Competitive Analysis

Posts about competitive analysis principles, methodologies, and tools.

Real-time Web traffic estimator tools

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 29, 2008 in Competitive Analysis, SEO Metrics

This week I shared some Webalizer configuration advice with you, although there were things I left out (for example, I did not go into how to filter robots out of your visitor and page counts).
If you’re using an analytics package that processes your server logs, running that process on a daily basis can help you [...]

Competitor SEO Analysis - McCain versus Obama

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 10, 2008 in Competitive Analysis, SEO Case Studies

Nielsen NetRatings caught my eye today with a press release claiming that Barack Obama has a head start over McCain on the Web. The release includes several charts and graphs for people who like pretty pictures, but I’m not sure of how that means Obama got a head start.
So I decided to turn to [...]

Advanced SEO Metrics for Beginners

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 24, 2008 in Advanced SEO, Competitive Analysis

There are no reliable Web metrics tools. People have their favorite tools but they all pretty much suck alike. Nonetheless, some information is better than no information, even if there is a good chance the information will be wrong. In competitive SEO the chief advantage lies with the optimizer who posssesses the [...]

Using moving averages to check your SEO success

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 3, 2008 in Competitive Analysis

Moving averages are pretty easy to calculate. If over a period of time you capture data at regular intervals, you can calculate the average for the most recent n data points and then update the average every time you capture new data. Stock analysts use moving averages to compare current prices to recent [...]

Exploiting the holes in search market share data

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 22, 2008 in Competitive Analysis

I have been monitoring and measuring search market share since public data has been released by the various services. Danny Sullivan has been doing it for many years more than me. However, as I have noted in past discussions, today’s metrics don’t accurately report real search market share. Search market share metrics [...]

SEO Metrics - Search engine marketing metrics

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 14, 2008 in Competitive Analysis, SEO Metrics

Metrics matter most when you don’t have them.
There are many ways in which to measure success, failure, and stallout. No one really has the right solution for measuring SEO campaign activity because we have no industry standards.
I occasionally point out that (my research over the past couple of years has indicated that) somewhere between [...]

October 2007 Search Engine Market Share

Posted by Michael Martinez on December 5, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

Every month (more-or-less) I compile a summary report for search engine market share and post it at Spider-food. I’ve now uploaded the October 2007 Search Engine Market Share report to Spider-food. Among other things, the report links back to eariler reports so that people can get a feel for how these numbers change [...]

How not to write an SEO analysis

Posted by Michael Martinez on November 19, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

I like Fantomaster. He’s a smart guy with a no-nonsense attitude. So when he links to someone’s analysis I usually follow the link and see what’s up.
I was disappointed with this study of the possible correlatione between PageRank and search results because the paper doesn’t even begin to describe the data that was [...]

Using free analytics data for competitive analysis

Posted by Michael Martinez on September 17, 2007 in Competitive Analysis, SEO Metrics

Free Web Analytics Providers

Alexa
AttentionMeter
Compete
Quantcast
Rankings

There have been times in the past when I have spun cautionary tales about using Alexa data for comparative analysis. Many times.
I beat up on Alexa mainly because one marketer likes to bleat about his Alexa rankings. I sometimes wonder if he has made the connection between his proselytizing for [...]

Competitive SEO Analysis for Beginners

Posted by Michael Martinez on September 9, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

If you’re just learning about search engine optimization and you need to evaluate what your competitors are up to, looking at Toolbar PR and backlink reports from Yahoo! are not going to tell you anything useful.
The first thing you need to know when doing competitive analysis is which queries are being competed for. That [...]

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