At SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk we know that it is just as important to know what your competitors are up to as it is yourself. When it comes to page ranking, a change in one of your competitors search engine optimisation strategy can be the defining thing which knocks you off the top spot, or the high positioned ranking you were previously at. There are plenty of good old fashioned ways of keeping an eye on what the competition is up to, however why do all the hard work yourself when you do not have to.
There are quite a lot of search engine optimisation tools available which can provide information on your chosen competitive companies; however one tool which is not spoken about as often as it possibly should be, is the Link Assistant tool known as SEO Spyglass. This tool is specifically for monitoring backlinks for competitive websites, however it goes a little deeper than just telling you the minor snippets of information. This tool can display detailed facts on the keywords and anchor text used within the link, the ranking position it receives for specific searches and in short, offer a general overview and background into your competitor’s link building strategies.
The tool can go into vast detail, however some of the most interesting and relevant pieces of information it can tell you are as follows. The benefit of knowing this information enables you to create your own backlink strategies that can complete with their strategy and ultimately, enable you to get ahead of the game. The great thing about Spyglass is that it is not just about the quantity and although it does provide you with basic data and volume, it clearly understands the importance of quality too.
Starting with the more basic information, Spyglass will tell you how many backlinks a competitor’s website actually has. Whilst we have stated that the quantity is not always the most important, it is never a bad thing to know how well other websites are doing with their backlinks and it is an easy way to make a direct comparison with your own site. PageRank is also monitored, with Spyglass offering information on both the authority of a specific web page and of the domain, which is extremely interesting when it comes to competing within SERPs. Another useful point that it discloses is if any of the backlinks are coming from exceptionally high traffic web pages. Getting backlinks from sites with a large amount of online traffic is an effective SEO strategy, and knowing this information can assist you with your own methods.
The detail which this tool goes into is very extensive, but some of the most useful information revolves around where your competitor’s backlinks have come from. Whether it is blogs or news pages or other website homepages, everything helps to build a bigger picture of their internal strategy. This in turn can enable you to see how the search engines may go about indexing your competitor’s sites which can ultimately aid you in your page ranking and backlink tactics.
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Posted by Steve.
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