website maintenance

Ahem, you may have noticed that this post didn’t appear last Monday as promised. Damn those holiday festivities. And damn Apple for the 10.5.6 Leopard update that crashed my mac, taking my blog posts with it. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

Competitors. Nobody likes them but, now more than ever, we need to learn to deal with them.

There are 2 schools of thought on competition. There’s the traditional “kill ‘em all” theory of dealing with competitors, and the Web 2.0 “love thy competitor” theory. Personally I’m torn between the two and find myself working with some competitors and against others. It all depends on your business model, your frame of mind and the arsenal of weapons you keep stashed in your basement.

Irrespective of whether you choose to work with or work against your online competitors, you need to know who they are, and you need to make a habit of keeping an eye on them. Here’s what I’d recommend as a basic competitor survey:

• Enter your primary keyword (the one you are trying to get a Google #1 for) into Google, within double quotes, e.g. “website maintenance services”. If you’re only targeting local competitors, be sure to tell Google to only show ‘results from the UK/US/wherever you live’.
• Write down the URL’s of the top 5 websites ranking for your keyword in Google’s organic rankings. While you’re at it, you should also write down the names of the top 3-5 advertisers on Google. These people are unlikely to be top 5 competitors, but they have got an advertising budget which makes them a threat.
• Now head over to Yahoo and MSN and repeat the process. Even though Google owns the lion’s share of search traffic, it’s still worthwhile checking out the smaller engines.
• Once you’ve put together a list of competitors, audit their websites. Actually read their web pages. Compare their product offerings to your own and make a note of any customer names they give away in testimonials or portfolio pages (if you’re planning on stealing their clients). You’d be amazed at the useful information you can pick up on competitor websites.
• Do it again every month. Some websites will change (e.g. those with blogs) and others will remain boringly static. After a few months of this you’ll start seeing how your competitors run their online marketing, and you’ll be able to decide whether you want to work with them, or squash them like defenseless bugs. It’s actually quite a lot of fun.

Moral of the story: Unless you’ve just written a dictionary for Amoebas, you’re probably going to encounter some competitors online. Best you learn how to deal with them before they learn how to deal with you.

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