ETHICAL TOOLS TO SPY ON YOUR COMPETITORS
Wednesday, September 23, 2015Global Administrator
eCommerce is booming and business is competitive. It can be extremely difficult to compete in an industry where there are so many other options for your customers to choose from. How does an eCommerce merchant compete in such a competitive landscape?
Last week we discussed ways you can
learn from your competitors to better you marketing and eCommerce strategy. To further that discussion, we are going to outline some tools you can use to track their activity and still be ethical.
Google Alerts:
Chances are you probably have these set up already for your own store to see what is being said about your company and brand. You can also use Google Alerts to see links to pages about your competitors. It will give you links for things as small as a quick mention on a webpage. This is a good way to see what customers, media publications, blogs, etc. are saying about them. This tool is simple and easy to use. You can have these reports sent right to your inbox as well. Did we mention that it’s FREE?
Google Keyword Planner:
This tool provides an estimated traffic on certain keywords. This is a good way to get an idea of keyword traffic for you and your competitors. The data you can get out of this tool is extremely valuable as you can find competitor keyword data (paid and organic) as well as monitor your own site and keyword traffic. Also, it’s FREE!
Monitor Backlinks:
Although a new tool, it’s mighty! This essentially provides you with a way to monitor your competitors back links. It will generate a report of this information and send it directly to a specified inbox. It ranks the domains in which your competitor’s bank links appear and compares results with multiple competitors. This tool varies on price depending on the features you require/request.
SEMRush:
This tool is a personal favourite. It provides you up to date information for your PPC campaign, as well as providing quality data on your competitor’s main keyword searches. Although a paid tool, you can try it for free when you first visit the site and type in your competitor’s website. Generally speaking, the keywords searched for your competitors will be similar to the ones searched for you. That is valuable information!
The Search Monitor:
This tool also offers a good amount of quality information. It specifically focuses on competitor data and allows you to monitor results from all major search engines and affiliates (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc). You’ll be able to view the search results from these websites and view results from various news sites and forums. Again, these features vary depending on the package you select.
As an eCommerce business, it will always be challenging to stand out from you competitors and you’ll never get a full idea of what they’re doing to stay ahead. Having said that, there are tools and techniques out there to help you understand them better and even learn from what they’re doing.
Do you use any other tools that may be helpful in understanding what your competitors are doing?