Using Alexa For Competition Analysis
A final resource that helps you spy on your local business competition is the website called Alexa. Alexa is most popular for its ability to rank websites based on traffic flow. Go here to learn more about Alexa.
Go to Alexa.com and type in your competitors website address in the search box and you will be given the following data upfront:
- Alexa traffic rank
- Traffic rank in the US
- Number of sites linking into the website
To get more detailed information, click on the ‘get details’ button and you’ll uncover more secrets about your competition such as:
- A brief summary of the products or services they offer, the percentage of traffic that comes from search engines, the number of years the site has been in operation, the demographics of the visitors they appeal to, how long each visitor takes on average on each pageview and to the site in total.
- In-depth analysis of various categories such as:
- Traffic stats- unravel the sources of their traffic
- Search-find the top search terms driving traffic to the site from search engines
- Demographics-discover who their most popular visitors are by age, gender, race, education and location
- Contact- find out who owns the site, their contact and the size of their company
- Reviews- check out positive and negative reviews about the site
- Related links- shows the link network they have developed
- Clickstream-shows you the sites visitors go to after visiting the competitors site (downstream) and the sites they visited immediately before landing on their site (upstream)
I hope that this series of articles on how to legally spy on your competition has given you the tools to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your competition and enabled you to compare your local business to theirs so that you can outsmart them.