Find Out How Competitive Your Market Is In 5 Easy Steps
Before getting started in any new market online, it’s necessary to do some research. Many times, people will skip this research phase because they don’t know where to start. It isn’t very difficult to do some basic research once you know how to begin. Here is a 5 step outline of what you need to know to move into a new market.
1. Keyword Brainstorming - Start writing down any possible keywords you feel people might use in the search engines to find your site. Write down everything you think of, even if it’s a stretch. Ask your friends and family what they would type in to find your product. You won’t think of everything on your own.
2. Search - Go to Google, Yahoo, and MSN and type in the keywords you just wrote down to start to look at your competition.
3. Review the Search Engine Results - Look at the number of sites each keyword returns, the relevance of the top results, and the Pay Per Click (PPC) popularity they have. You may also check Google Trends to get a better idea of keyword popularity. All of these factors will give you valuable information on which keywords others are targeting and receiving search traffic from.
4. Identify Top Keywords - Using the data you gathered from the search engines, choose your top keywords that you want to target on your site and in your online marketing campaigns.
5. Analyze Top Results - Using your narrowed keyword list, analyze the top search results’ Web sites for those keywords. A few factors to take into consideration include: site design, search engine optimization, usability, and page popularity (inbound links).
Now that you know more about your competition, you can develop an effective and successful strategy.
