Copyright 2006 Sharon HousleyThe old adage, "keep your friends close, and your enemies
closer", is applicable not only to personal relationships
but business relationships as well. While I'm not
suggesting that you befriend your competitors, it is
important that you are cognizant of your competitors'
business ventures and methods.
It is important to realize that while monitoring your
competitors is essential, it could easily become an
obsession. Therefore, it is crucial that you strike a
balance when incorporating it into your business plan.
There are several ways to conduct successful stealth
competitive intelligence operations. While it is fanciful
to imagine yourself as a secret agent or spy, none of these
techniques are difficult, hidden or secretive. In fact,
most of them are tools or services available to all
businesses.
1. Ego Searches
What are ego searches? Ego searches are keywords or keyword
phrase searches for a specific brand, product, or company
name. Ego searches are a great way to monitor mentions of a
competing product. You can automate the set up of ego
searches using RSS, so anytime a competitor's product or
brand name is mentioned in the news, blogosphere, or print
you receive notification and the details in an RSS feed.
How to Setup Ego Feeds -
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-ego.htm
Create RSS Ego Searches -
http://www.rss-tools.com/ego-search-feeds.htm
2. Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence is defined as the process of
gathering actionable information in a competitive
environment. Competitive Intelligence is researching the
business environment or techniques that another business
uses. Competitive Intelligence is often used to influence a
strategy for business development.
First, it is necessary to know your competition. Background
research can be conducted using the tools at DNS Stuff
http://www.dnsstuff.com , and various other websites. The
DNS stuff website will allow you to do a whois lookup. A
number of other research tools are also available on the
site.
3. Google Alerts
Receive notification via email on the latest relevant
Google search results (web, news, etc.). Define the Google
Alerts using a competitors company name or product name.
http://www.google.com/alerts
http://www.googlealert.com/ (3rd party tracking service) -
Google Alert is the web's leading automated search and web
intelligence solution for monitoring your professional
interests online. It tracks the entire web for your
personalized topics and sends you new results by daily
email.
4. Meta Tags
Have you ever considered what keywords or phrases a
competitor is targeting on their website? Have a peak at
their meta tags by simply viewing the webpage source. Pay
particular attention to the header tags that include title,
description, and keywords. Are these keywords part of your
marketing mix?
5. Information
Arm yourself with information. The Googspy website is
particularly useful when used properly. Enter a keyword,
company name, or domain, click the results and view the
companies top 25 competitors. If any of those websites are
using pay per click on Google, you will also be able to
obtain a partial list of the adwords they have purchased.
The website gives you a glimpse inside competitors, but the
list they provide is by no means exhaustive.
http://www.googspy.com
6. Incoming Links
There are a number of ways to determine who is linking to a
competitor.
A simple search can be conducted in Google and MSN for
"link:domain.com" (replace domain.com with competitor's
domain). In Yahoo enter a search for
"linkdomain:domain.com" (again replacing domain.com with
your competitors name). The search will produce all
webpages that provide a link to your competitor. Ideally
you can request links from the websites as well.
Other BackLink Tools - http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/
Search for Places to Submit to; this site auto-generates
http://www.webuildpages.com/search/ another tools that
works in a similar way -
http://tools.seobook.com/general/link-suggest/ ; simply
enter the keyword and a list of sites that will allow you
to request links appears.
7. Alexa Ranking
Use Alexa to determine not only who is linking to a
competitor, but also to determine what sites are related
(list yours) . Alexa monitors web traffic trends, and a
list of similar websites. Alexa also has the ability to
show a website's popularity trends. http://www.alexa.com
8. Website Monitoring
It is generally a good practice to monitor competitors, and
you can do this using a tool like CodeMonitor. CodeMonitor
takes a snapshot of a websites' HTML and notifies of any
changes. The differences in the web pages are highlighted,
making it easy to discern what changes occurred.
CodeMonitor is a free online tool, that can be found at:
http://www.emarketingperformance.com/tools/codemonitor/
9. Comparison Tools
MarketLeap has some great search comparison tools that
allow for you to compare domains and ranking. Marketleap's
Trend/History report gives you a view of how you or a
competitors website's Search Engine Saturation has
performed over time. It also verifies search engine
placement based on keywords so you can quickly discern a
competitors ranking for various phrases in the top search
engines. http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
10. Other Useful Spy Tools
Domain tools has a mark alert that allows you to monitor
the use of a trademark. They also have a number of domain
tracking and monitoring tools that can be helpful.
http://www.domaintools.com/
Keep in mind that while you should be aware of the
direction a competitor is moving. I do not advocate copying
a competitor. These tools above are to assist businesses in
monitoring their competition. I am not suggesting that you
replicate, duplicate, or copy anything that a competitor
does. Use the competitive intelligence to make sound
business decisions about the direction you want to take.
----------------------------------------------------
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a
wireless text messaging software company.
