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Analyzing Your Competitors – A Short SEO Course, Lesson 4

So far we’ve covered what SEO is, setting goals, some important technical information and finding keywords. Now let’s take this further and talk about the importance of competitor analysis when it comes to improving your SEO.

By studying your competition’s use of keywords, you can identify new keywords and keywords that are too competitive, as well as learn about what types of content are working for them. Also, you can find out who is linking to your competitor so that you can determine if you want to engage with those websites (and people) to get them to link to you too.

As you study your competitor’s website, ask yourself questions:

* Are my keyword choices too competitive?
* Are my keyword choices too tentative?
* What can I do better?
* What are they doing well?
* Who links to this site?
* What sites do they link to?
* How are they using internal linking?

You can use the same tools to research their URL as you use to conduct research for your own site. But remember that just because a competitor is doing something, it doesn’t mean that you should. Instead, use the information to fill in the gaps, do it a little better, and know where you stand.

A great tool to use for competitor research is Ispionage.com, which will help you find the keywords they’re using and other information that can help you improve your own SEO. (https://www.ispionage.com/Research/default.aspx).

Take your research further; join their email list and follow them on social media. Get to know your competition because even though they are competitors, you never know when an opportunity will present itself to either work together or buy them out. Don’t laugh; it happens. It can also happen the other way, if the competitor is just slightly more successful and worried about you encroaching on them.

Next time, we’ll discuss the importance of user experience by helping you analyze your website to ensure that it provides a good user experience to your audience in every way.

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