Knowing how to create online competitive analysis can come handy at times. It can be used to analyze your competitor’s website, line of products or even one particular product. The 5 tips below will highlight tips to create competitive analysis when evaluating your competitor’s organic search result potential. Let’s get to it.

1. Domain Age – The age of the domain i.e. when the domain was first registered is highly regarded by the search engines. The older the domain is, the more authority potential it will carry. To check the domain age of your competitor, head to Domain Tools and use their free whois tool.

2. Indexation – This competitive term relates to getting more pages included in Google’s index so they have the opportunity to rank well. It can also be viewed as an indication to your competitors website potential, for example if it has 100 products and they are all indexed you can safely assume it’s been build in a search engine friendly manner. To check the number of pages indexed in Google type [site:site-name-here.com] and for more precise results try to fine tune this query on a folder level, for example [site:site-name-here.com/folder-name/]

3. Back Links – The number of external websites linking to your competitor is a crucial matrix in the online competitive analysis. The more quality websites linking naturally to your competitor the more likely they are to influence its ranking positively. To check how many external links your competitor has, head to Yahoo Site Explorer and type the domain name.

4. Number of Products / Services – The number of products or services offered by your competitor could provide an advantage when it comes to organic search result potential. The more products or services offered, the more chances are each will have a unique page which will help indexation and improve web traffic.

5. Site Technology – Some types of web technology are more search engine friendly while others are less. For example, websites build using flash will find it harder to rank well compared to websites build using html coding. To find which technology your competitor is using head to Built With and type the domain name.

Now that you have the different key matrix to check, create an excel sheet and compare your competitors. Hopefully my tips will point you in the right direction when conducting online competitive analysis.

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Guest article by Michelle Strassburg Head of Sales and Marketing at online wooden worktops vendor Wood and Beyond. Michelle has over 10 years experience managing online marketing.

How you are going to go about branding your small business is one of the most important things to consider when starting your company (or when making any big changes). This involves the creation of a business ideals, objectives, and values which would eventually be given life through the use of logos and other marketing collateral. Branding is what would set your business apart from the competition and would give it face in your niche industry. It is what provides a public face for your business and gives it some retention value for potential customers and existing clients to remember you by.

Here are some important things you need to consider when branding your small business:

1. Refer to your business’ mission and vision – Every business has its established set of mission and vision. The mission often talks about what the business is set to do while the vision answers more on how the business foresees its own growth. These are important things to look at because these are the components that give value to your branding. It justifies what comes off of the brand that you will create for your business.

2. Consider your business values – Aside from your mission and vision, your business also has specific values which may also become its own business ethics. These are codes that your business live by as it conducts its business. Values may have a bearing on branding because it can dictate what type of key messaging should you include in your business branding. It may give you an idea how you need to project your business as you begin to brand it.

3. Make your logo and tagline complement each other – Logos and taglines are the ultimate symbols of branding. The logo and its corresponding tagline summarizes the whole brand of your business so it should be symbolic enough to explain what your business is all about and what it aims for. You should also make sure that you won’t have any issues with other existing logos and taglines thus far.

4. Identify your marketing collateral – Your business branding will make sense and be widely used in your marketing collateral so identify which ones you would need and for what purpose. Examples of these are company profiles, AVPs, brochures, and even calling cards. You might not need to have these all at once but a business event would call for such materials to be developed. Make sure that when you implement your company branding with these marketing collateral, it stands out exactly the way you have developed it to be in the first place.

Most of my readers are small business owners who are serious about their business and brand building marketing efforts. They do not have time to cruise YouTube in search of the fun recent marketing innovations.

Lucky for them I do!

My husband, uber-geek of the free world sent me this video. It is about a raw whole chicken, the Metal hair band Dokken and Norton Anti-virus. The geeks are excited about this and sharing it with each other. To quote Johnny Jacobsen, “I like Norton, Symantec now.”

How does this relate to your business? Well if you know who your customers are (males between the ages of 18 and 50-ish), and you know what they like (juvenile humor and hair bands) you can produce something that might spread ONLY to the people you are trying to target.

Most of the group that is interested in this ad are NOT interested in marketing so I couldn’t do a raw chicken Dokken campaign and think that it would cross over. BUT I could do something clever with reference to the 80′s (many of my readers are in the 35-55 range).

Why not capitalize on all the marketing dollars, research and focus groups that your big name competitors have spent on rolling out a campaign and scale it down to fit your business?

Here is follow-up ad – the chicken gets a chance!

Michael Martine of Remarkablogger had a great article today about how to brand your blog (and by extension your company). While he came down on the side of naming it something “non-spammy” and not keyword focused only, I found much of his information FABULOUS as always!

Here is a little bit on his keyword branding philosophy:

Related Keyword Branding

Here’s the thing about creating a brand: you can include keywords as part of it. It’s just not all about the keywords, that’ s all. Think about brands where the brand is the thing itself: Mr. Coffee. Coca-Cola. ProBlogger. Copyblogger. Yours truly. Don’t forget Blogger. Another way to put this: the name says what it does. Yet another way to put this: think verbs, not nouns.

The most inspired example of this in action is the “Dummies” series of books. What a brilliant formula! Take any subject and stick “for Dummies” on the end and you have instant keyword SEO power, plus a brand.

I think this is the most powerful way to name your blog, because you win in search and you win for branding. To me, this is the best kind of branding you can achieve.

Just in case you’re not exactly clear on why this is so good for SEO, please allow me to explain: if the only way someone can create a link to your site in a way that makes sense is to use the most important keyword you want to rank for… you are poised (in part) to win the SEO game.

I have to say that I spend my days doing keyword research and blog branding for small business owners and entrepreneurs. I have heard the myth of domain names being unavailable and just don’t believe it! Within the past two months we recommended www.bestrestauranttampabay.com and www.clearwaterflhomesales.com to clients. Both of these are highly competitive niches and it took a little time to find the right combination of terms that were available but it was so worth the time as these URLs will serve my clients well both SEO and branding wise!

Additionally, if they want to they can point a “marketing” domain like www.SnookersBlog.com to www.bestrestauranttampabay.com, getting the SEO juice AND having a memorable domain that will appeal to consumers.

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Want to learn social networking the easy way? Check out our social networking video classes that walks you through social networking from setup to handy dandy tools to make your life easier!

Social networking is the new free marketing thing that everyone is talking about! It is an amazing opportunity for small business marketers to get the word out about their business AND get leads from interested people. Here are three great reasons to use social networking to help grow your business!

Social Networking Makes You More Approachable

It is funny how intimidating it can be to call someone you are considering hiring or even considering buying a product from. It seems like there are scam artists all over and no one likes to get “taken”. When someone sees you on social networking, they can get a feel for how you operate. They can ask their “friends” for social proof that you will do a good job. If you are just building up your network and would like to try out your mad skills on someone, please feel free to add me onwww.Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com or Twitter.com. (I am Taradactyl on all of these and would be your friend – just ask!)

Social Networking Lets You Help People

People can watch what you are doing and can copy it. If I find a great new site that could help get me new business, more than likely I will be posting something about it online. If you are in my network, you will see it and be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Social Networking Is, Well, Social AND Ranks Well On Search Engines

There are many things that you can add to your profile which will be found by humans AND by the search engines. I hear all the time that you need to have backlinks to your site to make it more google friendly. One of the easiest ways EVER to get FREE backlinks to your site is to make them yourself. In your profile make sure to add your website!