SEO World

Often, people running websites have a unique interpretation of who their online competitors are.  Depending where you do your SEO, you will have seen this manifested in a variety of ways:

• In house – Director asking “Why don’t we rank number one for BMW instead of BMW.com?  We sell models of BMW cars”
• Agency – Chances are you’ve held back giggles as a new business prospect suggests they are competing with a major site like Amazon/YouTube/eBay.  I find brick and mortar clients struggle the most to detach themselves from the material world to look exclusively at online competitors.
• Independent – Joe Snow sells his own e-book “How to Build a Shed” and considers B&Q a competitor.

Here are three free tools to help get a better sense of accurate competitors in the digital space.  Assessing online competitors requires a detailed look at a number of SEO factors like backlinks and targeted keywords, so consider these tools as a great way to get the gist of competitor websites instead of a thorough analysis.  By working out competitors, instead of biting far more off than can be chewed, a more realistic SEO campaign can be managed from the outset.

SEM Rush

In SEMRush break down your competitors by organic search or pay per click advertising. SEMRush will even show you how many keywords you target which are shared with each competitor, along with how much traffic, and the number of keywords driving that traffic.

Spyfu

Spyfu will provide a list of nine competitors in both organic search and pay per click competitors. Even better, Spyfu allows quick access to competitor’s competitors by simply clicking the a link in each list.

 Alexa.com

Remember back in 2005 when people used Alexa rankings? It actually provides some great insight into competitors even today.
To establish competitors in Alexa search for your chosen site. Then check out the “Related Links” tab which appears just below the site summary. The table defaults onto “Search Analysis”, so be sure to click “Related Links” tab.

Non-Personalised Search

It’s not a tool, but I’d be a fool not to throw it in there.  Be sure to Google some of your target keywords and see what websites are appearing; that said, be sure you’re not signed into a Google account when doing this in Google; that way your results wont be personalised to your tastes and they will more accurately reflect search results.

What do you think of the competitors suggested by SEMRush, SpyFu and Alexa?  What other free competitor analysis tools can you suggest?  I’d love to hear your thoughts to improve this brief list!

© SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 3 Free Tools to Establish Competitors Online

Related posts:

1. 5 Low Profile/New SEO Tools You Should be Using
2. 3 Tips & Tools To Help You Become a Better SEO Project Manager
3. Tracking Online Marketing Campaigns in Google Analytics

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SEOptimise » blog

As part of our ongoing effort to share the knowledge we’re giving away a free SEO video every month for our subscribers.

Recorded in crystal clear HD format at our leading industry conferences, we have over 50 hours of some of the brightest SEOs out there (Rand Fishkin, Will Critchlow, Wil Reynolds, Richard Baxter, Michael Gray, Rhea Drysdale and Bob Rains to name but a few) giving away their best tips, tricks and research.

Check out the trailer below for a taster of what these videos contain:

So all you need to do is register your details below and you’ll get 3 videos in the first month, and then we’ll send you a fresh new one every month from then on. Nice!

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distilled

Since 2006, HubSpot’s award-winning free tool, Website Grader, has graded more than 4 million websites. Website Grader has given marketers advice on how to improve many aspects of their websites and encouraged millions to bring their website presence to the next level, all for free. But now the time has come to replace Website Grader! A lot has changed since 2006, and these days, marketing is about much more than just your website.

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of a totally new free tool from HubSpot. It’s called Marketing Grader. In under 30 seconds, it analyzes all of your marketing — not just your website — reviewing over 30 different factors and then providing an overall Marketing Grade on a 1-100 scale.

Why is Marketing Grader Replacing Website Grader?

In 2012, marketing is about more than just your website. It’s about social, mobile, blogging, email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics. As a marketer, you need to be aware of how your marketing impacts your entire sales and marketing funnel from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel. Marketing Grader does just this by analyzing all aspects of your marketing efforts and letting you know where you’re succeeding and what you need to spend more time improving. Marketing Grader will help you understand:

• Competitive Benchmarking: Is my marketing more or less effective than my competition?
• Lead Generation: Are my marketing efforts generating enough leads and sales?
• Mobile Marketing: Is my web presence optimized for mobile devices?
• Social Media: How effectively are we using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in our marketing?
• Blogging: Is my blog driving results that justify the time investment, or are we wasting time doing the wrong things?
• Overall Analysis: What are the strong points and shortcomings in our marketing?

Marketing Grader also outlines why you should take particular steps to improve and what your top priorities should be. With customized action items to help the top of your funnel, the middle of your funnel, and your analytics, Marketing Grader makes it easy for you to figure out your next steps.

Additionally, if we find something you could be doing better, the tool gives you resources to learn more about that particular topic so you can become a marketing superstar, and take your marketing to the next level. 

As the year comes to an end, it’s time to start thinking about what your top priorities in 2012 need to be and making some resolutions about what you should do differently. Run your own Marketing Grader report to get a head start on coming up with your resolutions and to-do lists for the New Year.

What’s your marketing grade? How is your marketing faring?

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

We are continuing our contest for a free Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2012.

Affiliate Summit is the best affiliate marketing conference out there, held on Jan 8-11th 2012 in Las Vegas.

Here’s how you can win a Gold Pass:

1. Comment on the blog, on any post. All comments will be entered into a random drawing to select a winner. The more comments, the more entries you get!
2. Link to a post on Daily Conversions and automatically get 10 entries. Just send an email to brian@dailyconversions.com or comment on this post with the link, and we’ll add 10 entries to your tab.
3. Post on Social media about a post on Daily Conversions, again, this will get you 10 entries.
4. Do something innovative to promote Daily Conversions. This will be at least 10 entries, with no limit as to how many entries you can get if you come up with something great. Just email or comment with what you did!
5. The drawing will take place on Christmas.

Good luck and see you at Affiliate Summit in Vegas!

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Daily Conversions

One thing I have clearly realized while being a full-time guest post editor at SEJ is that most (guest) contributors (no matter how much we love them) are terrible at formatting.

It very seldom happens that a guest blogger will browse your blog for a few minutes and copy your obvious formatting preferences to his own post. Or even that he tries to make the article formatting web-friendly at all.

While your guest post style guide is up to you (by “style guide”, I mean the required article length, preferred topics, writing manner, good article samples, etc), formatting is usually similar across the blogs: we need clear code, readable paragraphs, working links, etc.

A properly written formatting guide won’t let you fire your editor: most contributors will still fail to follow all the steps properly, but you’ll be amazed at how easier your editor’s (or your own) work will become.

A good formatting checklist should be:

• As short as possible (The longer it is, the more chances there are that none of your contributors will follow all the steps);
• As concise as possible (Avoid explaining the reason why you want it to be formatted that way. The more you explain, the less obvious your point becomes. Just list your requirements)
• As easy to understand as possible (Add a few screenshots, bold most important points, etc).

Now, here’s my formatting checklist for guest bloggers and paid contributors. Feel free to download it, edit minor details (like the preferred width of images) and use it to edit your blog. It will be suitable and (hopefully) useful for:

• Guest-contributor-driven blog;
• A blog network with multiple co-authors;
• A business managing multiple paid contributors;
• A business owner outsourcing content to ghost writers, etc.

Attention: This guide requires that your blog contributor has a wp-admin (Contributor) access to your blog. Otherwise, you may ask to send you the articles in HTML.

*Download the formatting guidelines here. Read some explanations below*

Structuring Standards

We know that breaking the article into sections is very important: blog readers tend to scan through the articles jumping from a subheading to a subheading (and probably reading the sections that seem most relevant to them).

One of the most efficient ways to capture your readers’ attention is to provide catchy subheadings that would summarize your article content nicely. Ideally, the reader of the article should understand what it is about by just scanning through the subheadings which should effectively summarize the article content while still encouraging the reader to go more indepth. Here’s a short but sweet checklist for using subheadings for SEO and usability I did a couple of years ago.

Other important guidelines that (may) go in this section:

• Make your sentences and paragraphs short (that makes the whole article easier to read)
• Introduce your article effectively in the opening paragraphs and encourage a discussion in the conclusion (by asking some questions)

Adding Links

Links are always great (unless links are brutally self-serving and anchor-text-dirty). I always encourage all my authors include links to any app, business or person they are mentioning. Links are user-friendly, so in my guidelines I always prompt contributors to:

• Link to relevant articles on my blog;
• Link to others relevant articles elsewhere (as well as sources of information, apps, etc)
• Normally link words (not image files or subheadings)
• Always make sure they are using the full URL and the original “clean” link (now a shortened version, stripping all tracking parameters, etc).

If that’s *guest posting* guidelines, consider also adding a caution against self-serving links in the content of your body. Here’s a post that explains my attitude to them.

Lists

Including lists is also highly appreciated. A well-formatted list is likely to draw readers’ attention and make them stay.

Sadly, contributors tend to format lists in all possible ways using -, *, or any other inappropriate symbols instead proper <ul><li> coding. Therefore it’s a good idea to remind them of proper formatting here.

Images

Another very important element of any blog post. Images will never be added unless you clearly ask for them.

Here I specify the proper style and size of the images as well as encourage authors to include a relevant, catchy and properly attributed Creative Commons image.

If you find the guidelines useful or have any improvements to suggest, please comment below!

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by mt 23

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SEO Consulting Blog – Seo Smarty

The paucity of posts over the past few months is directly proportional to how screwed up Google Places can be and the commensurate demand for help with said wackiness.  As a result I have been incredibly poor about putting up to posts that I have been planning.  They always seem to be 99% done and that last 1% hits the limit as x approaches infinity.

My review of SEMRush is one such long overdue post.  SEMRush contacted me several months ago because I am an avid user of the service and asked me if I would write a review.  Since I love the product I enthusiastically said I’d do it.  They even offered to comp the service for me (I guess that counts as disclosure right?).  But as I tried to put together the definitive review of SEMRush while trying not to spill coffee on my computer during a trans-oceanic flight I found that I could never quite get there – besides “Thor” was always on on-demand.  Then “The Hangover II” came on and I decided to channel my inner-Steve Jobs and ship like a real artist.

It was then that I read SEOBook’s review of SEMRush and decided that this SEMRush Review was just a “hobby” and perhaps I should leave the reviewing to the pros.  So go read Aaron’s review.  It’s great and there’s even a free SEMRush Promo Code.  (I even ripped off the image on this post from them).

In the meantime here’s why I find SEMRush valuable:

1. You can see a lot of keywords that a specific site ranks for.  It’s hit or miss for small sites but works well for bigger ones
2. You can see a lot of keywords that a specific site buys Adwords for.
3. You can see sites that target similar keywords
4. There’s a lot more features and they keep adding more all of the time

For you SEO consultants out there, perhaps my favorite use of SEMRush is when a prospect calls.  I pull up SEMRush, type their domain in and in seconds I can blow their mind by saying things like “how much traffic are you getting for “Michele Bachmann sucking on fried butter on a stick”?  or why are you buying ppc traffic for “Chuck Norris Birthday Cake”?

Anyways SEMRush is awesome.  Go check it out. And don’t forget to tell them that Andrew’s lame review sent you.

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Local SEO Guide

Beanstalk is giving away 4 free tickets to Digital World Expo running from September 25th through 27th in beautiful Las Vegas. And these aren’t just expo passes … these are class passes costing $ 877 each. To get your pass is easy, just be one of the first four to Contact Us and just add DWE in the Notes field with a 2 sentence description of what you’re hoping to get out of attending. People will be contacted as approved. This isn’t a contest to judge the best four answers – it’s simply a selection of 4 people who will truly get the most from such a great conference.

For those who enter – hope to see you in Vegas. I’ll be speaking on organic SEO 4 times at the conference. I hope you’ll come up and say hi.

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Beanstalk’s SEO News Blog

Need help with your search marketing efforts? The InsideAdwords team has good news for you.

Instead of making you have to read endless help pages, they have decided to hold free webinars for Adwords advertisers. The webinars will be held twice a week, every Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 3pm BST. The whole list of topics for the months of August and September are already plotted in the UK Adwords Webinar calendar.

Topics for this week include an introduction to the Google+ project, and a tutorial on the various Search Reports available to advertisers. Both webinars are expected to last for about 50 minutes.

Other topics slated for the next two months include an introduction to the Google Display Network (GDN), basic optimisation for the GDN, remarketing strategies, contextual keyword targeting, topic targeting in AdWords, mobile campaign best practices, targeting YouTube users, reporting and analysing GDN performance, and an introduction to mobile advertising.

If you’re booked during the webinar hours, you can always just visit the Google Adwords Online Classroom for tips, or join the Adwords Online Classroom group for updates on the video tutorials.

a

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SEO Blog

If you’ve been able to get on-line with all the outages this morning (EAST-1 was down for a bit) then you may have seen a number of links showing up for ‘free invites’ to Google+.

I know we did an article about the rumor that Google+ was going to accept new sign-ons without invitations on July 31st, but this came from the ‘official Facebook group’ which was a rather poor source. To my knowledge, the rumour never panned out and we still have an invite only system in place where Google can track how each person is related to the next. It’s not hard to get into Google+, it’s only difficult to do it anonymously.

Almost all the links are valid, point to a “ngemlink” path, and seem to work, even though the final section appears to be totally random:

Random invite example #1
Random invite example #2
Random invite example #3

This would mean that advertisers, groups, and other technically ‘unwanted’ new users should be hitting the system for the first time without a legitimate connection to the accounts that are letting them join? If that’s the case, where’s the response? The only thing I found related to spamming on Google threads today was this little thank you picture:

Perhaps I am in a quite circle of the web and I haven’t got the exposure to such things, but my Google+ profile has been entirely spam free. Indeed, the worst offender for spamming are associates in the SEO business that like to push out a few posts per day due to the wide range of stuff they tackle. Most of that content is related to topics that I’m interested in both professionally and personally, so it’s not really spam per se, just an excess of content that dwarfs the smaller feeds.

It’s quiet, almost too quiet..

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Beanstalk’s SEO News Blog

These days, social media is becoming an important part of many businesses’ internet presence. People post product questions on Facebook, seek recommendations on Twitter, and view promotional videos on YouTube.

When I’m looking for information about a particular business, I’m most likely to click the Facebook bookmark on my browser and search for that business’ Page. When I want to catch instant updates, I’ll follow that business’ Twitter stream. To check out a band or DJ, I’ll visit YouTube. These quick searches are increasingly becoming a common way for people to search for your business, instead of just turning to traditional search engines like Google.

Case in point: you need more than just a website to be effective with internet marketing. Today, using social media to direct traffic to your website and generate new leads should be an indispensable part of your marketing mix.

The countless social media platforms that exist online provide you with endless opportunities to get found. And the more platforms you participate in, the more likely you’ll turn up in search results, especially now that social media is a part of search engine algorithms.

The hard part is prioritizing which platforms you should dedicate your time to, as it seems almost impossible to maintain a presence on all of them while achieving the same success. That’s why we’ve just launched our newest ebook “How to Enhance Your Internet Presence With Social Media.”

This 34-page ebook narrows social media down to four cores:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. YouTube

Not only will you learn about each platform, but you will also find out how to use each of them to enhance your business’ internet presence and optimize it for lead generation. Once you’ve developed a presence on these platforms, the ebook also shares three key strategies for building a loyal following.

So what are you waiting for? Start enhancing your business’ internet presence now. Our free ebook is just what you need to get started, so go ahead and download your copy today!

Free Ebook: How to Enhance Your Internet Presence With Social Media

In order to be effective with internet marketing, you need more than just a website.

Download this ebook to learn to enhance your business’ internet presence using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog