Dominate Your Online Competition through Espionage
Typically when we hear the word espionage we don’t think of it as a strategy to
legitimately increase your business. The word always seems to accompany an image
of someone being led away in hand cuffs on their way to a long prison stay. Well
I am here to tell you espionage isn’t always an unethical way of doing things. In
fact, I think you’ll find that the leading companies and organizations take part
in this type of business strategy every day, and they do it without the fear of
being locked away in a prison cell.
Let’s take a peek at the true meaning of the word…
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that
is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the
information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, as the legitimate holder of the
information may change plans or take other countermeasures once it is known that
the information is in unauthorized hands.
The two sentences above are directly from Wikipdia and if you notice it doesn’t
say anything about being illegal, and in fact it discusses implementing countermeasures
once you know your information is in the wrong hands. I’ve often found myself wondering
what it would be like to sneak in under the radar to gain access to TOP SECRET information.
Well the Internet allows us all to live the fantasy and do just that, and it’s completely
legal and ethical. The only thing it requires is for you to have the desire to gain
access to this information, and a couple tools.
Identifying Your Competition
The first step in online espionage is identifying your online competition.
This competition isn’t simply companies that offer competing products or services.
It is any company that is showing up in the search results for keyword phrases you
are working to rank highly. Since most companies won’t pay as much attention to
you if you leapfrog them in the search results unless you offer a competing product
or service, these are easy targets. Today most companies don’t pay attention at
all, so if you are, you will almost most definitely win. You should identify the
top ten profitable keyword phrases you’d like to eventually rank number one for,
and conduct searches. As you review your list of search results, create a list of
the top ten competitors, and their website addresses, for each phrase.
Search Engine Optimization Strategy
ID
The second step in the process is to identify the search engine optimization
strategy of each competitor. You can accomplish some of this manually by taking
a good look at the page which turned up in your search results. You can do this
by looking at the on page elements and see if each of these competitors have optimized
their site 100% correctly. If you need a quick refresher on what you need to check,
refer to Eight
Key Elements to Get to the Top of Google. Make sure you take note of every
element they didn’t address since this can be your road map to domination. Once
you’ve done the manual analysis you can also use another tool which is SEM Rush. This tool will quickly
show you what other keyword phrases each of your competitors are ranking for. You
can potentially uncover keyword phrases that you didn’t even think of that can add
a significant increase to your revenue.
Pay Per Click Strategy ID
Is your competition using PPC advertising to drive traffic to their
site? If so, what keywords are they using and which words are giving them the best
return? Believe it or not you can gain access to this information as well with the
proper tools. Think about how powerful this can be. You can literally tap into their
most effective traffic source, identify the words that are delivering results for
them, and then insert your website in front of theirs to essentially steal their
traffic. Again, sounds sneaky, but you gotta love it! If you’d like to download
a free tool to constantly monitor this information without leaving the Google results
page you can download
PPC Web Spy. You can also use a nifty little tool called
Spy Fu. Make sure you visit these sites and try out the tools. You’ll
be amazed at the intelligence you can gain, and it is all absolutely anonymous.
Interactive Strategy ID
Engaging visitors once they arrive on your site is critical to any company’s
online success. You will need to spend some time thinking like your buyers so you
can, at least temporarily, think like they do. Once you’ve got yourself in this
frame of mind, visit your competitor’s website and look closesly at the interactive
strategy they have in place. Do they have a blog? Can visitors submit a question?
Is there video on the site? Whatever they are doing to engage the visitors, it’s
up to you to decide whether that strategy would be appealling to you if you were
a potential buyer. Going through this process will help you improve your website
by simply taking the time to think like your buyers and make sure you are delivering
an experience that would leave them the most satisfied.
You now have the road map to conducting effective competitive espionage.
If you follow these steps and take action on the intelligence you gather, you will
quickly be on your way to dominate your competition. Plus you may just add some
excitement to your work as you begin to anticipate your competition’s next move
and remain at least one step ahead of them at all times. Isn’t competition fun!