In Part 1, we have seen the initial step of search engine optimization services, the keyword research and analysis. Now in this article we will see the competitive analysis and it’s important in the present SEO practices.

Market research is the study of groups of people in order to determine if there is a market for your product or service. Your market research must be for your real problem not for imaginary one.

In terms of SEO, market research means a thorough study of your competitor's web marketing strategy so that you can gain an edge over them to become the front-runner in the market. Through this research you can get the following useful information:

o Learn what keywords they are targeting through their Adwords or Yahoo! ad campaigns.

o Discover what websites send them the most traffic through paid advertisements and/or links.

o Examine your competitor's search engine optimization strategies to help you understand what measures you need to take in order to increase your chances of outperforming their sites in organic rankings.

Advantages of Competitive Analysis and Search Engine Marketing Strategy

• Higher and consistent ranking assured among all the major search engines

• More extensive and better presented information

• Precisely targeted to shared prospective customers

Parameters of Market research in SEO

We can check for a number of factors in the competitor websites in the process of Competitive Analysis, including the following:

 Search engine positioning tactics and techniques

 Ranking Reports

 Status of Link popularity

 Keywords in domains/ page titles/ folder names

 With whom the competitors share reciprocal links

 META Description

 The competitors' messages

 META Keywords

 Frequency of website updating

 Page Headers

 Content

 Linked Keywords

 Navigation

 Location and amount of content

 Life of the website

 Number of pages on the website

 Trends in Search engine page cache

 Structure of the website

Additional Research Services

Domain name research

You should have domain name research so you can find domain name which is most suited to your brand or company.

Trademark/Copyright research

Trademark or Copyright violation is a burning problem of the day and companies now want to be aware well in advance that their choice of domain name or website would suffer or not?

Marketing niche studies

Is it worth for your company to invest $20M to enter marketing niche X? Marketing niche study provides a thorough picture of the competition that presently exists in a particular marketing niche and helps you understand the strength of each competitor and what it would take for your company to have a dominating presence. You should have information about the level of demand that presently exists from web users for a particular marketing niche.

Web traffic analysis

You should have a thorough analysis of your website's web traffic, helping you understand recent traffic peaks (or lows) as well as determine the effectiveness of various web/print/multi media advertising techniques. Web traffic analysis is valuable for determining where your web marketing strategy is weak and what changes are necessary to maximize the effectiveness of your current online advertising budget.

User behavior analysis

Are you curious to know the behavior of web users when they visit your site? Wondering if shoppers are getting lost in your shopping cart or why most web users’ exit the moment they visit your company's site? User behavior analysis can help you understand user behavior on your site and help determine which pages, graphic design elements, navigational systems and textual content are most effective for conversion.