Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You

Monday, April 9th, 2007 by Guest

Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You

By CK Chung (aka Kid Disco).

What if I was to tell you that you could cut the amount of time spent on a certain element of SEO by half and, at the same time, double your production for it. Is that something you might be interested in?

If so… read on, grasshopper.

SEOs will generally kick-off an optimization campaign by examining analytics, performing keyword research, checking on-page elements, analyzing links, and so on and so forth. However, there exists an extremely useful tactic that is often underutilized or left out completely from the SEO’s arsenal. What am I talking about? Ladies and gentleman, I present to you… Competitive intelligence.

What is competitive intelligence? As it relates to search marketing, I would define it as the process of performing research to gather information about your competitors’ websites and analyzing that data for the purpose of extracting methods used and formulating strategies that you may use to optimize your own website.

Competitive intelligence can open your eyes to many things, including:

What your competitors are doing.
How you compare to your competitors.
Predict what your competitors will be doing.

There are plenty of resources and tools on competitive research and analysis that are readily available for you to utilize. Simple searches on the SEM Search tool for competitive intelligence, competitive research, and competitive analysis will return a barrage of blog posts and articles that will lead you to a slew of more resources and tools you may incorporate.

These tools and tactics that you will find will lead you well on your way to gathering useful data on your competitors. Being the swell guy that I am, I’ll present you with two of my favorite tactics…

View the source

Often times, you will find that your competitors will leave a bunch of clues and/or trails in the source code of their pages. Some of the things you may find include:

What keywords they are targeting (meta name=”keywords”)
What kind of content management system they are using, if they are using one.
What analytics package they are using, if they are using one.
What other third-party companies your competitor is using.

You may use this knowledge to exploit your competitor’s weaknesses, implement these practices on your own site, and/or obtain additional information through further research… if you know what I mean.

Another item in the source you should look for are comments. Many web developers and designers will leave notes in comments like this:

You should also look for entire elements or blocks of code that may be commented out. These may reveal such things as new elements that may soon be introduced to the site and/or items that are being tested on the site.

Competitive Link Analysis

And now we get to the answer to the initial question: How can you spend half the time on a certain element of SEO and get twice as much out of it?

The element I’m talking about is inbound links. Everybody knows the importance of inbound links in an SEO campaign. Why not use your competitors to help you out? You can easily analyze the backlinks of your competitors.

There… there’s half the work of researching for potential link acquisition targets all done for you.

Now all you need to do is implement the usual link building strategies to acquire backlinks from the same sites that are linking to your competitors… right?

Well… you could, and I’m sure many of you are doing this.

But, I have more. Using those usual link building strategies, what if you were to get the website that is linking to your competitor to change that link to go to your site, instead?

Then, instead of your competitor having 1 backlink to your 1 new backlink, now your competitor has 0 and you have 1.

Bang! Double your productivity. Not only are you gaining links… you’re competitors are losing them!

Of course, you will want to avoid anything that may cause the search engines to become suspicious… and I’ll speculate that your competitor’s backlinks being replaced by yours across hundreds of sites may do just that.

So, you obviously should be replacing not just one, but many other competitors’ links.

In addition, keep in mind that this strategy should be just a part of your link building campaign, as it is best to keep your link profile diverse.

Summary

So, there you have it folks – competitive intelligence and a few tactics in a nutshell. I would really need something larger, like a clamshell, to expand on the subject, but I hope I have provided enough information for you to get started on the right path.

Being aware of competitive intelligence will not only help you gather information on your competitors to use to your advantage, but it will also make you aware of what you should and shouldn’t be doing on your own web properties so that your competitors can’t gather the same type of information about your websites.

Of course there are more sneaky tactics you may use with competitive intelligence, but we can’t go into those here.

CK Chung is a Holistic SEO Consultant and his alter ego, Kid Disco, keeps up an SEO blog covering the lighter aspects of search marketing.

[This has been an entry for Marketing Pilgrim's SEM Scholarship contest. Keep up to date with all entries and other marketing news by subscribing to our rss feed.]

Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal on Twitter!

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28 comments on “Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You”

Alister Cameron // Blogologist Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 9:33 am

Thanks for the mention and link to SEM Search, CK!

Always a pleasure to be of service to the search marketing community

-Alister
I Need Your Help! Go Check Out My SEM Scholarship Contest Entry | SEOdisco Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

[...] Hey peeps! I submitted a last-minute entry into the Marketing Pilgrim Scholarship Contest. [...]
Mark Barrera Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

Great post! So far, I think this is the best in the running.
Sujan Patel Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 2:04 pm

Sneaky but true. Best way to start SEO on your site is to check out you competition and know it like you know the back of your hand.
Dawud Miracle Says:

April 9th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

Really nice post. I’ve known much of this for some time, but for some reason I’ve been unwilling to do anything with it. I guess it seems a bit sneaky to me. But sneaky doesn’t necessarily mean bad. So look out.
Jeff Horsager Says:

April 10th, 2007 at 3:52 am

Kid Disco, great article. Good luck in the contest. Your fellow entrant.
Kirby Says:

April 10th, 2007 at 5:39 pm

It doesn’t take competitive intelligence to cheat; just Yahoo and the ability to lie to someone. Real competitive intelligence entails a lot more than this and if you know what you are doing, gives one the ability to compete and win without rank amateur sabotage.

Andy, this shouldn’t get rewarded with a scholarship.
Aaron Says:

April 14th, 2007 at 9:15 pm

Any smart business is aware of their competition and what they are executing. You’re not paying someone inside to squeal the secret recipe, you’re paying attention to what you have visibility to. This happens in every other form of marketing and advertising everyday. You focus on making the wheel better, not re-inventing it. The only thing I wouldn’t do is try to replace a competitors link with your own, that crosses a line with me (and it looks like Kirby as well). Otherwise, I say do your homework and include research on your competition, their success and their failures. You’re foolish not to.
Greg Says:

April 17th, 2007 at 6:03 pm

Competitive: having a strong desire to compete or to succeed

Intelligence: the gathering or distribution of information, esp. secret information

“Ryan, your conclusions are all wrong. Halsey acted stupidly”

Thatâ€™s crazy talk with hijacking links and sure smells of the road to failure. Although re-inventing the wheel is not the goal, originality is. If you recall your history most all bandits eventually died an uncomfortable death in captivity for trying to circumvent the system.

Building credibility is one key to your success online and the suggestion of hijacking links to better ones position is just plan crazy talk and does nothing but damage credibility.

Using analytics to determine ones competitors and what these competitors are doing to build their linking structure is very sound advice but attempting to hijack links is only for the foolish.
Friday Favorites 4/20/07 - Stuntdubl - Search Engine Marketing Consultant Says:

April 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

[...] There are some really great submissions for the SEM Scholarship contest. CK Chung (anything that starts with a entourage reference ranks high in my book), Eric Hebert, Ahmed Bilal, Simon Heseltine, Jeff Horsager, Todd Mintz, and Dustin Woodard, are among the favorites I’ve read so far. I love Social Media! – Votes are noticed and appreciated:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
HeatMaps Help to Increase AdSense Earnings (Search Engine Roundtable) : TheBlogSense.com Says:

April 20th, 2007 at 1:04 pm

[...] There are some really great submissions for the SEM Scholarship contest. CK Chung (anything that starts with a entourage reference ranks high in my book), Eric Hebert, Ahmed Bilal, Simon Heseltine, Jeff Horsager, Todd Mintz, and Dustin Woodard, are among the favorites Iâ€™ve read so far. [...]
Johnny Fuery Says:

May 1st, 2007 at 9:07 pm

I agree that competitive intelligence is key, and looking at competitor’s source code, meta tags, etc. should be a commonly employed strategy. I would even go so far to say that SEO should be started there.

However, I disagree with you when it comes to removing/changing links of your competitors. That is extremely uncool. One can be extremely successful in business without cheating.

Don’t do it.
Final Five for $10,000 SEM Scholarship » Online Marketing Blog Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 10:34 am

[...] Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You – CK Chung (aka Kid Disco) [...]
Marketing Pilgrim Announces SEM Finalists - TheVanBlog Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

[...] Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You [...]
Search Engine Optimization Warfare - The Competitive Webmaster’s Guide to Understanding the Dynamics of Top Rankings - Stuntdubl - SEO Consultant Says:

May 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

[...] Principles of defensive warfare 1. Those in the top spots should play defense by constantly repeating the things that got them to the top within the acceptable rules. 2. The best defensive strategy is to try to outrank your own sites with other sites. 3. Strong competitive tactics should always be emulated with improvement or bought. [...]
Automatic Blog Posting! » Blog Archive » Guerrilla Marketing Says:

May 20th, 2007 at 11:30 am

[...] Principles of defensive warfare 1. Those in the top spots should play defense by constantly repeating the things that got them to the top within the acceptable rules. 2. The best defensive strategy is to try to outrank your own sites with other sites. 3. Strong competitive tactics should always be emulated with improvement or bought. [...]
Seo Mumbai » Friday Favorites 4/20/07 Says:

May 23rd, 2007 at 4:53 pm

[...] There are some really great submissions for the SEM Scholarship contest. CK Chung (anything that starts with a entourage reference ranks high in my book), Eric Hebert, Ahmed Bilal, Simon Heseltine, Jeff Horsager, Todd Mintz, and Dustin Woodard, are among the favorites I’ve read so far. [...]
Final Five for $10,000 SEM Scholarship | The Internet Marketing RSS Aggregator Says:

June 5th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

[...] Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You – CK Chung (aka Kid Disco) [...]
Easy Inbound Links - Alibi Productions Says:

August 13th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

[...] links is to follow the leader. Just like with keyword research, it’s often suggested that you look at your competitor to see what terms they are targeting. This works the same way for inbound [...]
Eric Badgley Says:

October 24th, 2007 at 12:07 am

I would say this in unethical and I would use this form of seo on my site
Dylan Darling Says:

November 16th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

I would never go this far.
San Diego Insider Says:

November 16th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

Not my style either. I would rather beat you than cheat you.
San Diego Homes Says:

March 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

I am already using your rules. thanks
Slotted Says:

March 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

>I am already using your rules

Of course you are. You are a realtor. Screwing people is what you do.
kevin in bellingham Says:

April 29th, 2008 at 11:13 pm

Thank you for the information. I will start looking into those handy little trick asap. I dont think I will go as far to remove the competitors links though.
I Need Your Help! Go Check Out My SEM Scholarship Contest Entry | Online SEO Blog Says:

June 20th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

[...] peeps! I submitted a last-minute entry into the Marketing Pilgrim Scholarship [...]
SEM Scholarship, and the winner is……………… » SEM Training & Certification Says:

July 13th, 2008 at 10:58 am

[...] was a tie in the second sem scholarship contest with CK Chung aka KidDisco’s article “Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You“ also getting 4 votes. The tie breaker was the fact that Jeff had 3,385 visitors compared to [...]
Genetic diseases Says:

May 20th, 2009 at 3:23 am

great post!keep it on…

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