Starting a web site project
With a billion web sites on the World Wide Web, which spells: facing a huge competition, thorough preparation is necessary to make your web site a success. When surfing the web we can visit the pages of the well known corporates everybody knows by name through simply typing their name into Google's search. Google then will present their web sites mostly on the first search result page. When we enter search terms that only relate to their products or services the appearance of these brands is very often drastically reduced to not showing up at all.
So, if you do not belong to the category of great brand names but depend on being found by the search terms your target group probably uses when conducting their searches, your position is much more difficult but also a challenge.
Online Competition Analysis
Browsing the web to analyze your competition is always a good point to start. Awareness how your competitors are presenting their brand online and which functionality and strategy they use is most important. But also realize that they could build on a new web site right now, at this moment and that this web site will be definitely more advanced and in many ways improved than the one you see on your screen. So it is always important to think ahead for the purpose to stay ahead.
Search first for the firms you know by name by typing their firm name into the search fields of the Search Engines. Try different Search Engines, because when the firm doesn't rank in Google it can very well come up in the Yahoo or MSN results. Proceed to find them with the keywords you would use when you would not know them by name but would look for their products. In case they do not show up on the search result pages, you are challenged to do a better job but if they show up and rank high, check their keywords strategy.
Each Browser provides the possibility to take a view into the source of the web page. In case you use MS Internet Explorer, just click the "View" Button in the menu bar and then click "Source". An additional window will open showing the source code of the page. You do not need to be a programmer to find these tags we need to analyze. We are looking for the Meta tags and title. You can find them easily because they are located in the head of the code. Head stands for: in the top of the page. Locate the title:
title>Online Competition Analysis Marketing Articles /title>
meta name="description" content="Online marketing articles how-to conduct an online competition analysis." />
meta name="keywords" content="marketing, search results, online competition analysis, meta tags, web site, articles" />
Note the title and all the keywords and then check the content of the page inclusive the links for how many times these words can be traced back in the content. The answer is for sure not "the more the better" but in the harmonious relationship of the words in the tags and the content. "The more the better" can be interpreted by Search Engines as "spam " which would result in the banning of the page. Thus the density is of great importance. It also does not make any sense to put keywords in these section, which are not coming back in the text or navigation of the page. Each page should have a different title corresponding to its content and navigation.
The keywords and the analysis of the content of your competition will give you a sound input which direction to choose and which keywords you can or should not use, especially when they are found in sites which are very successful or if they rank very low. Keep in mind to differentiate yourself from your competition and use this online competition analysis also to do so. Mimicry is only successful in the animal kingdom!
I guess, it will now also make sense to you that SEO Consultants and Online Marketing Managers not only have to choose the best keywords, but also have to tweak the content and add or take away a word from the content here and there. It is definitely proved that Search Engines love content, themes and concepts. The more content the better and the best when it is wrapped up throughout the web site into a theme.
Link building is especially most important to show up in Google's search results!
|
