The Value of Knowing Your Competition

What you do is unique? But what if it isn’t? There are very few new ideas under the sun and ignoring potential competition won’t give you an advantage in the marketplace. How do you take time to compare your website and business plans to those of your competition? Here are a few steps you can take to get started and gather the right data. 

Find Your Top Competition

If your website and business already have some traction, you can use a tool such as SimilarWeb.com to find other sites that do what you do. It can provide your ranking globally and across the states as well as how you rank in your specific category. 

Of course, you can also use lower tech methods for finding your competition. Look on LinkedIn for people doing similar work and take a look at their websites. From that, you can pull a lot of useful information. 

Find Your Keywords

You need to know your keywords and the keywords your competition is using. If you’re a flower shop, for instance, you want keywords that will attract searching online. Things like flowers, flower arrangements, valentine’s day, birthday, get well, florist. You get the idea. 

But what are the more hidden keywords that will help you stand out. Things that are location specific. Like flower shop near me or florist in Atlanta. One simple trick to finding more keyword ideas is to use Google’s auto complete feature. Simply type flower shop in your search engine and see what it recommends. These are the top searches in this category. Try it with a few others as well. 

See What Your Competition is Doing

When you have your keywords and some ideas of where to find your competition, now you need to see what they are doing to stand out in the marketplace. What do they do differently? What products or services do they offer? How do they connect with others? What is their social media branding? 

While you don’t want to steal directly from your competition, there is nothing wrong with using some of their ideas as inspiration. Why recreate the wheel when you already know something is working?

Find the Gap

The sweet spot will be in the cracks between what people are offering. Take time to look for what they’re not offering. Can you fill that gap? Creative solutions, innovation, and a lot of hard work can put you in a great position to tap a currently untapped market. 

What can you do better or differently? What skills do you have that people can utilize to accomplish what they’re looking for when they shop online or reach out for services? 

Talk to the Professionals

Of course, doing this yourself means missing a lot of information. And while it can be helpful, it can also create even more uncertainty. Partnering with web professionals who understand all the ins and outs of web design and operation can help you find what you’re really looking for. 

Contact SiteTrustee to get a complete website audit and uncover your own potential.