5 Essential Tools to Scope Out Your Competition Online

It’s no secret that most of us occasionally scope out the competition to see how we are doing in comparison. In fact, it’s a downright smart business practice to keep up on your closest competition to understand how they are reaching their target audience. Luckily, it doesn’t take an act of espionage from James Bond to get it done.

There are an abundance of tools you can use to access key information that is easy to attain and is freely available to the public. Below is a list of 5 tools you can use to analyse the competition’s web presence, as well as your own.

Semrush

Curious about the keywords your competitor is targeting and ranking for? www.semrush.com.au is an excellent tool to use for both competitor analysis and monitoring your own website metrics. It offers important insight into the keywords that your website (and your competitor’s website) ranks for as well as the number of searches done on those keywords on a monthly basis. SEMrush also provides detailed graphs in regards to traffic history & volume, PPC ad keywords, organic search competition and more. With SEMrush, you simply have to type in the website of your competitor and the information will be displayed.

Built With

Ever wonder what your competition used to build their website? Or what shopping cart and widgets they are using? www.builtwith.com provides detailed information on over 7000 web technologies including shopping carts, widgets, analytics, CMS platforms and more. Using Built With, you can determine what tools are helping to drive your competitors success online – or lack thereof, in some cases.

Megantic’s Revenue Growth Calculator

Megantic’s revenue growth calculator uses proven data to estimate potential incremental revenue. While no SEO campaign can guarantee growth, our strategy opens up new online customer opportunities for clients. By analysing our historical averages for over 200 clients, we can get a rough idea of the performance potential if you partner with us.

See the calculator at www.megantic.com.au/proven-seo-ecommerce-revenue-calculator/

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a host of features for competitor analysis and provides very important insight into backlinks as well as the top pages of your competitor’s website. The data is updated every 15-30 minutes and therefore provides the most up to date information. It is great for identifying lost links, whether it was a competitor’s or yours. Find this tool at www.ahrefs.com.au

Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine offers a glimpse into the past with historic versions of a website. This can offer you insight into your competitors evolving brand image & website layout. It may also provide you with insight into how their current layout may have improved conversions. Any information that was previously displayed may show up in the archive and give you an idea of any changes in direction that they have made. This may include a particular sale they had, pricing changes or even changes in management. You can find it at www.archive.org

Understanding the competition’s overall direction, and target audience, should be an integral part of your web strategy. These five tools provide truly valuable insight into your competitor’s web presence. For help in understanding some of the information these sources provide, the team at Megantic can offer you a comprehensive competitor analysis, simply contact us.