Have you ever wanted to assess, discover or reveal your competitors most coveted SEO metrics? What if you could reveal the infrastructure behind their site architecture, traffic levels per keyword, how many pages they have dedicated to a keyword or how many inbound or internal links they are using to support their keyword(s) rankings.
Watch How To Discover Competitors SEO Strategies in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
After viewing this insightful SEO Video, you will have a firm idea of which metrics to data-mine, reverse engineer or which metrics to ignore. Veoh changed their long video policy, so, to watch all 12 minutes – follow this link…
Metrics:
- Use SEM Rush (for mapping most competitive keywords).
- Use Xenu Link Sleuth to assess links and site architecture.
- Use Relevant Naming Conventions in Tandem with Flat Site Architecture.
- Assess Website Size to Determine Content to Keyword Saturation.
- Assess Inbound links and Deep Link Ratio.
- Are there Content Silos? (Clearly Delineated Sub Folders).
- Assess Links in to Links out (from Top Tier Pages Down).
- Assess Aggregate Rankings (SpyFu, SEM Rush).
Application:
- Flatten site architecture for massive sites
- Use keyword rich descriptive URL’s (category last ) ex. /exact-match-keyword-category
- Ensure titles match descriptive URL’s and are reflected in H1 tags and first 50 words (in the body copy).
- Ensure that internal links from other pages match URL and title (to reinforce relevance).
- Ensure links leaving optimized pages link back to root or homepage with the main keyword/shingle.
- Ensure the homepage links to the main category pages only (to establish hierarchy).
- Then that categories feed subordinate products and other relevant landing page tiers from intelligent linking.
Related Posts:
- SEO Tips to Find Competitors Keywords
- SEO Tips to Spy on Competitors
- Market Research and Finding Competitors Keywords
- SEO Tactics to Outwit Competitors
- SEO Tips to Step Over Competitors
- How to Optimize Meta Titles and Descriptions
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Market Research and Finding Competitors Keywords
Thanks for sharing this really informational video! It would really be nice to find out competitors SEO metrics!
Hi, Thanks for sharing this, interesting approach. I don’t subscribe to SEMRush at the moment – Would you say it is worth the money?
@Andrew:
Finding out the who, what, where and why is a mandatory step, if you ever want to get past them or emulate tested metrics which work…
I only used basic tools to prove a point, it’s not always the tools, its what you do with the information that matters.
@Simon:
SEM Rush is worth it for 2 reasons (1) you can see how your own SEO is progressing when looking for new keywords to parse the horizon and (2) you can see how many keywords have stemmed with competitors (as well as which pages are ranking for what keywords).
SEM Rush is simple, but effective. You can also try http://www.spyfu.com which also shows paid advertising keywords, banners and metrics.
Hi Jeffrey, thanks for the video, very insightful. I was wondering something about the operator you often mention…site:website.com keyphrase. When I use this operator, as well as returning a number of pages on my site that match the keyphrase exactly, I also get pages that mention the keywords in the keyphrase, but not necessarily together. So for example in your high heels example, I may have “high” and “heels” on the page but maybe not “high heels” as a keyphrase. The operator still returns pages like this but what is the best thing to do? Is it to edit the page so that the keyphrase does appear exactly and then link to the champion page?
Thanks for any info.
Justin
Jeffrey,
Great video!
I’ve noticed my competitors have their URL’s setup like this:
http://www.somesite.com/category/page-title.keyword
Instead of:
http://www.somesite.com/category/page-title.html
Notice the very end of the URL (.keyword)
The keyword at the end of the string is the same keyword across the entire site.
The competitor ranks #1 in all SERP’s, for that keyword, & has over 10k pages.
Have you ever found any sites like this, or used this type of URL keyword stuffing?
Any thoughts on this type of URL?
Thanks, & again great info in the video!
HI Justin:
Typically in the bolded area of the search results, you can see the shingle (keywords) highlighted.
I know this is more about proximity and prominence, but often people attempt to inflate the relevance of a particular keyword from having something site wide in the footer, title or alt attribute (which can also skew the relevance / data).
You can try adding another parameter to the search operator such as site:domain.com AND “selected keyword”, but you may with to look through the first 20-50 pages visually to determine an ideal link location.
Even if it is broad match Justin, Google has already identified those pages with the most authority to leverage your new champion page.
Hey SlimJim:
The flat site architecture model works well is you have tons of pages to dedicate to this type of keyword saturation / blanketing.
I am a big fan of theming and siloing as well or using sub domains when applicable, however, to leverage all the power generated by the silos, you need a page flattened and close to the root to act as the beacon.
I wouldn’t call it stuffing as much as reinforcing “exact match” verbatim through three primary metrics (intitle, intext and inanchor” so long as they are internally linking from the individual pages back to prominent category pages (like like.com) does…
Thanks for the detailed reply Jeffrey, I appreciate it.
Thanks Jeffrey,
It’s kinda of funny that I asked that ? today, of all days to ask.
I’m still setting up a new site, tweaking everything, when I noticed the “.keyword” url’s on another site. So I decided to do the same, it has to work they are ranking #1 in all SERP’s for that keyword. Anyway I did the same after Google has already crawled a few of my pages, then everything went to heck, all my pages were buried like 70 SERP deep (UGH…)! :(
Now today it looks like Google has updated 2-1-10 & my pages are back with a few ranking within the first 10 results on page 1 of the Google SERP results.
I didn’t check the Google SERP today, until after I asked you that ?’s in my first comment.
Sigh of relief, all is good… :)
Also, when searching for:
site:websitename.com
If you are running the Google Toolbar in your browser, it’s very possible to get false results, the reason is Google looks at your search history. You can clear your PC cookies/internet history, but Google ( http://www.google.com/history ) still keeps an online history of your surfing that will influence the “site:websitename.com” search results.
I run the Google Chrome browser, & always do my “site:websitename.com” searches with the Incognito Google Chrome browser (no cookies, history, etc…)
Hi, Jeffray, so good the post is! Thank your for sharing so useful information.
thanks for sharing this..
I found this very informative.
Great!! Thanks for supporting seo professionals by giving such information.
I was wondering how to make this http://www.itoolkit-software.com high ranked by SEO on Google…
Great interesting approach!
So you are saying that if on my pages that rank first if i add another link to the first one my number of pages listed will increase or double, making my page more important?
This is great seo, Thank you
This is great seo, Thank you
Great content and explanation.
Video is more and more effective to your marketing needs.
Just watch if the top 10 competitors if they have Video on their site, be sure you have one too.
thanks for the video..Yeah video is more effective in marketing.
Great content and explanation.