It’s always a good idea when researching your keywords to see what your competition is doing. With that being said, just because they are doing it, doesn’t mean it is right, right? However, if you do a search using a couple of your top keywords and low and behold, there they are, then maybe it is time to see what they are doing.
As I mentioned in my “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” blog from earlier in 2014:
- Check out what your competitors are doing on their website
- See what kind of social media they have and what they are doing – usually that is linked on their website.
- Watch them on Facebook by adding them to your watch list or add them to a Twitter List
- Do a search for their business name in Google search and see what citations show up, where they are listed, what industry listings they are part of, what reviews are out there and if their social media wasn’t listed, that might show up in search also, or it should.
- As an aside, you should be doing this for your website as well, to be sure of where you are, what folks are saying about you and to check out which citations you have listed and…. are they correct!?
All of that is pretty self explanatory but feel free to check out the earlier blog.
Checking Out Their Source Code
But what I really wanted to show you was how to view their meta tags, the easy way by seeing what title tags, meta description, meta keywords or even h1, alt tags, if they have analytics, what platform their website is on and even what plugins they are using.
Viewing the source code can be pretty confusing if you don’t know what you are looking for, but broken out, it is pretty easy to understand, errrr, for some of us. Check out this quick little video (2 minutes) on how to view website source code, how to find things and a few things to look for.
I hope you found the video helpful and it made a little sense.
Doing what they are doing??
Remember, when you find out what others are doing, it doesn’t mean it is right or that it is meant for you to do. However, if someone is doing really well with what they are doing, find out what they are doing and make it yours. No need to reinvent the wheel, but remember… let’s not copy, just find something that works for you!
This might also help to determine IF a competitor really is competition for you, like you had thought.
Also keep in mind that you need to be where YOUR target market is… so work to get there. If you aren’t, someone else likely is! Your customers come first, so figure out what they want.
Should you need any help with competitor research, finding out where you should be, optimizing your website or getting seen online, contact me as I would love to help.
I’ll start doing more little segmented videos, so feel free to check out my YouTube channel and subscribe to keep up to date with new ones as they come along. Thanks
~Kristen
There is so much to be learned from finding out what your competitors are doing – both what to do and what not to do. Being where your ideal clients are is critical as you said.
I always look at the source code, because I design websites from scratch and know code. I’d never thought to help other people know what to look at. Great gift to them, Kristen.
Thanks Beth. I didn’t know that you had built websites too. Wow, the things we learn. But glad you are familiar with it and thanks for the compliment.
Oh this was a challenge. Watched your video a few times & I finally got it. Now I want to actually check out some competitors. Whenever I thought I had a competitor they were never exactly same as us, so it got hard & I gave it up. As a visual learner, loved having the video so keep em coming.
Oh no, sorry Roz, wasn’t going for challenging! Glad you got it though and hope you can find it to be beneficial. Sometimes we may think folks are competitors when actually they aren’t, so that’s great that you were able to learn that in your biz. YAY, visual learner, working on it! 🙂
Love it, Kristen! Didn’t know I could search for keywords in competitor websites. Going to do that now!
Awesome Jackie. Glad to help and I emailed you about your competitor! 😉
Thanks Kristen. You explained that really well. Choosing our own keywords is something a lot of business owners think about doing but often they don’t know what to include. Rarely do they think about investigating other people’s keywords. Great job on this. I’ll be sending some of my clients to see this.
Thanks Clive, I appreciate that. You speak so very well in your videos as well. Thanks for sending your clients to it, much appreciated!
Wow, this is like a foreign language to me! There’s so much for a new business owner like me to do, it makes my head spin. I will have to add this to the list of things I have to do.
Oh no Carol, but yea, there is so much to learn. That’s why we outsource the things we don’t know. Hope you can check out some of my other blogs to help with your spinning head! 😉
Hey Kristen, This is a great post. When I’ve checked out competitors, I typically look at their website, facebook & blog and try to see what they are charging for services but I never thought to look at their keywords,meta tags. I also never heard of a watch list on Facebook! I’ve got lots to learn… 🙂
Thanks & I’ll be sure to check out your other videos
Those are also awesome ways to check out your competitors – check out the other blog, linked in there to see what I say about the FB watch list… good stuff! Thanks again.
Kristen, I love how you always break down the techy stuff for people like ME to understand! Your video was helpful and easy to understand for the average joe. I’ll be doing this to my competitor sites to see what they’re working with. I always tag my pages and submit keywords, but never knew how to really optimize that option in WP. Thank you so much for making source code easy to understand.
Awww, YAY and thanks Holly! Glad it was helpful and glad that you are doing the right things! 😉
This was really helpful. I never thought to use the find feature and look for the meta tags to see what they are using for keywords! It was really helpful that this was done video style since I know I learn better that way with technical things like this! Looking forward to the rest of the videos to see how to be a better spy!
Thanks Heather.. glad that you found it helpful and informative. Looking forward to doing more videos to help small biz owners.
Ok, my eyes were about to glaze over when I started to read the title, but thank G-d for people like you to help people like me!!!!! Great info as always Kristen 🙂
I know… the title did kinda glaze ya over but interest you in the same instance…and well, my industry alone is that type of industry, nothing fun like sweets, right? Glad that I could explain in terms better to help folks “like you”.
Kristen,.
Wow. Great article and new ways of looking for keywords that I didn’t know appreciate the information and make use of it, Thanks !
Lori English
So glad Lori.. you are learning so much. Hope you can find the time to apply them.
Great article, I am very new to all of this so found this very interesting.
Awesome Jenni, I hope it was beneficial.
Awesome site, i think i stumbled on it before specifically reading up on the SEO and PPC section.
Awesome, thanks David.
These are valuable insights. Very useful. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome and valuable response, thank you Sandy
These are great tips. I typically watch my competition really closely on Social Media just to see what they are doing. I am currently focusing on SEO and Pinterest to grow my traffic. I was looking at my competition the other day and she was part of 70 Pinterest group boards. I was planning on only joining 40. And I was planning to only do approximately 150 pins a day. I found she does 200. I have a long way to go. I did customize my own strategy based on the time I should pin, and how well my images were optimized for Pinterest.
Divine @ LadiesMakeMoney
Those are great insights Divine and you don’t always have to match what they do… but some of that and then find what else you can do that they are or that they aren’t maybe.
Oh wow this is so much information! Really well explained as I never knew you could search for keywords and do all that code ☺️ Really good to have the video as well to explain it a bit further, and showing exactly how to do it on the screen. Tishhlah
Why thank you Leticia.. I’m told I can explain it really well… so I’m glad it was helpful for you.
This was helpful. Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure Fazeelah
All of the seo stuff seems so confusing to me – it’s the next thing that I’ve set aside time to learn and go through properly. I do agree though that you can learn from your peers and they’re your best resource!
It sure can be Emma, that’s why you have someone like me to help.
This is such a great tip on keyword research. I was literally struggling with it. Going to try it out next
Awesome Neha, I hope you do