How To Unmask Your Google Competition
Video Transcript
One of the most common mistakes people make when they start an Internet business is to immediately begin working on a product or website without exploring the market first.
Unfortunately many people waste a great deal of time, effort and money because they don’t take the time to understand the demographics or buying behavior of the their target market.
In this video I’d like to show you some of the additional features available in Market Samurai that can help you to understand your market and your competition.
Specifically we’ll be looking at:
- How to use Google Trends to examine online search trends
- How to become an online detective and investigate who your competitors really are
- How to gain a powerful insight into the demographics of the market you’re targeting.
Create a New Project
For this example, I’m going to explore the dog training market. To begin, I’ll create a new project...
... I’ll add the keyword ‘dog training’...
Access SEO Competition Module
...and then come across and access the SEO Competition module.
Generate Results
Now to obtain a list of the top 10 sites in Google for this keyword, all I have to do is click the Generate Results button.
Access Site Analysis Tools
So here are the top 10 competitors for the phrase ‘dog training’.
Now lets take a closer look at the number one ranked website.
To begin my research I’m going to click on this small arrow to reveal an additional level of research tools.
Access Google Trends
The first tool we’re going to explore in this video is Google Trends. To access the Google Trends website all I have to do is click this link.
Google Trends
Market Samurai then opens a new window containing the Google Trends page associated with the website that I am investigating.
(1) Here I can see that this site has been gradually gaining more daily visitors over the last twelve months.
(2) I can also see that it is particularly popular in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Region Detail
I can also dig a little deeper by clicking on one of these region links...
...and here I can see that this site is particularly popular in California.
This might give you a clue to also investigate related search phrases that contain the words 'California' or 'Los Angeles' in order to find some highly targeted traffic.
Comparing Websites
Google Trends is also useful for comparing websites. For example let’s compare the trends associated with the sites Facebook.com and MySpace.com.
This clearly shows that the use of Facebook is on a steady upward trend while the use of MySpace is on a slight downward trend.
OK, let me just close this window and we’ll get back to Market Samurai.
Access the WhoIs Registry
The next external service we can use to investigate a site is the WhoIs registry
The WhoIs Registry
This site contains the registration details associated with different domains.
So here are the registration details associated with the number one ranked website for the keyword term ‘dog training’.
In this case I can see the name of the site owner, his address, phone number and email address.
This is often a great way to obtain the contact details of people but of course you should never spam people or use this information inappropriately.
From this information I can also see that the owner of this site has used a product called Site Build It to create this website. Site Build It is a product developed by Ken Evoy which provides a step-by-step system for developing websites that are well optimized for the search engines.
So as you can see the WhoIs registry can offer some interesting information about your online competitors and their business models.
Access Quantcast
The next external service we’re going to take a look at is Quantcast.
Quantcast
Quantcast gives us a number of useful estimates.
First of all it reveals that the dog obedience training review website is receiving approximately 85 thousand visitors per month. Now this is not necessarily an accurate measure but it does give us some idea of the magnitude of traffic associated with the site.
Site Demographics
Another useful feature of Quantcast is that it provides an easy way to explore the demographics associated with a particular market.
Gender
Just to clarify, the demographics of a website relates to the characteristics of the people who use the site.
If I click on the demographics option, Quantcast suggests that the users of this website are slightly more female than male.
Age
These percentages show the distribution of ages of the site users. This suggests that the most common users are aged between 18 and 34.
Index Graphs
The index graphs indicate how this site compares to the Internet Average. So this graph suggests that this site is more popular with teenagers than the average Internet website.
Origin
The next graph suggests that most of the users of this site are Caucasian but also that the site is also more popular than average amongst Hispanic users.
Children
I can also see that the average user has children...
Income
...is in a middle income bracket...
Education
...and possibly did not attend college.
Once again, these statistics are not exact but they can be quite helpful.
For example, knowing that the majority of visitors to this site are middle aged females, the owner may decide to develop more articles to particularly target this core demographic.
Access Alexa
Coming back to Market Samurai, the final external service you can use to investigate your competition is Alexa.
Alexa Traffic Rank
While Alexa provides a wide range of information, it’s probably best known for its Alexa traffic rank list. This is a list that ranks websites based on the amount of traffic they receive.
So here I can see that based on Alexa traffic levels, the website dog-obedience-training-review.com is ranked 68,470 in the world.
It’s important to note that the Alexa data is based on people using the Alexa Toolbar and is therefore not representative of all Internet users but it does give us a useful way to compare traffic levels of different websites.
Contact Information
The Contact Info tab provides me with contact details for this website and these are the same as those that were listed in the Whois directory.
Keywords
Another useful feature is that I can use the Keyword tab to find out the top keywords that are driving traffic to this website, and as I’d expect the number one keyword phrase is ‘dog training’. This list also gives me some great additional keywords to explore using Market Samurai.
Clickstream
I can also click the Clickstream tab to see the upstream and downstream sites associated with the site I’m investigating. The upstream site is the site visitors came from and the downstream site is the site they move onto after leaving this site.
(1) This shows me that the vast majority of the traffic for this site is coming directly from google.
Alexa Demographics
And finally I can gain a second insight into the demographics of the website’s user-base using the Demographics tab.
While these demographic indicators are not exactly the same as those from Quantcast, they do reinforce the suggestion that the main users of this site are middle aged females.
Summary
So as you can see, these external services provide you with a number of powerful ways to explore online trends, investigate your competition and obtain a clearer picture of the core demographic associated with different markets.
Using this information allows you to create content and marketing materials that specifically cater for the needs of your target market.
Search
More SEO Competition Lessons
- Introduction To SEO Competition
- How to Assess the Strength of Competition
- How To Gain a Competitive Advantage
- How To Unmask Your Google Competition
You guys are really on the ball. Thanks for all the videos. Your software is amazing and I use it all the time.
You guys Rocks,
Having watched this particular training, I can't say enough how much I appreciate the Market Samurai methodology. I feel like I've joined a core group of people who have a job, something a little rarer in the world these days. This video gives me specific direction on how to more particularly develop my website. Using demographic information points me in a more correct direction than developing blindly or on preconceived notions.
These training videos just get better and better! Thank you for uncovering, and explaining, some of the powerful tools that lie deep within Market Samurai.
Another very insightful video Anthony.
I do believe that many internet users have no idea of the information available about competition on the web. The converse of this is that as website owners we have to be aware that people can find out about our site and therefore keep developing valuable content to keep ahead of those trying to catch us.
http://www.onesherpa.com
Nice work in this article
Useful and informative
I was able to mirror the methodology quickly and easily and apply it to the area of interest that I wanted
Thanks
As always, an extremely educational lesson about how to work with the many useful attributes of MS. MS is a never ending source of pertinent information. Thanks!
Leave no stone unturned! Another awesome demonstration of Market Samurai - just gets better and better. Keep up the great work..
Great Video! I didn't know Alexa can show you who is sending traffic to website! This is huge, you can analyze any of your big competitors main sources of traffic.
By the way is it a way to block from Alexa? I don't want to share mine :)
TruckSideAdvertising.info
Hi Anthony,
Google's Filipino translation is awkward, and widely departs from the original sense in English.
Thanks for the great article.
I'm the owner of dog-obedience-training-review.com
I can verify that most of the stats used in this study are very accurate and do reflect a true picture of the site.
I'm off to write some articles aimed at my female audience.....
One other thing, I am a Noble Samurai user and no doubt it has helped my site get to where it is today.
Chris
Thank you for your video. I can now use MS more effective.
but what does the alexa rank mean? high number is good or bad? compared to what?
Wow! More than the other videos up until now, this video begins to demonstrate the power of Market Samurai. No need for any other "spying" software. I've had Market Samurai for more than a year, and I'm finally learning how to use it. Thank you.
Also thanks for giving credit to Ken Evoy. He's rarely mentioned among the Internet Marketing celebrities, yet he has helped thousands create businesses online.
Anthony, thanks again for excellent video tutorials. As usual Anthony provides great value, in depth tutorials, easy to understand video tutorials and he is a wonderful teacher for the use of Market Samurai. I have had this software for a couple of years and the support team, updates and new tutorials just keep getting better. Market Samurai is by far the best keyword research tool out there hands down. The Samurai team honors their customers with great value and further education without digging deep into your pockets.
Market Samurai over delivers! thanks
Thanks! These are really helpful!
Before I retired I used to train trainers and for many years have complained of the low standard of training available online.
Anthony is the exception; the one online trainer I have never been able to fault. on a scale of 1 - 10 he is the first clear 10 I've ever had the pleasure of studying under.
Thank you Samurai - You've struck another winner with Anthony and his teaching is a credit to your management.
Great video , best software , excellent teacher ! I love you all !
Thanks for all the great work and well support from The Samurai Team !
All The Best !
KD
I use MS for competitor & keyword research on my clients (as well as my own affiliate marketing)
The first step with my clients is identify the main competition then fish out their keywords. Previously this was a painful job using Google AdWords.
Now with this tool, linking to Alexa, the job has become soooo much easier.
I wrote a tutorial around Quantcast and have a caveat. I don't rely solely on the Quantcast results (they can be flaky for smaller co's). I also feed a second or even third similar company through to cross check.
I have a question about the "domain age".
I ran the tool for one of my domains which is 2 years old but MS shows Domain Age as "6".
When I hovered I found out that domain age is calculated by the "first registration date" of that domain. This is something very new to me; I thought it was the registration date that counted and that was why I kept acquiring aged domains all this time.
Was I wrong?
I tried to compare websites on google trend results was no data. Does this means the sites I am comparing has not enough data to show up?