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.

I bet you are asking yourself what You Tube SEO is! Well it is the way to make the most of your You Tube Video opportunities to drive traffic and get free website clicks! There are some basic things that most people do not do when optimizing their You Tube videos for SEO. This post will list my top You Tube SEO Tricks and shortly will have a link to the video.

When I decide on a topic, the first thing I do is search on YouTube to find out who has the most popular video in that category. For this exercise I searched “YouTube SEO”. The first time I typed in “You Tube” and the internal search engine asked if I meant “YouTube”, all one word. Well I can guarantee that they ask everyone that so it makes sense to use the correct spelling.

When the top video in that category came up, I studied what they were doing so that I could have the same kind of success that they are having. I looked at their title, clicked more info to get access to their description and title tags, and made sure that I had similar content that added to the knowledge so that I wasn’t just tricking people, but adding value also.

You Tube Title – When you are picking a title make sure that you are capitalizing on the popularity of another video so that you come in the “Related Videos” area. Make sure to include the main keywords that the popular video is ranking for!

You Tube Tags – Use similar tags to your target video so that you will appear in the “Related Videos” area.

You Tube Outbound Links – This is probably the most important one, make sure to link back to your hub site (or money page) so that you can get incoming links from your YouTube video. Many people rely on a link graphic, but having a hard coded link right to your site is the best way to get incoming traffic.

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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!