Hi, I run an ecommerce site and want to know how to analyse my competitors. So far I have done the following; Keyword searches to see where my competitors are ranking Searches to see which competitors are running adword campaigns for my keywords Competitor site analysis re what they stock, pricing and promotions Google and Yahoo link analysis to see who links to my competitor Searches to see where my competitors advertise Is there anything else I could be doing to find out more about my competitors? Is there any paid or free software I can use to analyse my competitors? Thanks James
You can download Internet Business Pro, they'll do quite a bit of competitor research for you based on keywords they rank for. It'll tell you their keyword density for the words you want to rank for, and look at other on-page and off-page elements, such as number of incoming links so that you can reverse engineer and use that information to beat them out in the listings. They have a free demo version of their software. I would also look at ways to use social media and video--find out what advertising channels your competitors are NOT using, and go there.
Your public library might provide free access to Dun & Bradstreet and Reference USA databases that let you know revenue, number of employees, years at current location, and so on, about some competitors. Where I live, e.g., the King County library system gives me (as a proud library card holder) online access to both databases. Note that typically these business databases won't put a business on the radar screen until they have threshold revenue ($100K in case of Reference USA and $1M in case of D&B) ... but you might try to poke around. You could get some very interesting data on a competitor. Good luck!
On an more general level, you might find some friends or family who will give you very honest opinions and watch them as they use and navigate several of the sites. By watching how the users interact with the web page, you can find what works well and what doesn't.
Try www .spyfu. com. You can find lots of info on your competition and how much they are betting on adwords.