Online competitor analysis is a crucial element of both the setting up phase of your online business and as part of your on-going marketing strategy. The problem is knowing what to look for and where to start.

Amy Harris, the Community Manager for Expert Market, helps give you tips for online competitor research.

This comprehensive guide looks at the main steps you need to take to find out what is working for your most successful competitors and how to use that information to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

1. What is Their Backlink Profile?

Backlinks from quality sources boost the credibility of your website and you will discover that websites that are high in the rankings have a high quality backlink profile.

High quality links are those from reputable news sites, popular blogs, professional websites, and industry sites. Good links can be acquired through press releases, recommendations, memberships, guest posts and more.

Poor backlinks are those from the glut of directory sites and spam blogs. You probably won’t be analysing many poor backlinks in the future because the highest-ranking sites are starting to disassociate from them en-masse.

There are a number of tools available for checking competitor backlinks but many of them only give complete results to paid subscribers. Top choices for backlink checkers are Ahrefs, SEOMoz , Open Site Explorer and Majestic. All of these tools offer some free information too so it is worth joining, even if you don’t want to pay.

2. What is Their Content Strategy?

These days, top SEO starts with high quality, user friendly and interesting content. Sites that regularly update their blogs, provide fresh, contextual and relevant content on a regular basis and who network and guest post with other leading websites tend to score highly in the search engine rankings.

Have a look at the content on your competitor’s website and ask yourself:

• Do they have a well-maintained blog?
• Do they have a resources section/information directory?
• Do they publish guest posts and articles to other sites?
• Do they have a content rich site, filled with useful information?

You can get some good ideas about what kind of content works and what doesn’t and use the content framework that you glean from your competitors to eventually outrank them.

3. Stalk Them on Social Media

Stalking is probably too strong a word, but keeping tabs on your most successful competitor’s social media marketing strategy is relatively easy, covert and insightful.

• With whom are your competitors engaging and how?
• Are they sharing content, advertising special offers or just networking to build trust?
• Which sites are they a member of and which are they most active on?

4. Look at Their Keywords

There are some great tools out there for analysing the keywords that your competitor uses to get to the top of the search engine results but like all great tools, none of them is completely free.

Keywordspy.com gives some interesting insights for free and even shows you what your competitors are bidding on with PPC.  This analysis will show you if you are on the right track with your keyword research and highlight any that you may be missing.

5. Keep a Long Term View

Your most successful competitors are likely to be dynamic and flexible, responding to changes in the market and their competition quickly. Monitor your competition closely and regularly and respond swiftly to any change in their strategy. Naturally, you should be gaining competitive advantage through your own ingenuity but knowing what you are competing with is more than half the battle.

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