- Search your competitor’s source code. You will find a lot of information by scanning their code
- Review robots.txt file of your competitors to find out their site structure so that you can go to the internal pages and find relevant data for your needs
- If you have something to hide on your site, do it using htaccess file; do not put it on robots.txt. Here you can find information on how to create htaccess file: www.mattcutts.com/blog/htaccess-101
- Follow their company on LinkedIn.com. Look at the company’s status and follow the company
- Fan their Facebook page
- Read their content to find out who they are linking with
- Review your competitor’s traffic on Compete.com / Alexa.com
- Review your competitor’s ad spending data on SpyFU.com
- Whois.domaintools.com “Competitor Name” owns about
- Become an affiliate of your competitor
- 10 things you should be checking on your competitors’ websites:
- Page Authority using Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO tools
- Total links
- Social Media Activity
- LinkedIn Connections
- Find out if your competitors are blogging
- Use other spider tools – ScreamingFrog
- Affiliate programs
- Shopping cart spying
- SpyFu – this is the top one
- ReverseInternet.com – for competitive intelligence
- Firefox addon – outwit
- SEOMoz Pro – keyword analysis tool
- RavenTools Checklist – print this out and go through it, step by step
Speakers
Jane Copland
Matt Siltala
Michael Streko