8 dangers of copying another brand’s SEO
When trying to match what high-ranking competitor sites are doing, there is a risk of going overboard. Watch out for these SEO pitfalls.
Topic: Competitive intelligence
The complete guide to on-page optimization
This step-by-step guide will show you how to take your on-site optimization to the next level, create top-performing pages and achieve desired results.
How to use Google Ads Competitive Metrics
Learn how the Search Outranking Share, Search Overlap Rate and Position Above Rate can help you understand PPC campaign performance.
Everything you should know about evaluating your competitor’s backlink profile
Understanding what you can learn from your competitor's backlinks and what to avoid
How to gain insider expertise as an outside SEO vendor in 4 steps
If you aren't a subject matter expert in what your client does here's how you can earn their trust.
5 ways to use the Wayback Machine for SEO
Use the tool to recover lost information and glean insights into the direction of competitor strategies.
Setting client expectations with a thorough preliminary SEO analysis
Since optimizing websites requires time and money, the best way to convince your clients to prioritize SEO is to do an in-depth analysis and audit.
Semrush buys Kompyte so it can upsell competitive intelligence tools
The acquisition is Semrush’s first foray into products not specifically designed for search and content marketing teams.
Retrospective competitor analysis: Reinforcing SEO strategies with historical data
How can you get actionable insights from historical data to boost your clients’ search strategies and make market predictions?
Top social media monitoring capabilities for brands
Social media monitoring tells the story of consumer, competitive, and market intelligence over time. Understanding the capabilities of your social media tools is critical.
Adthena launches granular local search insights solution
Local View offers brands and advertisers local search trend and market share data to inform bidding, targeting, ad copy and more.
Video: Mike Blumenthal on review attribution in local search
Reviews can be used for a way to speak to your customers and as a competitive intelligence tool.
Video: Ed Bernstein on in-house SEO challenges and mapping SEO competition
Not only does he love SEO, he is also a musician.
Bing Webmaster Tools now gives you competitive link data
You do not need to have the site verified to see the site's link profile in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Social listening: what it is, why it matters, and how to do it
What is social media monitoring? Why is it important? What are the best social listening tools? Find out with this quick guide for 2020.
Finding content marketing opportunities that influence search performance
Start with your existing pages to identify opportunities, which typically involve some form of repurposing, reformatting and updating.
SMX replay: Visualizing Auction Insights data for competitive intelligence
James Hebdon of Paid Search Magic explains how you can curate Auction Insights data to analyze performance fluctuations, identify new competitors and more.
Six Google Shopping opportunities you may be overlooking
As of Q1 2018, Google Shopping ads drove 76.4 percent of retail search ad spend, eclipsing text ads in markets around the world. As these Product Listing Ads (PLAs) become more competitive, the question becomes how to maximize ROI without simply piling on budget. The answer is competitive search intelligence: understanding where your spend will […]
SearchCap: Mastering mobile SEO, Google sells Zagat to The Infatuation & more
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Last chance: SMX West kicks off next week. Be there! Mar 5, 2018 by Search Engine Land SMX West is coming to sunny San Jose in just a few days, and […]
Google updates its mobile Test My Site tool with more competitive analysis
Google's site speed tool now compares your site to your competitors' and tells you how many visitors your site is losing because of your load time.
AdGooroo Launches Competitive Insights For Local Paid Search
The new tool provides keyword, ad copy and budget insights at a city level.
Competitive Bid Opportunities Arrive On Bing To Help Advertisers Analyze Themselves Against Rivals
A new tool allows advertisers to stack themselves up against the competition, and instantly make changes where they see fit.
Bing Ads Updates Campaign Planner Tool For Search Trends, Keyword And Competitive Research
In September, Bing Ads released its Campaign Planner tool, which includes vertical and product trend data, keyword research and competitive insights. This week, the first update to the tool was released. If you’re not already familiar with this tool, I recommend taking some time and digging into it. It’s located under the Tools menu in […]
Bing Ads Launches Campaign Planner Packed With Competitive Data, Keyword Insights
A powerful new tool is available in Bing Ads that will help search marketers better understand the competitive landscape, get new keyword ideas and fine tune their campaigns. Campaign Planner offers marketplace insights including search traffic trending and forecasting data, industry benchmarks, competitor performance and keyword suggestions. Within the Campaign Planner, advertisers can drill into […]
Live @ SMX East: Competitive Research For Search Marketers
One of the harsh realities of being a search marketer is that you can become incredibly skilled at your job, technically adept and a master of all of the nuances of SEO or SEM and still struggle to get the kind of results you hope for. Why? Because your competitors are working just as hard, […]
Why You Should “Bing It On” In Your Online Marketing
Bing commercials have been running rampant on TV lately — they have amped up their service and definitely have something to prove. Among other things, they’re becoming increasingly integrated into Windows 8, possibly increasing public interest in Bing. For many people (online marketers in particular), there is a tendency to forget that Bing even exists […]
Big AdWords Auction Insights Update: Now Get Competitive Data On Campaigns, Ad Groups, Keywords
In the biggest update since the Auction Insights Report last year, Google AdWords advertisers now have the ability to run reports on more than just a single keyword to learn how their ad performance compares to the competition. The Auction Insights Report allows advertisers to get competitive auction data on: Groups of keywords. Filter your […]
Across From Google I/O, Microsoft Runs The “Bing It On” Challenge
Coming out of Google I/O at Moscone Center in San Francisco yesterday, I did a double-take. Was that Microsoft pitching its “Bing It On” challenge against Google directly across the street. Yep. “Put the science back in computer science: test your Google bias inside,” read a big banner, over the entrance to the Metreon Mall, […]
SMX East 2012: PPC Analytics: Competitor Analysis
PPC Analytics: Competitor Analysis Presentations from SMX East, October 2012 It’s not enough to be brilliant with your own paid search efforts. You also need to have an intimate understanding of your competitors – their keywords, landing page and quality score strategies, campaign management efforts – everything that they’re doing to enhance their visibility and […]
Google Provides Competitive Information In New Auction Insights Report
AdWords marketers’ days of regularly refreshing on all their keywords may be over — or at least that activity may not be quite so necessary. Google is releasing a new report — Auction Insights — that helps marketers understand how their ads stand, compared to others in the same auctions. “For a given keyword, the […]
SMX West 2012: Search Marketing & Competitive Analysis
Search Marketing & Competitive Analysis Presentations from SMX West, March 2012 It’s not enough to be brilliant with your own search marketing efforts. You also need to have an intimate understanding of your competitors – their keywords, optimization techniques, linking tactics, campaign management efforts – everything that they’re doing to enhance their own visibility and […]
Report: 58 Percent of SMBs On Social Media Sites, Most Have Only Limited Engagement
There’s been a boatload of survey data released in the past six months documenting the adoption of social media by US small businesses (SMBs). The numbers range from about 40 to 70 percent of SMBs reporting they’re using social media to some degree. Yet survey data aren’t always accurate because it’s challenging to get a […]
Roundup: Key Analytics Takeaways From SMX Advanced
At this week’s SMX Advanced show, several sessions touched on a variety of advanced analytics theories and tactical tools to measure the impact of your website traffic, and improve ROI and user engagement metrics. Here’s a quick review of the key issues being discussed. Google Analytics Pilot Integration With Webmaster Tools Generally, there was excitement […]
SMX Advanced 2011: Day One Live Blog Coverage
The first day of SMX Advanced is in the books, and here’s a roundup of the live blog coverage we found around the web. Advanced Analytics at SMX Advanced in Seattle, community.microsoftadvertising.com Advanced PPC Analytics – Live Blogging SMX Advanced, www.click2rank.com Advanced PPC Analytics – SMX Advanced, BruceClay.com Overlooked, Underloved and Unknown Analytics – SMX […]
SMX East 2010 Slide Video: SEO & Competitive Analysis
SEO & Competitive Analysis Presentations from SMX East, October 2010 It’s not enough to be brilliant with your own SEO efforts. You also need to have an intimate understanding of your competitors – their keywords, optimization techniques, linking tactics – everything they’re doing to enhance their rankings and jostle you out of position on search […]
This Link Profile Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us
Look around for link building advice and one of the most common pieces is to re-engineer the backlink profile of your competitors. The reasoning behind this is that if they’re ranking well (meaning above you, of course), they must be doing what Google likes, so why not copy it and see yourself shoot up in […]
Google AdWords Lets You Analyze Your Competitors Now
Google announced a new beta AdWords feature that gives your more insight into your AdWords competitors. The new beta feature is currently a limited beta and is named analyze competition. You can check under the Opportunities tab to see if you have this feature or not. What does it do? The tool looks at the […]
Paid Search Research In Action
Because this column, PPC Academy, is a one-year search advertising course, it made sense to spend the first few months on research. In the real world of tight deadlines and downsizing, it can be easy to want to do everything quickly, but deep research can yield tremendous dividends for your account so it’s important not […]
Essential Competitive Intelligence Platforms For Your PPC Toolbox
It’s important to keep a well-stocked search marketing toolbox. Third party technology vendors offer a wide variety of discovery and management tools and are absolutely vital in the research phase. A few weeks ago we took a look at some tools that allow you to upload and then track keywords on major search engines to […]
Fox In The Henhouse: How To Recruit Your Competitors’ Facebook Audience
Aggressive marketers have been infiltrating competitors’ camps since long before Odysseus sought covert entrance to Troy by way of the fabled Trojan horse. Search and social media marketing tools elevated competitive intelligence to the level of industrial espionage, in the hands of the unscrupulous. That said, somewhere to the left of that ethical line in […]