How to check competitor website traffic was something I had no idea that it was possible or unethical for someone to do while building a business.
When I first started marketing online I remember coming across an article on how to be an Internet marketing spy. This seemed intriguing to me because I wanted to know what my competition was doing as they were doing it.
To me, one of the biggest advantages Internet marketers have over old traditional marketing is you do not have to reinvent the wheel. It made sense that if I knew what other successful marketers were doing I could shortcut my own success.
This is still true today. Now you can literally monitor the website traffic your competition is getting and borrow from them. That is what we’re going to look at.
Here are 10 helpful tools to make it easy on yourself!
1. Google Alerts. You can set these up with Google to monitor a keyword or topic you want to receive alerts on.
You can set how often you want to receive alerts. Google will send you an email with a link to content matching your alert.
This is great to monitor what is going on in your niche., Sometimes I use them for new content ideas or to include a link back to it in a new blog post.
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2. Monitor Backlinks. As long as we have the World Wide Web we’re going to have backlinks.
This is what the web is made of. Being able to monitor backlinks to not only your own website but to your competitor’s websites is a big advantage to you.
Monitor Backlinks is a web-based app that allows you to follow links to determine whether they are followed or no-follow links, whether they’re active links, whether they are down, and so on.
You can use this for links on your own website. You can also use them as potential sources for new backlinks to your own website. Getting a high PR backlink can help your website rank just like your competitors already are.
3. SEM Rush. This is a 10-year competitive search analysis website.
They have over 200 employees in 4 countries focusing on making online marketing easier for companies of all sizes. You can use them to improve your own company and to monitor your competition.
4. Alexa. I am not talking about Amazon’s Alexa.
Online Alexa is used for keyword research, competitor analysis, and to do site content audits. They were founded in 1996 and continue to lead in helping develop marketing strategies.
5. Social Mention. They are a social media search and analysis company.
Want to know what people are saying about you or your competitors? Use Social Mention to track everything in real time.
This is great for a conversation on products, new company announcements, or anything you want to know.
6. Spyfu. Enter your competitor’s website and URL and be prepared to be amazed.
Here is what they say: “What Does SpyFu Do? SpyFu exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors.”
7. Simply Measured. They are social analytics measured in a number of ways.
They do this with 3 great products:
– Listening
– Social Analytics
– Social Media Management
They can help you whether you are a social marketing, content marketing, or digital agency. As their name implies customers have found their products to be simple to use.
8. Google Trends. This is an online search tool that allows users to see how often specific keywords, subjects, and phrases have been searched over a specific period of time.
This is used a lot to find ideas for a new niche., You can also use it to find the top competitors based on what Google says is trending online.
9. Google & YouTube, If you aren’t afraid of a little bit of hard work Google can be your best friend to monitor your competitor’s website traffic.
You can do this in basically two steps.
1. Enter the top keyword phrases for your niche.
2. Document the top 10 results and bookmark the websites of those companies. If you want to build a more complete list go on to page 2 and repeat, go to page 3, and repeat, and so on.
You can quickly build a list of the top competitors in your niche. Then you can follow them in a variety of ways including subscribing to their email list, bookmarking their blog, subscribing to their RSS feed if they have one, and so on.
Since Google gets more search engine traffic than all other search engines combine doing this is going to give you the best analysis of what your competitors are doing for the primary keywords relating to your niche.
You can also do the same thing with YouTube. Google owns YouTube and many of the results they deliver for a keyword are going to be in the form of YouTube videos.
This is another great way to find competitors in your niche because today there are many who just use YouTube as a search engine and only market on YouTube.
10. Facebook, Twitter. Use these 2 social networks to find more competitors.
Many companies have given up on search engine marketing and do 100%of their marketing with organic and paid advertising. Use them as a social search engine to spy on what they are doing.
final thoughts
If you’re a small Internet company like I am you are going to find 10 of these tools to be too many. I would suggest that you check them all out, and then zero in on two or three that you want to become very confident in using.
I like manual methods because it forces me to really take a look at my competitors. However, I also like sites such as Monitor Backlinks to help me find out what my competitors are doing to get quality backlinks so I can just copy them.
There’s no easier way to increase your own website traffic than to get high-quality backlinks and focusing on the ones your competitors always already have is a great timesaver.
Some may say that backlinks do not work today and are useless today for rankings. I really think we should not focus on it and rather build our website with quality content. but with you linking to authority sites and others linking to yours do not hurt. The flip side to this is that if some of those sites went down, it can provide a broken link to your website, and that can hurt you.
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Hi, David.
That is the kind of article I like. Just the sort of info I need. This article has not only given me food for thought, but it has also given me some ideas on how I can improve my content! I especially found your comments on Google Alerts very useful.
Well written article. Many thanks!
Paul
Paul, Thank you for your comment and kind words. My website is on make money tips and it was created for the average marketers can come and use the information to help them grow their business and website spying is definitely one of those tips.
Glad that you find it very helpful and more important you can take this information and use it to help with your content marketing. This makes me feel very satisfied that I should continue to provide helpful information. Talk to you soon and feel free to come back from time to time.
What I find so amazing about the online world is that there are so many ways that a person can make money. The choices seem to be endless even though each one may have its advantage and disadvantage.
You post is well detailed with tons of good information and very informative that will be able to help your readers especially those that are new when it comes to this online work.
Also, some of the more older ones as myself, could use some of these tips on how to further grow their business and being able to make a good income by following your helpful tips. Thank you so much.
Norm, yes it is easy today for anyone to make money online if they take it seriously. And as you rightfully said, there are advantages and disadvantages.
Glad that you get some value here with this post and see my points on how someone can use these information to help with getting traffic to their website.
When I was starting out, it was difficult to understand the experts post cause i believe that they were writing to professionals and i was a newbie back then. This is the reason when I am writing i think about the person starting out and for the veterans as well. Thank you for mentioning that.
Hi Mr D,
I am an online tool fanatic and love your list of competition monitoring tools. It is really helpful and you mentioned a couple I was not aware of. It is always important to keep an eye on your competition and see what they are doing. I will identify my competition (only a few) and see what they are up to. I find you can learn a lot from your competition and also get great ideas for your own website. It is important not to copy what they do, but rather improve on it.
If you could pick one benefit you get from watching your competition, what will it be?
Thanks for a great post!
Rika, online Fanatic? I guess that is one way to describe our obsessed behavioral attitude. yes, watching your competitor will help you when building a business online, and is important you do copy but use them as a guide to make your website better.
it hard to choose one way out of the list I provided, and that may varies according to your offers you are promoting, but if i had to choose one, it would be Spyfu, my number 6 on my top 10 helpful tips i provided. Hope I was able to answer your concerns.
This was really eye opening. I will never look at this business the same way again. I really got value out of your talk about google. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing that. It is such an easy concept and I think it will really help me understand a little more about my niche. I am all for putting in a little work.
I took alot away from this and I appreciate you for taking time to share such valuable information. Thank you.
Hey Anthony, glad that you get some value here. Please feel free to use all the tips that I mention, it would really help you to understand your competitor and will give your website a boost to help get more traffic and eventually sales.
Please feel free to contact me if you need a hand with anything, Talk to you soon.
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