can be achieved:

• You will come to know where your website stands, as against other SEO service websites

• Understanding the competitor’s link building strategy will become easier

• Newer keywords and key phrases could be traced, considering which keywords are assisting these web sites to soar high in the search results.

• It could be possible to identify the techniques adopted by the competitors to attract reader’s attention

• If you are a new SEO player in the market, a careful competitor analysis will make you acquainted with the market conditions and preferences

• Analyzing competitor’s website traffic can help a lot in understanding the traffic growth trend, site reach, page views and traffic rank. You can make use of ‘Alexa’ to find out such crucial details.

Be it any business, research is utmost important. Though it is time consuming, it provides long-term benefits as well, especially in terms of web site popularity. Therefore, knowing your competitors is equally important, compared to understanding the customer behavior.

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