We all know spying is cool if you are an actual spy and not some creepshow spying on your neighbor. Spies are cool because they have cool spy gadgets such as laser watches, exploding pens, and decked out cars that can lay down spikes and oil slicks. Spies are also cool because they gather tons of information on rivals that can then be used by their side to gain an important advantage. The purpose of this article is to help you become a cool spy as well. We will show you a cool digital marketing spying tool that will help you gain an advantage on your competition. The best part about this tool is that it is absolutely free. Let’s get your spy career started right now.
There are a ton of digital intelligence tools on the market that provide reams of information on any website of your choosing. The primary problem with these tools is that they require monthly subscriptions that can add up after a while. If you are like most small business owners, you only need to check on your competitors once every two or three months to make sure nothing crazy is happening. We went out of our way to find a free web grader that provides data that normally requires multiple subscriptions to these intelligence tools. Click on the link above to start using this web grader for your business. Once you click on the link above, you’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this.
Follow the Steps below to properly utilize this way of Greater.
Step 1 – Enter the URL of your site and your Email Address
Entering your website address and your email address will give you access to this web grader. Once you have completed step one, you will be taken to a new screen where you’ll be asked to Enter three competitor websites. For illustration purposes, we selected a pest control company in Orlando. Their URL is https://termitelawnandpest.com
Step 2 – Enter the URLs of up to 3 Competitors
When considering which three competitors to add to the web grader, we highly recommend that you conduct a Google search for one of your most important keywords and see who Google shows in its search results. While you may not consider these companies your primary competition, Google does. That means we need to get past them to rank number one. We will need to understand a little bit about them to know which tactics we need to employ to move past them in Google search results. For a pest control company, we typed in the keyword “pest control company orlando.” We took a screenshot of the search results below to show you which companies we included in the competitive analysis.
Enter the URLs shown above into the web grader. Once you have completed entering all three competitors, click on the submit button; your screen should look like this.
We can now analyze the competition. The first stat to review is the monthly traffic value represented in dollars. The monthly traffic value represents what your keyword rankings are worth. More explicitly, it tells you how much you would need to spend in AdWords to get the amount of traffic you are already getting for free from your organic rankings.
It is important to understand that this web grader does not have access to your analytics account, so it cannot actually verify that you received these visits; however, it does estimate how many visits to your website you receive based on where you rank on important keywords.
As you can see in the example above, our pest control friend is behind all three competitors. In fact, he is far behind two of the competitors. This means that we will need to do some serious SEO to catch up with our competition.
The next thing to take a look at is the backlinks scorecard. All four websites have a zero domain rating. Domain rating represents a number 0 to 100 that measures the overall ability of a site to rank in Google’s search results.
It is also important to understand the number of referring domains. Referring domains measures the number of different websites linking to you from other websites. It is important to understand how many sites are linking to you as Google reviews links from other sites as votes for your website. The more votes you have the higher your website will rank in Google search results on the whole.
Step 3 – Pull back the Curtain on your Competitors Keyword rankings
To see which keywords your website ranks for, as well as your competition, simply click on the “See full keyword analysis” link in the top organic keyword rankings section of the web grader.
This web grader will now pull back every single keyword for which you rank and your competitors rank. This is a treasure trove of intel for you. Because there are typically so many keywords present, it is best to use the search filter in the upper right-hand corner. When deciding which word to use to filter results to find the best keyword, we recommend the following. If your business is like this pest control business and is based in Orlando, we recommend entering the city name. That typically does the trick. However, if your business is not geo-specific, you will need to enter in your most important services to filter properly.
You are now a Spy
You are now a graduate of spy school, having gained important information on not only your website but, more importantly, the websites of your competition. You now understand which keywords they rank on, how far above you they are in the search results, and the web grader even tells you the cost per click of those keywords. Use this information to change your website marketing copy as well as the metadata on your website. We are specifically referring to making changes in your title tag, header tag, description tag, as well as all text. We also recommend that you use these keywords in blog posts. If your competitors have a tremendous advantage in terms of monthly traffic value, domain rating, or referring domains, we recommend that you hire an SEO agency to help you catch up as building backlinks is time-consuming, difficult, and can end in disaster if you try to go to services like Fiverr. We hope you find this article useful. If you find other tools that would be useful to the small business community, please add them below.
