Useful information you can get from researching your competition.
When deciding on the keywords for your website, it is a wise idea to perform a research on your competitors. One of the reasons to research your competition is to find out, if the keywords you are planning to compete for, are an achievable goal. Some of the keywords have such a high competition, that you may make a fortune, if your website shows up on the first spot, but it will also take you a fortune to get there. Unless you are prepared to spend hundreds of thousands, may be even millions of dollars, your website may never be found for some of the very competitive keyword phrases.
If during the research you came to the conclusion that the keywords you planning on targeting fit your budget, there are a few things you can learn from your competitors. Some of the things to pay attention to include on page optimization; your competitors pages titles, meta tags, h1, h2 tags, keyword density; as well as off page optimization - all the inbound links, where they are coming from, and what is the quality of those links. As with anything else in SEO it is important not to overdo. There is no need try to replicate every single trick your competitor is doing, or try to get a back link from every web page your competitor has. If you following someone's ideas you most likely will always be behind. To be number one you you have to come up with fresh ideas on your own. It is also possible that during an SEO campaign your competitor has done a lot of mistakes in his own research, and now targeting not the best keywords. Going for the high volume, but not a very high relevancy keywords, is one of the common mistakes.
In conclusion the best tips regarding researching your competitors would be the following:
- Find out what your competitors are doing, not to replicate the strategy, but just to find out.
- Do not underestimate your competition. Just because your SEO expert is telling you that your competitors are weak and he can do better, that may not be the case.