One of the best ways to improve your SEO is to find-out what the top sites on Google are doing to get there. If they don’t have an exact-match domain and you do then you have a nice edge you can use to your advantage. SEOMoz did a great post recently about how to really drill-down and determine what you can learn from your competitors.
I thought I’d point-out a few of the highlights which you can read below – if you’d like to learn more then just read the full article available here – Spying on (and Learning from) Your Competitors: Step 5 of the 8-Step SEO Research Strategy
- Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your competitors and compare specific characteristics
- Compare Features and Content
- Ask yourself what your competitor is doing that you’re not
- Compare on-page SEO
- Compare inbound links – this is IMPORTANT to Google
- Compare traffic using tools like Alexa and Compete
- Come-away with a list of specific things you can do to beat your competitor!
Remember the famous saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” the more your know about your competitors the greater potential you have of out-ranking them in the search engines! Now go forth and conquer!
