I don't usually do research on my competitors. In fact, I don't usually know who my competitors are. I generally don't care. I simply publish content I'm proud of and try to maximise the things I can, like traffic and the profit that my sites make. However, I'm not one to look a gifthorse in the mouth either. I love free, useful information, and I'm so very nosy. I don't go looking for competitive research information, but if someone presents it to me, I'll take a look. A good look.
One of my sites is in the same niche as another very popular site run by an "internet marketer". As well as running the site that competes with mine, he also runs an internet marketing blog. I don't often read blogs, but for some strange reason I found myself reading his blog today. In one post he boasts that an article he wrote for That Niche Site (the one that competes with mine), that took a matter of minutes to write, receives a nice round 500 unique visitors a day. Nice!
But hold on. This site is in my niche. What if those tasty 500 uv/month are arriving mostly via the search engines? If I could only figure out what keywords he is targeting with that article, maybe I could get in on the action too! If he can spend 5 minutes writing a huge traffic pulling post, then I'll spend 10 minutes on mine!
Here's what I did. Using semrush I was able to type in this guy's domain, and find the top keywords that it ranks for. Bingo! Using the Google Keyword Tool, I dicovered that the top two keyphrases each attract more than 20,000 searches per month, and one of his pages ranks #1 and #5 for those two phrases. And those phrases are not competitive. These two search phrases must be the ones pulling the traffic, and the page that ranks highly for them must be the one he's boasting about. Let me tell you - that page is nothing to write home about. I know that I can easily target these terms myself, rank highly and hopefully increase the traffic to my site.
One thing's for sure. You need to be very careful with the information you divulge on the internet. This guy was particularly careless because in his boastful IM post he even links to the site that has the magic traffic pulling article.
I haven't had time to create content for those phrases yet, but I will soon. I'll set a date: one month after I publish this content, I'll disclose here the traffic that it receives. Deal?
Other tools that find the keywords a site ranks for are:
Looking forward to the traffic update, sounds like an easy take! What a silly Billy the IMer is putting up one of his golden eggs!
Good luck with the snipe attack, I’m sure you’ll win.
I’ve got to remember – disclose less rather than more.
I’ve got to remember – disclose less rather than more.
I’ve got to remember – disclose less rather than more.