Analysing the competition
No doubt you will have a clear idea of who your actual competitors are. These are the people you are competing with in your overall business.
Your online competitors are very often different. You may be using the Internet to extend your business reach, or your actual competitors may have poor web sites or none at all. Whatever the reason, the greatest challenge to you online may come from previously unknown businesses or from other unexpected sources.
Find your competitors
Equipped with your keyword research, you can search like your prospective customers and look at the search engine results through their eyes. Use all three major search engines for this exercise: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Each has an international .com version and a regional .co.uk version. This is a time to experiment, so test each of these options. Make a list of your most visible online competitors, both for your overall web site and for its individual subject areas. This list will be invaluable, so keep it handy.
Make your business stand out
The Internet offers your audience seemingly unlimited choice and service. To survive, you need to stand out from your competitors. Find out about their strengths and weaknesses, and find something of your own that none of them can claim. You are different – so make sure that difference becomes part of the company culture.
What keywords are your competitors targeting?
On each competitor site, go to the web pages that rival your own. Go to the ‘View’ menu in your browser and choose ‘View Source’ from the list of options. Now you are looking at the code of their web page. Near the top of the code, you will find their page title, meta description and meta keywords (short descriptions and keywords written in HTML language). This valuable information will help you find out how they are presenting themselves to your audience.
You can use this information to check that you have covered all your options for targeting your audience. Blend this information with your keyword research. Be careful not to infringe your competitors’ intellectual property rights and copyright by using their exact source code.
The title, meta description and keyword tags in the page source
