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Keep An Eye On Your Competition.
By Rik Tairea
No matter how "niche" you think your websites and webpages
are, you can guarantee that you will always have some sort of
competition trying to out do you traffic and/or revenue wise.
Even one rival can count as competition.
With that said, competition is a good thing (sometimes it can
even be considered as great). This is because it can give you
a sense of feeling what you are doing right and/or wrong (in relation
to how your site is performing) and it can also generate focus
and direction.
For example, the former "webmaster books" section at
Groundzero hugely evolved since it's earlier version. It used
to only consist of one page with information and screen shots
of three books, then it grew to info on twenty five books (each
on a separate page).
The main reason for the change of tactics regarding the books
section was because I noticed a competitor was doing something
similar (in relation to housing info and selling the same types
of books). The difference was that they were offering more books
but not necessarily more information about said books.
So I decided that I would focus on beefing up the book section
a bit, but still provide information (not a full book review)
for people to make an informed decision about whether or not it
would be beneficial to purchase the book.
The main benefit of super sizing the books section was the fact
that it added a whole lot more content to the website that is
beneficial to other webmasters (the main reason why Groundzero
exists in the first place). Add that to the fact it also increases
traffic to the site and provides an extra revenue because of book
store affiliations.
Another benefit of keeping tabs on the competition is to find
out what you might be doing wrong.
For example, a while back I had thought that I created a good
product page that was beneficial for the user, and at the same
time optimized for search engines. I was half right (which could
make me half left but that's a different issue).
The sales copy was good but the ranking position was not what
I expected. I forgot about this for a while and checked on it
about a month later, and saw that nothing had changed, except
that a competing webpage jumped up a little bit.
I took a quick look at the competing webpage and at first didn't
notice anything out of the ordinary. Checked the Google pagerank
of the page and noticed it was average, then I looked at the keyword
density of a specific phrase and didn't notice anything major
there either.
So I looked at the source of the webpage and "bingo",
there was the answer staring me right in the face and laughing
out loud.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this but I won't short change you
by not mentioning it. The main difference between my product page
and the competing page was the use of heading tags (or in my case,
lack of heading tags).
I forgot to put them in.
I've said it once and I'll say it again, I'm no SEO expert and
I don't play one on television either. I should have known better
because if there are SEO classes, the use of heading tags would
be covered quickly in SEO 101. A rookie mistake that I should
not have made.
I didn't even have one stupid little H1 tag and this page managed
to use H2 and H3 tags. Some may argue that heading tags won't
do much, but my research has concluded that when used wisely,
they are beneficial (to a certain point of course).
By keeping an eye on the competition I've learnt many lessons,
which in turn have helped me implement ideas that benefit my websites.
Checking out what other sites do better than you can give you
ideas, focus and motivation. It's also a good way to keep a finger
on current and future trends.
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The above article was written solely for Groundzero and may not
be reproduced in anyway on print or other media. This article
was written by the webmaster, creator and owner of this site.
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