Tools to measure your website against the competition
Your website may look great and seem to perform well, but how does it stack up against your competitors? There’s always room for improvement, and the following tools will help you measure your website competition by analysing other websites in your industry and helping you to discover new ways to improve traffic and conversions.
Check search results
You can easily check the major search engines to see how your site ranks for your chosen keywords versus those of your competitors. If you find other sites achieving better rankings than your own, examine them for keywords and other SEO optimisations to help tweak your own.
Do a website comparison
Compete.com is a paid service that lets you enter your site and find lists of similar sites in the same industry domains. It shows you keyword density analysis and which other sites are competing for your own audience.
Research competitor engagement
You should do all the basic searches, looking at Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for your competitors. You can then see how active they are, how many followers they have, and whether they engage with their users. For a really powerful look into how others are using social media, services like followerwonk.com can help you analyse your competitors’ twitter feeds and follower lists.
Influence sites like klout.com and alltop.com are a great way to see who is a current influence in any industry – check out the leaders and study how they’re using social media to engage with their audience.
Subscribe to competitor feeds & conversations
Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a great way to subscribe to multiple sites. Using a reader like feedly you can add any number of feeds from your competitors and get regular updates on their sites. The same can be achieved by joining email newsletters to see how your competitors are engaging customers.
Most twitter clients can track conversations using hash tags, so you can keep an eye on industry or competitor specific conversations as they happen, and sites like trendsmap.com can show you what’s currently being talked about.
Keeping an eye on the competition is healthy business, and often a good way to get tips on how to service your own customers better. These tools should help you pick your way through the data to fine tune your online presence.