Hi all I have a question that I want to ask the SEO gurus that frequents this site. I need to do a bit of a snooping around for my first web project and wonder if any one could help me with this. 1. What is the definitive way to find out the back links of my competitor. I mean the links that are not from their domain.. Is there a way I can download the whole list from somewhere? 2. How can I find out what are the key words that are generating traffic for my competitors. 3. Is there any point in Hub pages or squidoo as the article pages do not have a PR - I mean if it is just a link could I not just get a 100 article done and get the links? As you can see I am a proper noob – will appreciate your help. regards Shan
Firstly you should know what keywords u are targetting. Since your a noob and you are starting something new i recommend targetting long tail keywords with less traffic and less competition for a start. Like say "steel radios" gets 10000 searches in a month and you have a shop of steel radios .. but "stainless steel radios" has just 100 searches in a month. So initially target stainless steel radios and neverthe less along with this target you are also paving the way for "steel radios" since the promotion remains the same ... Your backlinks will contain steel radios as well so u dont have to like work seperately for your main keyword. Yahoo Site Explorer helps in competitor analysis... and also your own backlinks analysis.. Not highly perfect but yet the best from the rest. Articles well they are just pages... but imagine a page of a PR8 site giving u a backlink cause in the next PR update it will surely get 1-2 PR whenever that occurs say 6-8 months later... So articles are for long term growth... not short term... but still they are good links..
1. There is no definitive way, but there are definitely tools you can use to see what links your competition have, that you do not. I use Linkscape by SEOMoz (it is a paid tool, though) 2. KWs generating traffic for your competition? Oh how I wish we all had access to that information...however, title tags and meta information may be an indicator of what KWs they are targeting, at least. 3. Sure, why not? Just more content on the internet with your links. Wish you the best of luck. -E