Competitor Analysis is an important element of the strategic internet planning process. Like any other successful marketing plan, an internet marketing plan also requires thorough and in-depth analysis of the competitors to be successful to generate the desired online business. It is an essential component of the corporate strategy and thus requires a very systematic approach to prepare a robust internet marketing plan.

When planning for internet marketing strategies, one must know who are your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and their overall online activities. Very often, competitive intelligence and analysis is taken for granted in the search industry. You can learn a lot of things by studying your competitors and pick up new tricks and techniques from them. A complete competitor analysis would study in detail all aspects of each of your competitor's internet marketing strategy. Knowing your competitors will help you to understand their tactics, their strategy, their level of success and more which is very crucial to the success of your online marketing strategy. One good method of studying your competitors is by signing up for their emails, read their content and get to know their sites.


Why Competitors’ Analysis?

Competitor analysis has various important roles in your internet marketing strategy. It helps you to:

1) Understand your competitive advantages/disadvantages relative to your competitors.
2) Generate understanding of competitors’ past, present (and most importantly) future strategies.
3) Provide an informed basis to develop strategies to achieve competitive advantage in the future.

Questions To Be Asked While Analyzing The Competitors:

The following is a useful list to keep in mind:

1) Who are our competitors?
2) What threats do they pose?
3) What are the online activities of our competitors?
4) What are the objectives of our competitors?
5) What internet marketing strategies are our competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies?
6) What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors?

There are a few online tools to find out exactly how are competitors are running the show :

1) SpyFu.com
This website monitors nearly 4.5 million domains, showing you on a daily basis exactly how much your competitors are paying for search advertising, their average ad position and the total number of hits they receive. SpyFu also reveals the exact keywords that your competitors are ranking for in organic search and who their top 100 competitors are.

2) Internet Archive
This tool will help you to explore a site's history and how it has changed over time.
Using this free and simple tool you can discover:
i) How often a website has changed their copy?
ii) Whether or not a website is split testing?
iii) Find out if your competitors have made any big changes in their offer, including price, bonuses, guarantees, etc.

3) Search Status
Search Status is one of the best SEO tools around.
You can use this tool to:
i) Highlight no-follow links
ii) View any page in Archive.org
iii) Show all Whois information. This is especially useful if you want to find out who the owner of a website is. (great for setting up a joint venture)
iv) Show robots.txt file. This feature will show you exactly which pages and directories a website does not want listed because they want to keep them private. (can be quite informative.)
v) Show Indexed Pages. Find out exactly how many pages a website has listed in all 3 major search engines.
vi) Show Backward Links. This feature will show you exactly which sites are linking to the current page or website that you are visiting. This is especially useful for finding link partners and affiliates.

4) Google alerts
Google Alerts are good tools to let you know what your competitors are up to. Whenever something changes for your competitive keywords you receive an alert as well as when you and your competition are mentioned online.


Competitors’ analysis is not a one time thing but a regular process that is needed to stay ahead. The industry is always changing and so you need to do constant research and study of your competitors to stay on the top.