Blogging Competitor Analysis
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This is the next action post in my $100 a day blogging series. Up to this point we have reached the point where you should have a basic list of high level keywords that you may want to target with your blog. Today we’re going to move on and take the step of gathering specific information about the theme that we’re interested in blogging about.
Competitor analysis is really a key for many different reasons.
- Understanding what you’re up against.
- Gather monetization ideas.
- Frame your competitive advantage.
For each high level keyword in your list (you should have no more than 7-10) do a Google search and take a look at the top 10 or 20 results for each of them. Create a spreadsheet and make notes under each of the above 3 categories.
TIP: When you’re checking these keywords in Google, make sure sure you’re not logged in to your Gmail account (or any other Google account, like Reader) because you’ll get different results if you are. I usually use Internet Explorer for Google searching and then Firefox for my real browsing and checking Gmail etc.
Here’s what we’re looking for:
What Is the Quality of my Competition?
For each site you find in the search results:
- What is their Alexa ranking and Page Rank?
- How many pages do they have in Google?
- What is it that they are good at (their competitive advantage)?
- Is their site a good match for the keyword term?
As I did some of this research I was surprised to find that in quite a few cases, there were sites in the top 5 of Google that weren’t a great match for the keywords.
For example, for the term “make money online” ProBlogger.net comes up in the top 5 results. Now ProBlogger.net is a great resource for “make money blogging” but it really isn’t nearly broad enough to cover any decent portion of the “make money online” topic.
That tells me that Google doesn’t really have any enough sites that it considers authorities for that phrase, therefore it has put ProBlogger into that result, since it is a pretty good fit. If I can convince Google that I am a better fix (primarily with more diverse thematically related site content) then I may be rewarded with a great ranking for a high traffic keyword.
How Are My Competitors Making Money?
Make notes in your spreadsheet about ALL the ways that your competition are making money. Some possibilities include:
- AdSense
- Private ads
- Affiliate Links
- Text Link Ads
- Private Link Ads
- Sponsorships
- Pay Per Post
- Review Me
There are lots of others, of course. Make a list of them, but pay special attention to the prominent ones. Which ones are above the fold, promoted front and center…likely these are the big profit makers.
Look for a Competitive Advantage
As you are scanning these sites, remain open to find your competitive advantage. What are these site weak at? What can you do better than they are doing?
Make sure you read comments on these sites. Are commenters pissed off about things on the site? Or is there a theme in the comments that can give you ideas about what the readers of the site are wanting that the site isn’t providing.
Keep reading (or take some time to reflect once you have read them all) until it becomes clear what you can bring to this market that doesn’t exist already.
Other Ways to Scope the Competition
If they have a mailing list, sign up for it as well as downloading and looking at any free e-books, whitepapers etc.
Who do they link to in their blogroll? Check these sites out as well. There are usually lots of highly valuable sites in any niche that don’t show up in the search engine results.
When you do your searches for your competition, are any of these sites buying traffic on AdWords (look at the URL field on the ads on the searches you are making)?
One thing I discovered in my research was that John Chow has a promotion that encourages people to review his site and link back using the keyword phrase “make money online.” That’s a great idea. Not only as a technique for me to borrow (ie. do the same; encourage my readers to link to me using a targeted phrase), but also I could write a review of his site and be exposed to his readers (who are exactly my target market.)
Don’t forget, your profit potential is largely determined in the market research stage of blogging, so don’t rush or if you have already started your site, don’t neglect it.
I notice too that some sites (like John Chow’s) have a star rating system where users can rate the posts out of five. I think that’s a really good way to get feedback, since a lot of people don’t want to comment but clicking on the stars is easy. I might hold off on trying it until I have more traffic though.
Thanks for the reminder, I’ve been meaning to install that plugin. I believe that it can then display a list of the “top rated stories,” which is cool.
“I might hold off on trying it until I have more traffic though.”…unless you can set the default to be 5 Stars with 50 votes on each story
I don’t understand why logging out of all Google accounts is necessary before searching. What would Google gain by giving different results to users of its services?
Hi Promod, Google tries to provide you with “better” results by learning your preferences and serving appropriate content. For example if you own an orchard and you do many searches for terms relating to “apple” (trees, seeds, fertilizer etc) they will know that you aren’t as interested in Macs and iPods, like most people are expecting when they search for “apple”. You can opt out of this “service” …look for customizations in your Google account. There are definitely privacy concerns to be considered.
Thanks for the explanation, Jon. Your example is very clear. For some users, “apple” may turn up the witch in Cinderella
As for privacy, I’m a contrarian. I’d rather get better search results. I don’t mind some tracking. There’s no reason for me to post here under my real name, but there’s no harm either. I figure that since you’re real, it’s a sign of courtesy to reciprocate.
Good luck in your hunt for $100/day. I enjoyed this post, although I’m not sure if you should worry so much about your competition at this stage. It might be that you really can’t consider them your competition as if you create good content, people can absorb both.
But anyways, +1 Digg, +1 Stumble
Thanks Scott, I appreciate the social bookmarks. As for the competition, I agree that my site is nowhere in the league of the sites that I am looking at. It is more like realizing the skills required (that need to be developed) than suggesting that I’m going to “beat” them. I think of it like a tennis player who wants to go pro and therefore needs to constantly be seeking out players who are better than him so he can raise his game.
[...] Jon Symons at Art of Money is on a quest to make $100/day blogging. Today’s topic was scouting out his competition [...]
[...] Scope out the competition - quickly find out how many sites are competing for a keyword [...]
[...] How Heavy the Competition Is - If you want your webpage to make serious money, the kind that can pay the bills and let you live comfortably and not just eke out a meager earnings, your site will have to be in the top 20% of all the websites on that topic. So take a look at some of your competitors. Make sure that the niche isn’t already saturated with what you are planning to offer. Or even if there is a lot of competition, make sure that you think you will be able to beat them at their own game. [...]
[...] You check out the site and think “much coolness, another small step in my march towards market domination.” [...]