How to Reverse Engineer Your Competitor’s SEO Campaign
Implementing an individual SEO strategy that works flawlessly is like finding the largest gold reserve in the world. You are extremely happy about your discovery and you would not dare to tell another living soul where you found it. Targeting the top spots in Yahoo, Google and Bing is like searching for gold. There are websites that rank higher than your website and you might wonder exactly how they are achieving more success than you. Knowing how to reverse engineer your competitor’s SEO campaign can help you expose exactly how your biggest competition is reaching the top spots.
Reverse Engineering SEO Explained
Taking a closer look at your competition will teach you a lot about what works and what does not. It is no accident that other websites perform better than your website or have higher page ranks. Reverse engineering is used in the manufacturing industry to create competing products that look, work and sell very similar to successful products. This same concept is useful in search engine optimization analysis. Breaking down the elements that are used by your competition to reach the top spot in search engines will show you exactly how their success is earned.
The ways to apply reverse engineering to your competition are:
• Locating and Using Their Source of Backlinks
• Define Keywords and Key Phrases Used in All Content
• Examining Their Website Structure
• Know the Demographic Visiting Your Competition
• Find a Niche That is Not Being Used and Use It
How Reverse Engineering Makes Your Website Successful
Potential visitors to your site can easily be lured away by your competitors. This could be costing you money every day of the year. If you are spending your time and money on PPC and banner advertising, you could be throwing your money away by trying to compete. Utilizing reverse engineering SEO tactics has no expense attached to it. You can easily find out if your keywords are incorrect and what keywords are being used by your competition. Your content, niche products, videos and design of your website can be tailored accordingly based on the success of your competition to help you gain a higher page rank above your competitors.
Keeping Reverse Engineering Ethical and Legal
It is important to mention that directly copying content or making a mirror image of your competition is not the right thing to do. These tactics could land you a copyright infringement lawsuit or get you blacklisted from search engines making your SEO tactics useless. The best way is to examine what is working for your competitors and use your original designs, content and marketing skills to help you succeed. When you learn what works for your competition, it is much easier to devise a plan that could get your website higher sales conversions and increased search engine visibility.
Here are some great tools to use for reverse engineering:
Want to know what a competitor is Tweeting about? Twilert makes it possible. All you need is a Google or Twitter account to sign in and create keywords or phrases related to your niche, brand or business. Twilert will send you an email update anytime someone uses your specified keywords or phrases. It’s eavesdropping without getting caught!
Google is the premier search engine. You probably know that already, but you can use Google to your advantage. Each time that new content is uploaded to the web Google can tell you about it. You don’t even need a Google account. Just go here and enter your keywords or phrases. Select the frequency that you want Google to deliver each email and you will receive an endless supply of new content that only you and Google know about.
SEO SpyGlass is like “Big Brother” to the SEO world. It will tell you what is happening with a competitor’s website and exactly how it is achieving high page rank. A complete set of savvy Internet tools packed into this software will help you define just what your competition is doing that you are not. The software is free to try and costs between $99.75 and $249.75 depending on the version that is purchased. It is a nominal investment to eliminate taking a backseat to your competition ever again.
Do you use Firefox to browse the Internet? SEO Toolbar is a useful plugin that is installed into your Firefox browser. You will know instantly why search engines rank some websites and why others are ignored. You will have at your disposal a complete SEO tool to know all of the dirty little secrets that a competitor is using against you. Competition page rank, number of backlinks, PPC ads and keywords used are just some of what SEO Toolbar offers.
Tap into a huge database of keywords that are used by websites in any business or niche by using KeywordSpy. You have to pay a monthly fee to get all of the pro features, but knowing exactly what keywords are being used to rank a website goes a long way to help skyrocket your SEO success. Tracking, research and analytics tools are included to help crack the secrets used by your competitors.
If you think you have the right keywords to attract web users, you can use SerpIQ to verify your data. You might be surprised at how great or how bad the keywords you use are performing. Before you ever use a keyword, you can enter it into the SerpIQ software and make sure it is a moneymaker. Detailed reports, graphs and other information can help you dominate any competitor trying to rank for the same keyword or exact match domain.
If you are using Google Adwords to find keywords, you might be fighting a losing battle. Search volume tells you nothing if you don’t know how many other websites are trying to rank for the same keywords. The most advanced research tool ever made is SEMRush. Not only can you determine what keywords work, you can find hidden keywords that you never knew people were searching for regardless of what Google Adwords displays. Find out what backlinks and domains are pointing to your competition to takeover their spot in search engines.
Take this confidential information and use it wisely. Your website will never be the same again.
