You’ll get an email report every time a competitor on your alert list gets mentioned online. Monitor Backlinks In addition to tracking your competitors’ names and social mentions, you should also be tracking their backlinks. You’ll also have access to the success of their campaigns. With WhatRunsWhere, you will know if your competitors find a new marketing strategy that works. SEMRush will get your instant information about their rank, traffic, ad keywords, and organic keywords. You’ll get real-time information about how these websites are performing. The monthly plans range from $50 to $250, depending on the features you’re looking for. You’ll be able to identify the most profitable keywords and adjust your strategy based on what your competitors are doing. You need to monitor your competition. What types of tools does your company use to monitor your competitors?
Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
There are countless outside factors that influence whether or not you’ll turn a profit. Your competition plays a huge role in the success of your business.
That’s why it’s so important for you to take the proper steps to gain a competitive edge on other brands in your industry. But, as I’m sure you’ve quickly realized, this is much easier said than done.
The ease of access to the Internet has amplified your competition at an exponential rate.
You’re no longer just competing with a few other local or regional businesses. You’ve got to worry about national and global brands as well.
What makes your company unique? What differentiating factors help you stand out? Why would a customer buy from you over your competitors?
These questions are difficult to answer, especially if you aren’t constantly researching the competition. But with so many other brands to keep an eye on, this can seem like a daunting task.
Not to worry. There are plenty of online tools to help you keep tabs on your competitors. I’ve narrowed down this list to the top 10 I found to be the most helpful.
If you try these out, it will be much easier for you to brand and market your business, taking into account what your competitors are doing.
1. Google Alerts
No list of online monitoring tools would be complete without Google Alerts.
This tool is about as easy to use as it gets. Simply sign into your Google account to get started. If you don’t have one, it will take only a couple of minutes to sign up.
Next, input the names of your competitors. Google takes care of the rest.
You’ll get an email report every time a competitor on your alert list gets mentioned online. You can set it up for links and keywords as well.
It all depends on what you want to track.
Google Alerts is great because it’s free to use. You’ll get notified when your competitors are mentioned so you can stay up to date on the latest information.
2. Social Mention
We know 71% of small businesses use social media to engage with their customers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.
That’s why Social Mention is one of my favorite monitoring tools.
It’s super easy to use. Simply search for terms, keywords, or the names of specific brands, and the platform will show you what people are talking about across social networks and blogs.
The tool will tell you how often the brand gets mentioned as well.
This is a great opportunity for you to see what actual people are saying about your competitors in real time. There are plenty of ways for you to use this to your advantage.
If the comments are negative, you can try to avoid these errors yourself. You may even be able to exploit those mistakes in a marketing campaign, aiming to steal their customers.
But what if you see nothing but positive comments from people talking about your competitors? Don’t panic just yet. You can still benefit from this knowledge.
Figure out what your competitors are doing well and try to emulate it. What do they do best? Find a way to do it better.
3. Instapaper
What happens when you see something online about your competitors?
Do you instantly drop everything to read it?
I doubt it. You’ve got a business to run. While competitive analysis is important, it can’t take priority over everything else you’re doing throughout the day.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up on this information later. You can use tools like Instapaper to stay organized.
Instapaper behaves like a much more advanced version of a typical bookmark for web browsers. One of the best parts of this tool is you can access saved articles without an Internet connection.
So now, if you stumble upon some new information, a blog, or an article written by or about your competitors, you can save it and read it later.
The tool automatically optimizes the text so you won’t have to worry about messy scrolling or zooming the way you would have to on mobile sites. You can even adjust the font, size, spacing, and margins to your liking.
This tool is available for desktop and mobile devices. It doesn’t matter whether you use Apple or Android, they’ve got a version for you.
You can sync saved articles across all your devices as well. It’s perfect for those of you who want one place to conveniently read all articles about your competitors.
4. Monitor Backlinks
In addition to tracking your competitors’ names and social mentions, you should also be tracking their backlinks.
Backlinks play a huge role in website traffic and search engine optimization. That’s why in the past, I’ve given you tips for consistently building backlinks on a weekly basis.
If your competitors are smart, they will be trying to build as many backlinks as possible too. That’s why the Monitor Backlinks tool is crucial to your competitive analysis initiative.
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