Who’s Ahead? Evaluating Your Competition

By Jeanne Neath and Paula Mariedaughter

If you have a storefront for your business, you probably know exactly who your local competitors are. You have a good idea about their strengths and weaknesses and know how to keep customers coming to your shop, despite the competition. But, what about the competition for your online business? Do you know which Internet businesses are getting the most traffic and sales for the productsyou sell on your web site?

In earlier columns we have discussed the importance of identifying a number of good key phrases and then optimizing your web pages for these phrases. These key phrases may be general terms like “quilting fabric”, or more specific, such as “30s reproduction fabric”, or even “Aunt Grace Dots”. A good key phrase will generate significant traffic and draw visitors likely to buy your products. However, some key phrases have much more competition than others. Sometimes you can find key phrases that generate high traffic, but have minimal competition. These phrases are your potential goldmine. We encourage you to study the competition and find your online market niche.

Once you have identified potential key phrases, take one key phrase and search Google for that phrase. As you know, the first page of search results will receive the most attention from visitors. Our fictional example of a key phrase is “Volvo 303 Sewing Machine.” Web sites that come up first, second and third in the Google results are your main competition. Go visit each of these sites and do an evaluation! Take notes about your findings.

Look for search engine optimization on your competitor’s web page. For example, does the key phrase appear near the top of the web page, in headings, in the title (very top) of the browser, and liberally throughout the page? If you can’t easily tell that the page is about the Volvo 303 sewing machine, then your competitor’s page has not been well-optimized for the search engines and this may be a good key phrase for you.

Next, study the incoming links to your competitor’s site. You can see the links that a specific search engine recognizes for your competitor’s site by doing a search for the term “link:” followed by the competitor’s domain name (e.g. for our site, link:www.quiltprofessionals.com). Once you have the list of your competitor’s incoming links, note the total number. If the number is large, larger than the number of incoming links you think you can generate for your site, then be concerned. Continue by checking the quality of the links. Are the links from prominent web sites or from businesses you have never heard of? If many of the links are from businesses that are not sewing-related, this reduces their quality.

Move on to the next sites. If you have just two strong competitors for “Volvo 303 Sewing Machines,” this may be a valuable key phrase to use. Repeat your evaluations of the competition on Yahoo and MSN, the other two major search engines, and for additional key phrases.

As you work, take note of the quality of the competitor sites you visit. Search engines may give high rankings to sites not even selling your product! If the first five listed sites are not actually selling the Volvo 303, or are hard to use, and your site is number six, your sales may be excellent.