Know what your competitors are doing!
First of all, I would go online and identify a few main competitors for my company (other than the ones I already know). I would type in some keywords, and see who is ranking high in different search engines and also serving the area my company has business in.
Then, I will use the following tools to keep track of what my main competitors are doing:
1) Alexa.com
- A free and very easy to use site to track the traffic of competitors’ website. Are they doing better or worse? If they are doing better, try to investigate why. What they have done and you didn’t or what you have done wrong.
2) Watchthatpage.com
- I use this to monitor any updates on my competitors’ website. Some people would use it to monitor price drop or increase in their competitors’ sites. It is a free, very easy to use automated tool. Since changes on my competitors’ sites are not frequent, I have scheduled the tool to send changes/updates to my email address once every Thursday. A very useful tool!
3) Archive.org
- This free site brings you back to the older version of a website, before it is updated. You type in the website address and then choose from any archive date they have there to view the old site. Very useful if you want to check what your competitors have on their sites a few weeks ago, before their recent updates.
