Know Your Competition - How to transfer business skills into the internet marketplace

Released on: March 6, 2008, 11:18 pm

Press Release Author: gurpreet singh/technoflicker

Industry: Internet & Online

Press Release Summary: One of the first things to do before starting up any business
is to investigate the competition.

Press Release Body: One of the first things to do before starting up any business is
to investigate the competition. Any business owner knows this is crucial; to
determine how to position a business in the market, who to target, what prices to
set and who to keep an eye on. The same is true of the internet marketplace.

However, this understanding is rarely transferred when a business decides to go
online. Perhaps the initial setup is so daunting that little thought is spared for
anything beyond the layout and content of a website. The internet, however is still
a marketplace, and one that is growing exponentially. Those same business skills
need to be put to use here too.

If you want to learn from the success of your competitors you first need to think
like a search engine. By mimicking popular keywords and phrases you can benefit from
traffic that would otherwise be directed to your competitors sites.

Keywords are contained in what are called a Meta Tags. These are tags that are found
in the source code at the top of a webpage and include descriptions, titles and key
words. Search engines use this information (in addition to content) to rank your
page for different search strings. You can access this information by viewing the
source of any website, just simply select a View and a Source from the toolbar.

If after looking at this code you fear it resembles some alien language, do not
despair! There are many programs available that will search competitor's sites for
this information and provide a full report: in plain English. Just look for anything
about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is one of the new hot topics; and you
will be swamped with products. The danger is to believe too much of the hype, Dona
to pay for promises; search engines are not as easily tricked as we are!

Another key ingredient is links. Your page will be ranked favorably if it is viewed
by the search engines as being an authority on a given subject. Links work a bit
like votes, if someone links to your site they are effectively casting a vote of
approval. However the weight of this vote is affected by how many other sites they
link to, so beware of link farms(pages contained entirely of links) because they
will not help improve your site positioning. The easiest way to obtain links is
through online directories although people may not visit your site directly through
these links, it will help with overall search engine positioning.

Returning to the competition; you can discover who is linking to other sites by
using an online link popularity checker. This way you can try and get these sites to
link to you also. Remember, directed traffic is the best, so aim for links from
sites which contain similar content to yours. If you are a business selling stamps,
your best links would be from stamp appreciation pages obvious really.

The internet has been established for a while now. It is no longer an unknown
jungle. As a new business entering this arena you can learn from other people
successes as well as their mistakes!


Web Site: http://www.thedesignbuild.com

Contact Details: For More Free Resources visit www.thedesignbuild.com

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