SEO Warrior

Analyzing Your Competition

You can use many tools to analyze your research data. Many of these tools provide similar information. It is best to use several tools to gauge your competitors. Even Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool is not perfect.

It will take some time for you to find what works and what doesn’t (especially with the free tools). Whatever the case may be, make sure you use several tools before drawing your conclusions. Try out the free tools and see whether you find them to be sufficient.

Historical Analysis

After you know who some of your competitors are, you will be ready to roll up your sleeves and conduct a more in-depth competitor analysis. We’ll start by examining how your competitors got to where there are, by doing some historical research.

The Internet Archive site provides an easy way to see historical website snapshots. You can see how each site evolved over time, in addition to being able to spot ownership changes. Figure 13-9 shows an example.

Note

Web archives do not store entire sites. Nonetheless, they can help you spot significant changes over time (at least when it comes to a website’s home page).

Figure 13-9. Internet archive for “oreilly.com” (1997–2009)

To find historical Whois information, you can use the free Who.Is service at http://www.who.is/. Alternatively, you can use the paid service offered by Domain Tools.

Web Presence and Website Traffic Analysis

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