9 tactics to know what your competitors are up to, and how to profit from that knowledge · 2011....

9 Tactics To Know What Your

Competitors Are Up To, And How

To Profit From That Knowledge

Phil RozekLocalVisibilitySystem.com

Table of Contents

Tactic #1: “I know I can get visitor statistics for my site, but how can I get stats on my competitors’ sites?” ................Page 3

Tactic #2: “My competitor’s site has been ranking higher and higher. How do I find out how he’s been changing it?” ..Page 5

Tactic #3: “My competitor is kicking my butt at pay-per-click advertising. How can I find out how he does it?” ............Page 6

Tactic #4: “My competitor’s site does well in the organic search results. What’s the best way to find out why thesearch engines love his site?” .........................................Page 7

Tactic #5: “How can I find out the sites that link to my competitor’s site?”...................................................Page 10

Tactic #6: “I think my competitor is up to something with his Google Local Business address, and isn’t located at the address he claims. How can I stop him?” ...............Page 12

Tactic #7: “I suspect my competitor is using phony reviews in his Google Local Search listing. What can I do about it?” .................................................................. Page 14

Tactic #8: “How can I find out what’s being written about me and what’s being written about my competitors?”..........Page 16

Tactic #9: “How do I keep my competitors from ripping off MY website content?” .......................................................... Page 18

Bonus ......................................................................................Page 19

9 Tactics To Know What Your Competitors Are Up To, And How To Profit From That Knowledge

© 2010 Philip A. Rozek [email protected] 3

Tactic #1: “I know I can get visitor statistics for my site, but how can I get stats on my competitors’sites?”

Go to Compete.com. You’ll be able to see what are the main sources of traffic for

your competitors—like which sites and search terms bring in the most traffic—as

well as a graph of traffic trends over time. You get more if you sign up for their

paid service, but what you get for free is great.

Why you should care: If your competitor is bringing in more business than you,

you want to find out whatever advantages he may have, and use them to your

advantage. For instance, if you think he brings in more business and suspect that

it’s because he gets more traffic to his site, you’ll want to find out for a fact that

he gets more traffic before you spend any time or money trying to get more for

yourself. You can’t take an advantage away from your competitor very

well if you don’t have the facts—and Compete.com gives you some great

facts.



Example:

Here’s a head-to-head comparison of the top two sites that come up in the results

for “Dallas pizza.”

The picture shows at a glance how much traffic each site gets. You can’t really see

it here, but one site gets almost twice as the traffic its competitor gets. It has just

a couple sites linking to it, but the other site doesn’t have any. Those are just a

couple things the comparison immediately tells you.

Here’s what you can discover about your competitors:

How much traffic they get in relation to how much you get

From what websites they get that traffic

What search terms people use before ending up at your competitor’s site



Tactic #2: “My competitor’s site has been ranking higher and higher. How do I find out how he’s been changing it?”

Use the “Wayback Machine” at http://www.archive.org to see what your

competitor’s site looked like a few months ago, last year, or ten years ago (if his

site was around then). Just stick your competitor’s URL in the following box:

This lets you see how a site has changed over the months or years, and gives you

a sense of its general trend—like how much content your competitor has added

and when, what type of content he’s added, etc. That tells you how you might

be able to change your site and get a leg up.

“What else can I find out about my competitor’s site?”

You can find out:

Whether he’s making a different offer than the one he used to make

How much his price-points have changed over time

Whether (or how) his Unique Selling Proposition has changed

Of course, there are all kinds of other things you could find out about your

competitor, because you can see the entire existence of his site. Once you know

what your competitor does, you gain the opportunity to do better than him with

your site.



Tactic #3: “My competitor is kicking my butt at pay-per-click advertising. How can I find out how he does it?”

There are two particularly great paid services you could use: Keyword Spy

(http://www.keywordspy.com), which has a good free-trial version, or Spyfu

(http://www.spyfu.com).

“How do these tools help me?”

Both of these tools give you the dirt on your competitors’ PPC campaigns. Not

only can you find out what keywords they bid on and what’s in all their ads, but

you can also see a graph of their PPC ad budget. For instance, if your competitor

really started outranking you in PPC last October, you could look at the graph to

see how much more (or less) he actually spent on his ads during October.

“How does it help to know all about my competitor’s ad campaign?

If you find out what your competitors do for their PPC campaigns, you can take a

page out of their book and use it to your advantage.

“Can I get a free trial?”

Keyword Spy offers a free trial. It’s quite good, and you don’t have to enter your

credit card info in order to sign up for the free trial, so there’s no chance that

you’ll forget about it and get whacked every month. Spyfu appears NOT to offer a

trial version. There’s another, similar keyword tool called Semrush

(http://www.semrush.com). You can get a free-trial version of it.



Tactic #4: “My competitor’s site does well in the organic search results. What’s the best way to find out why the search engines love his site?”

You’ll want to use two tools: Google Keyword Tool and WebsiteGrader.com.

“How does Google Keyword Tool help me?”

Google may consider your site and your competitor’s site to have different themes.

As you may know, one of the main functions of Google is to identify what a

website or page of a website is “about.” No one knows exactly how Google does it,

but we do know that Google detects certain keywords on a given web page or site,

and then associates those keywords with that page or site. For instance, Google

may look at your competitor’s website and conclude that the theme of it is broadly

related to “vintage cars.” (“Vintage cars” might be one theme of the site, but

there are usually several themes Google associates with the site.) If you deal in

vintage cars, you’ll want Google to consider your site relevant to “vintage cars,”

but it may turn out that Google considers your site more relevant to “used cars.”

If you want any chance of knowing how to make your site just as relevant to your

market as your competitor’s site is, you’ll need to know what terms Google

associates your site with. Google won’t tell you exactly what it considers your site

“theme” to be—most sites don’t have one specific theme—but the Google Keyword

Tool will give you a pretty good idea of how Google categorizes you.



“How do I use it?”

To use it, type “Google Keyword Tool” into Google and click on the top result.

Click on the bubble for “Website content” and enter your URL, as follows:

Then start the search. You’ll then see a long list of terms Google thinks your site

is relevant to. That will give you some idea of what Google thinks your site is

about—what service it thinks you provide, etc. Then repeat the process: enter

your competitor’s URL, and you’ll see a long list of terms his site is relevant to.

That will (a) indicate how different Google considers your sites, and (b) give you a

hint as to how you might want to tweak the subject matter on your site.

“What do I do next?”

The second thing you should do is go to the completely free

http://websitegrader.com/

Once you’re there, all you do is enter your URL in the first box (which you’ll see

immediately). You’ll see an overall score (like “61/100”), as well as specific

recommendations as to how to improve your site. Do the same for your

competitor’s site, and you’ll know what you should ask your webmaster to

do next. That’s all there is to it. WebsiteGrader is great as a routine quality-

checker.



If you want yet another handy tool…

Go to http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo , where you’ll be able to see a breakdown of

the search terms visitors used to find your site (and your competitors’ sites), as well as

what percentage of your traffic came from each search term.

There are all kinds of things you can do once you know how people find you. To take just

one example: Let’s say you’re a dentist, and you find out that most people who visit your

site found you by typing in “implant dentist.” You can then tailor the content of your site

to that audience—which may help bring more patients through your doors, especially if

your site wasn’t particularly targeted toward that audience to begin with.

By the way, if you find search terms by which you didn’t know people find you, and you

want to take advantage of that new knowledge, I might be able to give you some quick

feedback if you drop me an email at [email protected]



Tactic #5: “How can I find out the sites that link to my competitor’s site?”

You can do this very quickly with Google’s backlink checker.

To check which websites link to a given page of your competitor’s site, first

navigate to a page of his site (let’s say the homepage). You can then check the

links in one of two easy methods:

First method: Click on Google’s backlink checker (in the area where PR is

displayed, near the top of your browser window). It’s the area that looks like this:

You’ll then see a page of Google search results, which lists all the web pages that

link to the URL you just entered. If you click on any of the search results,

somewhere on the page is a link to your competitor’s site. That’s the info you

want: where your competitor gets his links.

Second method: An equally easy way to do the same thing is to type the

following into the Google search bar: “link:www.examplesite.com”. (As you can

see, there’s a colon in there, and you’ll obviously want to enter the name of your

particular competitor’s site.) Here’s what I’m talking about:



You’ll then see that list of which sites link to your competitor—which is what you

want to know.

One last note:

In my examples, I showed you how to find the sites that link to your competitor’s

homepage. However, there may be outside links leading to other pages on his website.

If you want to find sites that link to other pages on your competitor’s website,

you have to enter the URL of that page. For instance, if your competitor has a page

called “product1.html” and you want to see how many links point to it, type in

“link:www.examplesite.com/product1.html”. Then you’ll see the sites that point to the

“product1.html” page.

If you aren’t sure which pages are on your competitor’s site and don’t want to spend time

digging around in his site, type “site:examplesite.com” into Google. You’ll see a full list of

all the indexed pages, or in other words all the pages Google “knows about.” You can

then check the links that lead to those other pages, if you’d like.



Tactic #6: “I think my competitor is up to something with his Google Local Business address, and isn’t located at the address he claims. How can I stop him?”

There are two steps: use Google Street View to verify where your competitor is (or

isn’t) located, and then tell Google.

First step: type the address of your competitor into Google Maps:

Click on the red map marker, then on the Street View:

You’ll then be able to see whether the business is at the same address as that

which is listed in the Google Local results. Maybe you’ve driven by your

competitor’s establishment and know he isn’t located where he claims to be, but



this step is important if you actually plan on telling Google about your competitor.

Why? Because Street View is the main (possibly only) way the people at Google

will be able to tell whether your competitor is legit.

Second step: once again type the address of your competitor into Google Maps.

Then look in the bottom-right corner of the map on which your competition is

listed, and click the little “Report a Problem” link. Then just fill out the request

box:



Tactic #7: “I suspect my competitor is using phony reviews in his Google Local Search listing. What can I do about it?”

Phony reviews come in a number of shapes and sizes (it just depends on the

situation), but in some cases the review is simply irrelevant to the business it’s

supposedly written for. Take a look at the following review, which was listed as a

review for a locksmith:

Step #1: Flag any reviews written through the reviewer’s Google Account

As the picture indicates, you’ll want to click “Flag.” As you may know, customers

can write reviews of local businesses through their Google Accounts. The review

above was written through Google. All reviews written through Google have the

“Flag” option, so wherever you see a bogus-looking review with that option, click it.

You may also want to get other people (family, friends, employees) to do the

same. If enough people do it, Google may take your competitor’s phony reviews

down or shut him down entirely. (By the way, just because a review has the “Flag”

option next to it doesn’t necessarily mean the review is fishy.) That takes care of

the reviews written through Google.

Step #2: Report any reviews written through an outside site

(CitySearch, Yelp etc.).



To take care of reviews written through a directory site, click on the link that

indicates where the review was written:

You’ll then go to the site that has some of the phony reviews. These sites have

“Terms of Use” or “Report Abuse” sections. There’s usually a contact email

address in there. Send a short (2-3 line) email, explaining the basic situation, and

they’ll tell you what to do next.

Step #3: When you’re looking at a bogus review, click “No” where it asks “Was this

review helpful?”

For all the phony-looking reviews, you may also want to notify Google that the

review was NOT helpful. You’ll see where to click below every review:

That helps to get phony reviews taken down. Google and the review sites are

useful and influential only insofar as the info they post is accurate—which you’re

helping to police.



Tactic #8: “How can I find out what’s being written about me and what’s being written about my competitors?”

You can have Google email you whenever someone on the web posts anything

about you or your competitors. Use a tool called Google Alerts. Just type “Google

Alerts” into Google, go to the first result, and you’ll see this simple box:

Enter your or your competitors’ business name, and you’ll get updates from

Google whenever a mention is made of either of you.

Other examples of what you can monitor:

You could set up alerts for:

Your personal name

Your competitor’s personal name

Google Local Search terms you are or want to be found for (example:

“Minneapolis auto repair”)



Two more GREAT free resources:

Google Alerts a fantastic thing to have running in the background, but if you want to do

some proactive digging for what’s being said about your competitors, I’d suggest

123People.com or PIPL.com. Then enter the personal name of your competitors, and

you’ll see what the word on them is.



Tactic #9: “How do I keep my competitors from ripping off MY website content?”

There’s an excellent tool called Copyscape. It tells you who else is using the

content that’s on your website. If you go to Copyscape.com, you can use a free

trial. If you want to use it on a more regular basis, you’d have to buy it, but it’s a

great service either way.

“What exactly can Copyscape do for me that Google Alerts (Tactic #8) can’t?”

Like Google Alerts, Copyscape tells you who might be ripping you off, but the

difference is that Copyscape monitors entire pages of content (as opposed to more

specific phrases). It looks at everything that’s on your site, and tells you who else

uses even a little snippet of the content that’s on your site

Sure, some siteowners may get a hold of free content you offered, and they may

cite it as yours and kindly link to you—that’s fine. But you don’t want your

competitors to use your material for their benefit, and that’s where Copyscape

comes in. It also saves you the trouble of Googling snippets of your content to

see who might be using it; Copyscape tells you what you want to know instantly.



Bonus: You may also be wondering…“Is there an easy way to see all the links to my competitor’s entire site, and to get detail on those links so I can get some for MY site?”

I know of a great tool for this. It’s not free, and it’s probably only useful to you if

you need to dig up info on your competitors’ inbound links on a regular basis. If

you’d like more info on it, you can email me at [email protected]

“My SOB competitor down the street purposefully grabbed the website name I wanted to use. Can I get it back?”

Most likely yes. If you can prove that a competitor poached your company name

(or the name of your trademark product, etc.) just to prevent you from using it,

you can get it back. That’s why if someone in the early ‘90s thought it would be a

great idea to snap up CocaCola.com before Coke did, he’d be forced to give the

name to Coke.

“How can I get my rightful name back?”

I don’t have room to go into the process here, but if you think someone

intentionally grabbed your name, I can tell you how to go about getting it back.

Just email me at [email protected]



Would You Also Like a Leg Up

in the Google Local Search Results?

Some of the solutions I just showed you help you get ahead of your competitors in

your local market. If you’re sick of not being visible in your local market, or if

you’re sick of your competitors getting a bigger piece of the local pie, then I have

good news: I have MANY more solutions other than the ones I just showed

you.

You may have already seen my comprehensive Local Visibility System. It’s the

first of its kind, as a full system that gets you found in your local market. It

contains 11 tools and 27 solutions for getting you more visibility—and more profits—in

your local market.

If you’re perfectly happy with the amount of local business you currently get, then

I don’t have much to offer you. However, if you’d like more than you’re

getting, check out http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/visibility-now

To Your Success!

Phil Rozek

9 tactics to know what your competitors are up to, and how to profit from that knowledge · 2011....

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