Any major company that’s not on the Internet has a CEO that’s stuck in the last millennium. The Web is the marketing medium of the future, and the longer any business waits, the farther behind they will be. You can learn from your competition, though, and it’s much easier than you may think. Here is all you need to do:

=>:Who do they link to?
=>:Who links to them?
=>:What keywords do they use? Why?
=>:List your competition:

List your competition

Who is your competition? Everyone has competitors, so make a list of who they are. Write down their Web site addresses, and look at their sites. Study the flow of the site, and look at the words they use on their pages.

Don’t limit yourself to local competition; see what similar companies and industries around the world are doing. You might bump into an area that’s much farther along, Internet-wise, than yours is. Or, as I’ve seen many times before, your local competition may all have similar Web sites while similar industries in other geographies may be vastly different. Find out why. Is it just the geography, or is it something else?


Who do they link to?

Who does your competition link to? What types of industries, what specific businesses? Do they have a list of partners? This will give you a good idea of who they work with, and who they link to. Write it down.


Who links to them?

This is very important. People may be linking to your competition because they don’t know about you. This is an opportunity to introduce yourself. Finding out who links to your competition is relatively easy also. Here’s how:

Go to your favorite search engine (I’m going to use Google because it’s the most popular search engine on the market). For example, I’m going to use a company that sells shoes. This company is in direct competition with Nike®, and we know that their Web site is www.nike.com, so we type "link:nike.com" (without quotes) into the search engine.

You can do this on Yahoo® also, but you need to go into the “advanced search” area to find it.


What keywords do they use? Why?

Finding keywords is easy, and do it while you can. Right now, the ability to look at the source code of a Web site takes two clicks. However, with all the copyright issues cropping up on the Web, it won’t be long before this area is locked down. There are ways to scramble the code now, but most people don’t use them.

So, to find the keywords your competition is using do this:

Go to your competitor’s Web site.
Click View, Page Source (or Source)
Look for <meta name="keywords"
That’s it, that’s where the keywords are, if the company is using keywords. Find out more about keywords on page 6, the “Keyword Analysis” section. For now, copy down the keywords they use and study why they might be using the