SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

As you already know, good link partners are vital to the growth of your website. Without good link partners you wont be ranked highly in the search engines, and you wont receive the traffic you need to gain new customers and make new sales. Building high-quality links to your website helps it to succeed.

Websites that maintain good incoming links will get many targeted visitors from their link partners. These link partners are also a good source of information and can offer value for the visitors that come to your website more often. The idea behind link partners is to find web sites with complementary content so that you enhance your web site. For example, if you sell computers, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to link to a site that sells printers.

Linking to your competitors is much more dangerous. The fact of the matter is that when you link to your competitors you are handing them your business. They may be handing some of theirs back to you, but the trade off simply isn’t worth it. If you are in a situation where it is your product or theirs, do not link to them. Aside from the obvious issue of losing business to their site, you may even lose the returning link if you don’t keep an eye on it.

When dealing with link partners, theres virtually no point unless you get reciprocal links. These links make your website look good, as well as getting you targeted traffic from users clicking on the links. When you are optimizing your site for key words, however, it is important to link to sites that provide more information regarding the content that you have provided. In cases like this, the link is already helping you. If you get a returning link in addition it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

With good-quality incoming links, you will benefit greatly from the increased traffic to your site. Most major search engines rankings are at least partly based on the number of quality links pointing to your website. Google, HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi and more all use link popularity in their formula for calculating rankings.

The value of your link partner’s sites will be very important, as many of the search engines use this in determining how relevant your site is to the terms that are being searched on. A site with a page rank below three generally isnt worth exchanging links with. Then again, if the site is on its way up, it might be a good idea to get in on the ground floor. If you are curious as to whether a site is going to be accumulating a higher page rank in a short period of time try going to http://www.iwebtool.com/rank and punching the sites URL into the backlink tool or the page rank predictor. These will show you how many links the site has going to them and will let you know what the page rank could be within the next three months.

You must always keep an eye on the value, and use value-for-value exchanges only. Make sure that your link doesnt get removed from any sites you link to, and remove your own link to them if it does. Many people will agree to link with you and then remove your link after a week or two. If you leave your site linked to them, then theyre the only one benefiting.

Good link partners are hard to find, and it will take some time for them to respond. You may have to contact them more than once, and probably wont take you seriously if you just ask them to trade you links. It is important to provide them with information relating to your company and let them know why your link will be worth while to them. If you are serious about SEO, you will be able to let them know that you expect your page rank to explode within the next few months and you may be able to accumulate links this way.

Its important for to make sure that you links are checked on a regular basis. Of course you dont have much control over the incoming links, but you can still do whatever you want with the outgoing ones. You should immediately remove any links that dont work, as they can and will bring your search engine rankings down.

By understanding how link partnering works and maintaining good quality links on your website, you can increase your targeted traffic and improve your sales. After all, isnt that the whole point of having an online business? Just remember that your website, like any other business, takes time and effort to make it succeed, and any little way you can speed up the process is good as long as its not against the rules, of course.

1. Add every meta tag that you can.

Take a look at the code of a few websites out there. Many sites have silly amounts of tags far more than they need. Remember the old adage: keep it simple, stupid. Dont add tags unless you know what youre doing and dont make up your own tag names, because no-ones paying any attention to them. Most of these tags are skipped over by most search engines anyway. The only crucial tags are the description tag and the keywords tag which are both utilized occasionally. Many other tags are there just for the sake of crediting the webmaster, author, etc. These kinds of tags are there mostly for the sake of other webmasters if they need to know who to contact about the page itself.

#2 Have lots of keywords.

Using the keywords meta tag correctly is good, but dont get too hung up on it. Many search engines now ignore it altogether, including Google and AltaVista. Remember that putting too much in this tag could be considered spamming make sure you dont put anything in more than three times, and keep the keywords related to your site. As previously stated, many of your meta tags will be skipped over anyway, but you should keep to your primary key words and not worry too much about assembling a gigantic list. Be descriptive, be honest, dont be excessive.

#3 Keyword lists must have a formula.

People have a tendency to get very distracted by the keyword meta tag you shouldnt misuse it and you definitely shouldnt expect miracles from it. It gets skipped more often than not; even its used it is used in company with the content on your page. If you want to obsess with optimizing something, optimize your content.

#4 The title tag doesn’t really do much.

Out of all the tags, this one is the most important when its used correctly. Just like with your sites content, write your title tag for your audience first and the search engines second. Think about your sites branding and navigation issues as you create your title tags. Your title should be relatively long. A seven to ten word title is not out of the question. The title is the first thing that a search engine really cares about and it should be the most common thing that you want your visitors to find you for. Your most important key words should all be worked into your title.

#5 If I copy my competitor’s keywords I will do just as well.

You need to understand tags and the details of search engine optimization in general. What works for one site doesnt necessarily work for another! You do not have identical sites so you cannot work with identical keywords. Aside from this detail, a site that has been around longer is more likely to have success from its key words than a new site. If you are trying to take over a small niche, you have to expand and do something that your competitor hasnt done yet.

#6 If I repeat my keywords in a comment tag I will rank better.

There was a time long ago when this was true, but it was a really long time ago. Search engines are all wise to this trick nowadays.

#7 We need to have as many different keywords as possible throughout our site

This is an SEO nightmare. Your pages need to be focused, not always trying to cover all basis. Limit your keywords.

#8 Anyone can write a websites tags.

SEO calls for copywriting and marketing talent: writing good tags that can attract both humans and search engine spiders isnt easy.

#9 Google doesn’t rank me by the description tag, so why should I use it?

Google does still use the description tag from your site it displays it to its users in the results. If theres no description tag, theyll just see a nonsense excerpt from your site, which is bad. Dont forget that there are still plenty of uses for the description tag. Make the title and the description complement each other, as they will often be displayed together.

Search engine optimization isnt rocket science, but it can feel complicated at times. Theres no need to worry about the jargon when youre just starting out, though, and part of the point of SEO is to make everything simpler and cleaner, the way search engines like it.

Everything a search engine does has a pattern and a reason. Even if the algorithms are too complex for you to understand, there are patterns that can be found if you look hard enough. All you have to do in order to find the patterns is be willing to look for them which basically just consists of keeping your eyes and your mind open.

Being good at SEO requires some effort, but is for the most part very basic. To have a successful campaign, just follow these simple rules they apply to all websites.

Search engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You have to realize that most search engines dont work by moving the good stuff towards the top: instead, they try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that whats good will float up. Content is King and it can get you good search engine rankings easily if its written properly and sprinkled with the appropriate keywords. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds search engine spiders and crawlers. I cant stress enough that good content is the key to good SEO.

A fast way to develop good content is to generate a series of articles or an ebook regarding your topic. These items are very powerful in the world of SEO because they provide your visitors with something to read and they allow you to conquer some key words that you normally wouldnt be able to touch. If you are managing a website for pets, an article about dog food is more likely to generate a high position in the search results for dog food than your home page. Therefore, if you write articles pertaining to your subject but slightly more in depth than you can put on your home page, you will benefit drastically.

To try to get to number one in an index, you must first find out where your site is now. That means checking each search engine to see your position, and coming up with a strategy for each one who knows, maybe youre already number one on one of the smaller search engines! You cant just assume, however, that because your site is listed in one search engine that it will be listed in all of them. Thats not how search engines work.

Look at the sites that currently rank high on the search engines and you will see that have simple designs with graphics that use minimal bandwidth, and theyre easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what both search engine crawlers and search engine users like, as it lets them get the content they want without any fuss. This is what you should be aiming for.

Some sites are considered good enough to be ranked highly in search engines, even though their designs make them difficult to look at. This goes to show that the looks of a site have nothing to do with where a search engines places it in the rankings all search engines care about is text. If the content of a site is relevant to what people are searching for then thats all that matters to a search engine.

Lets take a look at meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. Theyre all important elements, even if theyre not what will make or break your site theyre just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. Its best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

If you have any questions and you dont know where to go, then check out some of the forums on the subject just do a search for seo forum. These people are usually more than willing to post answers to your questions, or direct you to someone who can answer your question if they cant. Remember to be patient with yourself: learning something new takes time and effort, and SEO is no different.

Although Overture (now owned by Yahoo) can be used by itself, its often better to use it together with another PPC engine, to get the best chance of being seen. Overture is the largest of the PPC engines so it is a great place to start if youre going to try making money by spending money, but make sure that you dont try to provide your visitor with too much too quickly. It is very easy to over diversify your online advertisement portfolio and, in effect, pull yourself out of the game with a strained wallet.

Overture does nothing to hide the prices of its advertising from you theyre straightforward from the beginning. This is a great advantage for users of Overture, as you can never spend more than you want to. You know exactly where your ads will show up, and you can change them as often as you want. The ideology behind Overtures open display of its prices is that an informed customer is the best kind of customer. You never run into customers who complain about what they got because you tell them what they get. This is the kind of attitude that more online utilities and web sites should adapt. It gives web users a fair shake at optimizing the return on their financial investments.

You can include prices and other details in your listing so that people are better informed before they click this saves you money on people who click and turn out not to be interested. After all, you dont drop the big bucks just to watch your hits climb. You pay for quality hits that will result in sales or whatever else you are trying to deliver via your web page. Make sure to only pay for key words that are going to deliver quality traffic with sales potential. You should write a different ad for every keyword youre targeting, taking the time to do it correctly. Use the keyword in the ad, as Yahoo will put it in bold to make it stand out, and more people will click on your ad.

Remember that one of the biggest reasons that you are probably using Overture is that it is so outspoken with its prices. If you are selling something, why not put the price right out there in the advertisement? This is a quick way to avoid getting hits from those users that are seeking free versions of whatever you are selling. Believe me, no matter what you are selling, somebody is trying to get it for free.

Since using Overture gives you more flexibility and room when it comes to writing ads, youll be able to do more with them. Other sites you typically give you a standard 3-line ad area and no more, which doesnt leave much room for creativity. In the case of Overture you can generate spectacular ads that really give you a chance at displaying your product as something that the user would want to buy before they even click on the link.

One thing to remember when you create an advertisement is to state the most important things first, in case some of the ad gets cut off or the reader gets bored before they finish.

When youre one of the top 5 bidders for a keyword at Overture, you get a little bonus. Yahoo will list you twice when you have one of the top five positions once at the side of the page, and once at the bottom. If youre not in the top 5, youre missing out on this free exposure so its much better to pay a little extra to become #5 than to stay as #6.

Check your advertisements at least weekly, making sure youre still where you want to be relative to your competitors. Change the ads every time you launch a new product or service, and dont be afraid to try out new keywords you think of.

Be creative, and create short-term Overture ads for special offers if youre offering free shipping or free gifts for a limited time, say so! Use your ads to promote, advertise, and sell. After all, sales are what youre paying for, right? Many people are unaware that Overture lets you do this, so its a chance to stand out.

MSN may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN. The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results for just about everything. If you cant find it at Google, cant find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and youll find something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.

Its still quite easy to figure out what you need to do to your site to rank highly at MSN. MSN generally indexes every page that it can find anyway and is a pretty handy search engine in that it is the third most popular out there and it is also a nice one to foreshadow what may be happening to your listings at Google in the not too distant future. Theyve recently changed their algorithm, though, and everyone wants to know how it works. Well, here are some answers.

MSNs ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as page content, the number and quality of the sites that link to your pages, and the site content, and keyword relevance. Keep in mind that there are lots of differences between MSN and Yahoo and Google. All search engine algorithms are similar, but little differences can have big effects when it comes to SEO. The nice thing about MSN is that its algorithm isnt as strict as those of Yahoo! and Google and is therefore a very powerful SEO tool in and of itself.

Relevant themes and topics are very important to MSN optimization, and you should also consider keyword density remember, no keyword stuffing, as MSN explicitly says this is against their rules. The general rule is that you should make sure that there are key words in your title and then follow the basic platform for key words. Put a few in a header at the top of your page; scatter a few throughout the page including several in the first and last paragraphs; finally, put a couple of links that contain key words towards the bottom of your page. These steps are common for all search engine optimizations and should be a set process for every page that you attempt to optimize. Complete this work before attempting any other SEO procedures as this is the basis of SEO.

Links are important, and maintaining good incoming links with your keywords will get you good rankings. Its very important to get as many natural links as possible providing interesting and useful content can make this happen for you with no extra work at all! Youll seem completely natural to MSNs spider. These natural links are the basis of link SEO. If you are trying to attain links you should first attempt to attain these links from pages that would naturally link to you but may not have heard of your site yet. After you have done this you should go to directories and other sources of links that may not be as obvious. First things first, dont mess up your search engine listings because of a bunch of bogus links from unsuitable, questionable, or malicious locations. These links can and will get you banned.

MSN doesnt allow you to pay to boost your sites ranking, but they do offer advertising. This advertising will allow you to pay a certain amount for links in their sponsored links boxes on the top and sides of each results page. The value of these links depends on the demand for them. At any particular time a sponsored link could become very expensive by somebody bidding an outrageous amount for a link, or by a large number of people trying to overwhelm a niche market.

MSN doesnt update often, but when it does it often removes links it believes to be out of date, so make sure you change your site occasionally.

One thing that MSN likes a lot is well-formed HTML code, with closed, valid tags. Watch out for broken links, and make sure you have static URLs that dont move around, and contain your keywords.

Long-term SEO maintenance requires dedication to your website. There are people who think that they can throw up a web page and that people will find them, and good luck too them but it wont happen. Any website that wants to make money needs to get optimized, and stay that way. Running and SEO campaign once or twice isnt enough in this market: you need to consider long-term maintenance of your SEO.

For long term SEO maintenance to be effective, you need to constantly monitor the search engines algorithms, which can change very frequently. You also need to keep track of your competitors optimizations and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Always consider your website as an investment youve put time, money and effort into it. Your investment needs to be protected, and the way to do that is SEO maintenance. This makes sure that your website is ranked high enough to bring you the traffic you need, and keeps the sales coming.

Weve compiled a list of tips to help you with your SEO maintenance. To keep good rankings, you need to pay attention to how your site is doing. A few things to remember are:

1. Check on your pages regularly and make sure theyre still listed. Your listings are the most important part of your SEO work. Whether the page is listed or not is vastly more important than what key words you have etc. After all, if you arent listed at all what good is it to optimize?

2. Monitor the listings every week or two to make sure your pages are displaying correctly and that there are no problems with your site. While your at it see whether youve risen, dropped, or remained constant as far as listings go. Odds are that you will not remain constant, if you do remain constant you should consider this a small success as you have probably risen above other pages that were formerly above you while others from below you have surpassed you.

3. Watch for trouble, and fix it quickly. Dont think it will correct itself it won’t. Any missing pages should be checked out thoroughly. Chances are that the system has run into a problem, but if you dont check it out you may very easily be wrong. Always correct any of your mistakes as your mistakes can be very costly if they are not dealt with in a timely fashion.

4. Resubmit your site if you make major changes, but not for anything smaller. The most important time to resubmit your site is if you have recently changed your titles. Titles are very important in SEO and can deliver you with a completely new set of quality key words.

5. Create monthly ranking reports on your site, to see if any changes need to be made.

6. Keep building your link popularity.

7. Keep submitting your site to the big directories, as spiders use these as a starting point.

8. Watch your competitors and the methods they use. If they start trying to cheat, report them straightaway it gets them out of your way.

9. Set goals for yourself. Write out an SEO maintenance plan, and if things change then make sure to set new goals and stick with them.

10. Stay up to date on the latest SEO information.

11. Check your sites performance if youre not monitoring your traffic, find a tool to do it now.

12. Maintain a solid plan for dealing with your sites growth. Dont panic if you see a blip.

This might seem like a lot of work for a small website or company, but you need to do it to help your website grow. If you dont have growth, you have nothing. No business wants to stay where it is forever, and SEO is a good way to get more business and stay in the race.

Do you remember why you started a website to begin with? The chances are you wanted to make money. Your website is a business, and you need to run it like one. Dont stress too much over the work involved: its only a few hours each week in total, and you can do it whenever you want.

SEO or the search engine optimization is the way of creating web pages eye-catching to most of the search engines. This is the way of altering a web site in a course of a plan and writing methods that will improve your site on the main search engines.

Search engine optimization is simply assuring that the web pages are available in all search engines. And this is also centering on the means that will make them enhance the probability that internet users will find the page using search engines.

A page that is well enhanced optimized will become the top placing in the search engine result lists. This is very significant because most people who use the search engine would tend to only look at the first page. Since a well optimized pages is located at the first or second page of the search engine it is very possible that the researcher will read it.

The main aim to become a search engine effective is to have the pages available at the first two pages or first pages (if possible) for specific key terms. They are five crucial rules for search engine optimization and they are:

1. Keep in mind that each page of your website is a detach unit. Each page should relate to the fundamentals of an efficient search engine optimization.

2. Select for a suitable key words or phrases that you will use for each web page. It is important that the key words or phrases relates to the topic.

3. Provide every page with a proper and suitable title that contains the key word or phrases even once.

4. Once you are choosing the key words or phrases, place it in the pages title tag, Meta key words and Meta description. The Meta description should be interesting if necessary since most search engine utilize the description in the search engine results pages.

5. Make it certain that the key words or phrase you have selected is reiterated sensibly all through out the pages content. If you did not do it, there is a possibility that it may be considered as spam and be rejected.

Some may tell you that these are only the five fundamentals to effective search engine. However when you utilize these five basics, surely it will provide your page chances of appearing in the first page of the most search engines or else at the second (which is still good).

Below are listed search engine optimization tips when it comes to its importance:

Possible site plan
Selecting the right keywords
The title tag
The copywriting
The Meta tag
The descriptions alt quality
Things that should be avoided
How long will it take to be programmed

Most people are easily gets upset when the articles that they are looking for are unavailable in the internet. Sometimes it would take them hours and hours looking for the articles. And since most people would rely on the articles of the search results first page, chances are the articles at the latter pages will likely be noticed as much as the first pages.

This is what makes the search engine optimization important this time; it helps the internet surfers find their researches the easiest way possible. Especially at this era of computer oriented lifestyle, most people know how to use computers and most people uses the internet for some important matters. By the help of the search engines, it will be simple for them to locate data on keywords that they are looking for.

Before you can evaluate your sites SEO profile, you need to understand what an SEO profile is and how it works. An SEO profile for a website is just like a marketing plan or a business plan basically, its a strategy document, putting your decisions into words. This is best performed on a computer program such as Microsoft Word as these programs do provide the best bang for your buck. All else aside, Microsoft does put out some excellent business oriented software so take advantage of it!

Writing your SEO profile should consist of the following:

An introduction - This should include a BRIEF description of your company as well as a purpose statement of some kind. If you can describe your company in a neat, tight format, you will be one step ahead of most in the SEO game.

Goals relating to your Search Engine Status - What do you want your page rank to be? Where do you want to be listed under specif key words? top 50? 25? 10? How many pages of your site do you want search engines to index? Do you want to pay for listings? These questions will get you started, but you must go more in-depth into your SEO goals. Also include the search engines and directories that you feel are necessities such as Google, DMOZ, Yahoo!, and MSN.

Information regarding SEO actions and achievements - This one is pretty self-explanatory. List everything that you do regarding Search Engine Optimization as well as any successes caused by these actions.

Once youve written an SEO profile, you can compare it from time-to-time with whats going on with your site, before either adjusting the site to reflect your strategy or adjusting the profile to reflect a strategy change. Generally, it is wise to stick to the plan, but occasions may arise when you find that this is simply not logical anymore. In these cases, you must re-evaluate your entire plan because one change can effect the rest of your strategy. If you have an extremely intricate strategy that depends on one thing going well, you may want to diversify your strategy. Your profile should especially focus on special things you plan to do that arent standard SEO practice. Standard SEO work can get you only so far. Every one of your competitors is probably doing the same things so get creative. This is one place where doing something for yourself can really push you to the top. If you already have a high-ranking site, you should use your profile to document the reasons why it has happened, to help you maintain your high ranking.

Keeping your SEO profile updated will allow you to stay current not only on whats going on with your website, but also on whats going on in the SEO industry. The SEO industry is very fickle. It can change suddenly without warning to reflect what a search engine or directory believes to be the opinion or benefit of the market. Remember that search engines are always in competition with one another to deliver the most results of the highest quality. If you stay on top of your quality, changes in the SEO industry will have minimal effect on you. It is still important to track these changes in order to ensure that your site gets maximum exposure. Evaluating your website and profile regularly give you an advantage in the market you should never let a profile get older than 3 months, and you should refer to it and update it every time you make major changes to your site. These changes include additions of services or removal of services as well as design changes and SEO work.

There is software available online that can help you evaluate your site’s SEO profile. Some of these software are very useful, others are very overrated. The difference that these programs will make in your fight for page rank and listings depends on your interpretation of the results nearly as much as it depends on the value of the software itself. In order to find some software simply google for SEO software. Reading the reviews and making judgement calls is the best way to determine the worth of SEO software. If you think that its worth going for look at the cost of it. If the cost seems to high, it probably is. You can generally evaluate your SEO profile on your own once you have learned what to look for in an Search Engine Optomized page.

Many SEO experts will tell you that they have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website. Some do it using SEO tools software that compares possible keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you DIY methods with spreadsheets. We say, however, that you should try every method you can in the search for keywords. Here are some steps that might help:

Identify and create a list of keywords from meta tags, research on your competitors, your highest-converting products and biggest current traffic sources. For each term (typically between 30 and 50 terms overall), narrow the field down to about 15 or 20, choosing the terms you feel are most relevant to your website. Your higher ranked competitors are probably up there for a reason so take a look at what they are providing. Make sure that everything is directly relevant and try to stretch yourself out into some unchartered water. The less common that your key words are, the more likely you are to get the search engine results for these key words.

We would recommend a piece of software called WordTracker to find out how many searches have been done on a certain term. You can choose to work with this information however you want spreadsheets are good, but you can use anything that will make it easy reasonably easy for you to track these keywords. Youre trying to find a popular word that has a low competition rate. Although this is easier said than done, its very rewarding to find an area where your site can succeed because of the lack of competition. You should remember, though, that these search databases are relatively small, and should be used for comparing keywords against one another rather than for estimating their true market sizes.

This keyword selection research should then be compared with client experience of which keywords may be most profitably optimized, as well as any current ranking on the target keywords. Data from PPC campaigns can be helpful for this. The outcome should be a focused list of, say, 15-20 keywords that are both strong performers in terms of search volume, as well as solid candidates for successful optimization.

When determining how profitable your key words are you should look into your web sites statistics and see what key words were used for what number of sales. This is called your conversion rate. The more sales that are associated with a certain key word, the more valuable that key word is. It is important to account for all of the variables, however. If ten people come across your site through a certain key word but only one of them buys an item this key word isnt as profitable as a key word that one person finds your site through and still orders a product. It is important to work percentages into your decision of worth of a key word. Your conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of visitors.

You probably know who your competitors are, so go to their site and open the source code of a few of their pages (select View Source from your browsers menu). Look for the tag to see which keywords theyre aiming for. Their keywords are often garbage, but if you look around at a few sites then you can often find keywords you hadnt thought of. It is not good practice to simply copy and paste a list of key words. It would even be concievable that you would be charged with copyright infringement for such activities. Whether or not you get charged, it is morally wrong. Looking through and coming across a few extra relevant key words is one thing. Steeling an entire list is something else completely.

Another approach is to type in the keywords you have in mind and look at the current top results. Analyze their pages for keywords, descriptions and content this will give you some idea of what kind of keyword density you should be looking at for your keywords. If the sites that come up are a different kind of business to you altogether then youve probably chosen a dodgy keyword remember that youre trying to get relevant traffic, not just any traffic.

The general rules that you need to keep in mind when selecting key words are:

1. Try to select unique key words that your competitors have not thought of.

2. Optimize for your most profitable key words. How many sales does the key word generate? How much profit is made for each of these sales?

3. Make sure that the key words are very relevant to your site so that people who find your site through your key words will not immediately leave.

4. Try to assemble a list of key words that covers your site very will so that you arent leaving anyone or anything out.

When you analyze a competitors website, you need to make sure youre prepared to do the job correctly. Competitors websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. You can use these sites to analyze your own market. If a site gets a lot of hits it has to be doing something right. Check out where it is ranked, what key words it uses, how it is formatted, and what you can do to exemplify the good and filter out the bad. Also be sure to keep copyright laws in mind as a copyright infringement suit is never good for you, your site, or your blood pressure.

Identifying the Leaders.

You need to start off by identifying the major players a good place to do this is Yahoos directory. Its not as comprehensive as it once was, but its good if youre looking for the major players. You may want to print out the directory to take a closer look. Look for large companies, as well as innovative approaches and new products. Also use this examination as an attempt to identify the niche markets that the major players have not identified and exploited. If you can find new niches youre basically set as far as traffic goes.

Also consider that since Yahoo!s directory is the place that you look to find the big players, it may be a good place to get listed in order to become a big player. These little associations are important if you want to start to attain more and more traffic and conquer a niche or category. Try to identify all places that the big dogs hang out and start hanging out there. Its all about who you know in this business so bigger is better. You might not be ready to play with the big dogs, but the only way to get there is to sit down and give it a shot.

Sites like Media Metrix 500 can tell you which companies get the most traffic, and you can learn about the relative traffic by using Alexa. Alexa is a free add-on to your browser that ranks the traffic to each sire you visit, telling you whether its in the top 100, the top 1000, the top 10,000, and so on. This gives you a rough idea of where your competitors are in the pecking order.

Scrutinize the Leaders.

The next step is to study the top 5 or 10 competitors very closely. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at competitors website and analyzing them. These are the things that you should look for.

1. Make sure you check to see what products or services they offer, and note anything thats different from your own offerings. Look for gaps that you could fill.

2. Think about the look, feel and functionality of their website.

3. See what advertising campaigns and offers theyre running.

4. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, from the customers point of view.

5. See if you can figure out their strategy.

When youre dealing with publicly traded companies, you can often get detailed information from their SEC filings. Write down the names of their key players and then look for any interviews and speeches they might have made about their website.

Look for Strengths, Vulnerabilities, and Gaps.

Now, summarize the information youve found into a few sentences for each competitor, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Note strategies that are going to be necessary to counter their offering these will depend on your own websites strengths. If youre small, then youll need to be resourceful to exploit their weaknesses.

With this research, you can create a marketing plan. Be sure to include how you intend to deal with competition, and what steps you think youll need to take for you site to come out on top. Once youve finished analyzing your competitors, you need to consider whether it would be better not to compete at all, and find a less-saturated market.

Dont get frightened away prematurely, though make sure you know what youre getting into before you start, and dont let big companies intimidate you. Remember that you can move faster than they can! All you have to do is offer your customers things they cant find anywhere else.