Research your competition - E-Business Success Blueprint Workshop - Part 7

Google page rank and Alexa ranking

Continuing from previous lesson...

This work you are doing now will also allow you to zero-in on those keywords which you have researched. Those keywords you can later use to optimize your pages and to purchase advertising for.
As a next step we will use those keywords to research our competition.

You will need to download two tools.


1. Alexa toolbar.
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Alexa toolbar will allow you to determine how much traffic the site you are visiting is receiving. You will be also able to determine their physical location, find their contact email and see other related sites. Once toolbar is installed this information is instantly displayed for you while you are browsing.

To get your Alexa toolbar access this link and once there click "Install Toolbar"
http://www.alexa.com/toolbar

They also have toolbar for Firefox





2. Google Toolbar
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Google toolbar will allow you to see page ranking by Google. Google ranks pages from 0 to 10 where ten is the highest. You can read about Google page rank here.

Access this link and install Google Toolbar. http://toolbar.google.com



You can also install SEO tools for Chrome here
I haven't really evaluated this tool yet, it appears to have some errors.

For Firefox you could install this add on.

If you don't want to install any add-ons, you can just use this web based page rank checker.
http://www.checkpagerank.net/

Once you have installed toolbars let's get to researching your competition.

Observe your Google and Alexa toolbars which are attached to your browser.

If you don't see Alexa and Google toolbars go in IE as follows

View--->Toolbars and then check Google and Alexa toolbars.

Access http://www.google.com and type first best keyword you have researched yesterday.

Google will bring you to the page with results. As you know Google will list most relevant results from the top down.

Visit the first site you see on the result page.

Google and Alexa toolbars will display new information.

Alexa Toolbar on Firefox will show in right bottom corner graph and number next to it. This number is a rank for the site. E.g. where I'm editing this article on blogger.com their rank is 49.

What this means is that Alexa is ranking blogger.com today as top 49 site in the world.

The smaller the number the more traffic this site gets.

You can click on this number on your toolbar and you will be taken to Alexa site where you can find more info about it, including traffic graphs, site linking to it, reviews and site history up to 1 year.


Google toolbar will show you a small indicator with description "Page Rank". If page has any rank green indicator will show you how much Google values this page.

Notice that Alexa is ranking the entire site, whereas Google is ranking the page.

In case of Google, the bigger the number that higher the ranking.

Adlandpro has rank 4 as of this moment. Google.ca have rank 7 as above.


If you see a page with rank 3 or higher, these pages are worth looking at.

Your goal is to search for sites which score well for your keywords and visit them.

This is your competition.

The two toolbars will show you how important is the site.
The more importance this site has in eyes of Google and Alexa the more time you should spend on it.

This is your competition which does well and you need to pick up as many ideas as you can from their design and approach.

Notice what struck you when you went to the site. Was it easy to navigate and find what you would be looking for. Do they have newsletter. If they do, join it. In their newsletter they will tell you how to run this business.

If they have affiliate program, join it. They will tell you how to run a business and how to attract affiliates to it.
Have a nice weekend and research your competition.
Visit all sites from the first and second page of Google results.

You might also check sites which are on the right side of the Google pages from Adwords. These are paid advertisers which were bidding for your keywords. This is your most aggressive competition.
The more you understand success of your competition, the faster you will be able to get your business off the ground. If you have business already in that area, this will help you on improving it.

Next lesson....

Bogdan Fiedur

Adlandpro.com Copyright 1998 - 2013 - All rights reserved . 

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Determine your competition - E-Business Success Blueprint Workshop - Part 6

Competition

Previous lesson... 

When I told you at the beginning that I would tell you all my techniques, some of you probably didn't realize that there will be so many steps to be completed in order to get to that point we are now.

Remember, there is no golden bullet.
There are steps and there are skills to be acquired in order to be successful with your internet business.
Once you understand these tedious steps which don’t seem to be taking you anywhere right now, you will realize that it takes sometimes only very small adjustment in order to get your business on the higher level.

Remember that winning horse wins most of the time just by a nose, but gets 90% of prizes.
Another one, the devil is in the details meaning that going through these tiny steps can reveal a problem with your chosen business which you may not have seen without going through these steps. In this case it is a good thing because you will find it early enough for you to deal with it properly or change direction if necessary.

Today I want to show you how you determine your competition.
Please make sure that you have your keywords handy. You’ll need them to complete this step.

Simply access Google web search screen.

http://www.google.com


Start typing in the search box and you will see suggestion for common searches related to the keyword you are typing.
E.g. if you start typing word "truck" Google will offer you as a suggestion "truck for sale" and as you  continue to type to accept the suggestion Google gave you, you might get more detailed suggestion. At the same time portion below the search box gets filled with results for you for so far entered keywords combination.

Above the results you will notice that there is a line which says.
About 71,800,000 results


Today we will be using those numbers to analyze our competition.
The bigger the number, the more competition you have.

Again, the more narrow/specific your search (more keywords), the more targeted results you will be getting.

You can do search for "Trucks" and see that there are 593,000,000 results.

whereas for "Trucks accessories"  20,700,000 results.

You have to understand that all results for "Trucks accessories" are contained in results "Trucks"

How do you use those numbers from previous lesson with the numbers today?

In  previous lesson you were looking for search keywords with largest numbers of searches to determine if there is demand for your solution. Those numbers gave you an indication of how many people were looking for your solution.

Today you want the number next to your keyword as small as possible. You want to have your competition as little as possible.

The numbers you see below the search box  indicate how many competitors you have in this area.

For example  for keyword "Unicycle" Google keyword suggestion tool showed 135,000 global monthly searches and 8,100 local monthly searches and competition was low.

When I use web search on  Google for keyword "Unicycle"  I'm finding  5,100,000 documents.

As you can see that ratio of documents on Google search  to searches in Google keyword suggestion tool  is around 38:1

5,100,000 / 135,000 = 38

For every person searching for the keyword “Unicycle” there are 38 documents which match this keyword.

At the same time "Truck accessories"  on Google keyword suggestion tool gives me  246,000 global searches and 33,100 local searches.

Google search gives us 20,700,000 documents.

The ratio is 84:1 for global searches.

I would stay away from "Truck accessories" business and would go into unicycle business because it has more than twice as much chance of being successful.

In other words greater interest and fewer competitors.

Do your testing and comparisons for several of your business ideas and their respective keywords.

In the next lesson I will show you how to research your competition and pick up the ideas which work for them and how to spot the wrong ideas in order to avoid them.

Next lesson...

Bogdan Fiedur

Adlandpro.com Copyright 1998 - 2013 - All rights reserved . 

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