6 SEO/Web Spy Tools to Research your Competitors
In a previous post, SEO Keyword Research - Choosing Keywords for SEO, I mentioned the ability to spy on your competitors for SEO ideas. I’d like to expand on that in this post. Below is a list of free tools that will give you insight into a competitor’s SEO status. Seeing which keywords your competitors are ranking or bidding on may give you a few ideas for your own campaign. These tools should help you make more informed decisions regarding your search engine marketing campaigns. Not being first in the game isn’t always a bad thing. You can skip the growing pains and trial and error of the first comers and put all your time and resources into proven methods. Seeing which other sites are being visited by visitors to your website (as well as your competitor’s) can provide expanded knowledge on who your competitors are.
1-Google Search Operators
You can use Google to get some basic information on who else is targeting a certain keyword. Google’s allintitle operator allows you to search for webpages out there with specific keywords in their title tag.
So for example. if you want to know who has “Google Analytics” in their title tag, you’d Google: allintitle:google analytics. With this, you can see who out there is optimizing for this keyword (at least to the point of having it in their title tag). Another thing you can do to spy on your competitors, is view search results for all of their indexed pages. Googling site:www.seoracle.com/ will show every indexed page for seoracle.com. Now combine these two, and you can see every page on seoracle.com that had “Google Analytics” in their title tags.
Here is expanded list of Google, Yahoo!, and other Search Engine operators.
2-Yahoo! Site Explorer
If you want to know who’s linking you or your competitors, this is probably the easiest way to do it. Furthermore, you can download the results into a spreadsheet.
3-Google Ad Planner
Part of Google’s Media Ad planner, this tool is geared towards helping PPC advertisers make more informed decisions regarding their ad placement. Enter a URL and get the following;`
- Other sites visited
- Keywords searched for
- Basic site metrics (Unique Visitors, Reach, Pageviews, Total Visits, etc)
- Visitor Demographics (gender, education, age, and household income)
- Filter by Country
- Price: Free
4-Google Trends for Websites
Google Trends allows you to see trends for keywords searches as well as site visits over a period of time. for Enter a URL and get the following;
- View trends in visits over time
- Other sites visited
- Keywords searched for
- Filter by Country
- Drill down into more specific regions (states)
- Compare multiple websites at once
- Price: Free
5-SpyFU
As the name implies, this tool is specifically geared towards spying on your competitors. The paid account is reasonable and since monthly plans are an option, you can always get your information in he first month.
- Daily Adwords (PPC) Ad Budget
- Avg. Ad Position / # Advertisers
- Daily Organic (SEO) Traffic Value
- Paid vs. Organic Clicks Per Day
- Top 10 with free account, expanded and exportable list with paid account: Paid Keywords, Top Ad Competitors, Organic Keywords, Other Domains Owned
- Basic: Free
- Monthly Subscription: $59.95
- Annual Subscription: $395.00
6-Site Analytics Compete
This is a very extensive tool and gives you a wide variety of metrics to compare and the ability to compare multiple sites over a period of time. The payment plans are a bit pricey but even the free account provides meaningful data. Enter a URL and get the following;
- View trends in visits over time
- Compare multiple websites at once (3 without logging in, 5 with free account, many more with purchase)
- Site Description
- Other sites visitied
- Keywords searched for
- Referring sources
- Basic site metrics: Visits, Unique Visitors
- With Pro Account: Reach, Attention, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Visits/Person, etc)
- With Pro Account: Visitor Demographics (gender, education, age, and income)
- Price: Basic account is Free.
- Intro: $199 per month
- Standard: $299 per month
- Advanced: $499 per month
- Enterprise: Contact for Pricing
Go forth and research!
These are by no means all of the tools out there. However, they are the tools I have found most valuable. Feel free to give your 2 cents on these tools and/or share other tools that have worked for you.
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Another great article! I’ll be spying =]