Competitive Analysis ofOffsite Success Factors
By Ross Dunn, CEO/FounderStepForth Web Marketing Inc.
“Increasing your bottom line online”@rossdunn
Presentation at: http://slidesha.re/offsiteAnalysis
Have you worked somewhere this is familiar?
About Me
• Proud father & lucky husband, (no she’s not here)
• I have been in SEO since 1997,• I love working with small & medium sized companies,
• I am a regular writer for The Search Marketing Standard print magazine & various online blogs,
• Host of SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM • I am a regular speaker at conferences and I teach SEO and competitive analysis at my local college,
What is Offsite Analysis?
A review of factors which may have a positive or negative effect on: • the competitor’s organic rankings i.e. links to their site, social media buzz
• and overall online success.
Today I am covering backlink analysis.
Identifying Worthy Competitors
Each competitor:• Ranks well for the core phrasei.e. “mountain bike parts”
• Has top rankings for a wide range of top keyphrases and longtail searchesi.e. “<brand> mountain bike parts”, etc.
• Has a large number of inbound links
Your Link Analysis ToolkitWhat I used in this presentation:
• Majestic SEOin‐depth competitor link profile reports
• DomainTools.comwebsite network detection
Other Great Tools:• SEMrush.com
competitor keyword intelligence• SEOmoz LinkScape
in‐depth competitor link profile reports
Find the list of these tools & more here: http://bit.ly/comptools
#1) Majestic SEO
• Prices start at £ 9.99 per month.• "the largest commercially available Link Intelligence map on the planet."
Majestic SEO users have access to:
• 70 billion unique URLs in it's Fresh index• 3.5 trillion available in it's historical index
http://bit.ly/comptools
#2) Domain Tools
• Starts at $29.95/mo.
Handy tools include:
• Domain Monitor• Reverse IP• Whois History• Hosting History• Alerts for trademarks, name servers, and registrants
http://bit.ly/comptools
#3) SEMRush
• Starts at $69/mo• Shows Google organic and AdWords keywords • allows up to 10,000 results per query• Export results into Excel or CSV (organic & AdWords)
• Access to organic & AdWords databases for US, UK, DE, FR, ES, RU, IT, BR, AU
http://bit.ly/comptools
#4) SEOmoz Pro
• Membership starts at $99/mo.• Open Site Explorer & LinkScape to conduct link analysis within a “proprietary web index of over 9.2 trillion links”.
• Access to a veritable fountain of other great tools.
http://bit.ly/comptools
A WALK THROUGH USING 3 TOOLSCompetitive Backlink Analysis
Majestic SEO, Domain Tools and Excel
Our Competitors for the Core Phrase: “mountain bike parts”
The Goal
Link Data You Can Leverage
C3C2 C1
Intelligently consolidate link data from all three competitors (“C”) to supplement your link building strategy
The Task: Create Order from Backlink Data for Each Competitor
Create MjSEO Reports
Merge MjSEO Reports into Master
Excel Sheet
Run MjSEO’s CliqueHunter &
Merge
Identify Other Competitor‐Owned
Sites
Highlight Competitor Owned Sites in Master Excel Sheet
Mine that Data!!
Step 1) Majestic SEO Link Report
• Create Advanced Reports for each competitor• Download Top Backlinks list in CSV format excluding no links (only flagging) using the Download tab.
MjSEO Link Report in Excel
Step 2) Manually Review Top 50 Links
Create notes on each competitor’s link profile:• Relevant anchor text• Relevant on page content• Quality of page content• The reason for each link• The type of linkeditorial, blog, blogroll, paid, comment, social network, charity, etc.
Step 3) Combine Results in Excel
Merge into
Master
C1 Links
C2 Links
C3 Links
Step 4) Find the HubsUse CliqueHunter in Majestic SEO to find shared links among the 3 competitors; AKA link hubs.
4.1) Highlight Link Hubs in theExcel Master Link List
Step 5) Looking for Biased Links
Look for signs of similar design and layout on sites linking suspiciously to a competitor.Look for signs of similar design and layout on sites linking suspiciously to a competitor.
Is the same anchor text & surrounding text used repeatedly across supposedly different sites?Is the same anchor text & surrounding text used repeatedly across supposedly different sites?
Are the links site wide?Are the links site wide?
5.1) Reverse IP
A lucky find! Otoponer.com is another domain on that server and it is a duplicate of bikeparts.com
5.2) Is Otoponer.com Redirected?
After a quick check on Google it is clear now, BikeParts.com has duplicate content issues.
5.3) We Want More! Time to Spy
Conduct a Whois on BikeParts.com
Uh oh, it’s private!
Search their WhoisHistory for past openings
This is the email address to research further
Eureka! Time to Cough Up the Dough
5.4) Highlight Competitor‐OwnedSites in Master List
Step 6) Drawing Conclusions
Your Link Building Master List is now primed! You can now sort data any number of ways looking for quality links for yourself:• Sites with high ACRank that provided particularly strong, followed anchor text.
• Find sites that provided mentions of competitors which may help with local SEO
• Forums provide links with relevance & weight
6.1) Drawing Conclusions
Examples of many possibilities:• Lots of competitor owned backlinks:= precarious ranking advantage
• Many .edu links:may point to a concerted link building effort,and/or high quality onsite content worth copying
• Many links nofollowed: possible low quality link building tactics such as commenting
6.2) Dealing with Dirt
What if you discover your competitor(s) are blatantly violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?
What do you want to do with that information? Report them to Google? Not necessarily smart.
You deserve to know the dirt but be careful to use the information wisely.
To Recap: One Way to Create a Competitive Link Building Master List
Create MjSEO Reports
Merge MjSEO Reports into Master
Excel Sheet
Run MjSEO’s CliqueHunter &
Merge
Identify Other Competitor‐Owned
Sites
Highlight Competitor Owned Sites in Master Excel Sheet
Mine that Data!!
6.2) Prepare for Link Building
What you do next with high quality competitive backlink intelligence:
1. Avoid making the mistakes they did!2. Start building links from Hub pages.3. Tackle relevant, high ACRank websites..4. Build content/articles based on the content
which earned links for your competitors.
6.3) Track the Campaign with RavenInternet Marketing Tools
http://bit.ly/comptools
Social Media Competitor Analysis
Another 15 min is needed at least. But here are some handy tools:• SocialMention.comexcellent free social competitor analysis tool
• Klout.comsee how your competitors measure up
• Bit.ly (just add + to the end of their bit.ly url)Track the content your competitors share to see what gets the most attention!
SEOLinkReports.comIt is offline temporarily but look at this!
• Total Number of Backlinks• Unique Domains linking in• Unique IP's linking• Front Page Links• Run of site links• Links Lost• Broken Links• Anchor Text
http://bit.ly/comptools
Example of an SEO Link Report
Questions? [email protected]
Tune in to SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM live every Monday at 2pm PST, 5pm EST or get it on iTunes: SEO101radio.com
Twitter:@RossDunn
Ross Dunn’s Contact Details in QR FormatPresentation at: http://slidesha.re/offsiteAnalysis