Before I jump into this post, let me first give you a little backstory of how this post came about…
It all started when I added a comment to a post about the amount of website traffic a site receives. The comment stream had a very good discussion on how to gage someone else’s website traffic. I threw out Alexa as one resource to compare websites. Admittedly, I have not done much reconnaissance on my competition but I have used Alexa in the past to compare sites. And while I would never trust the numbers (because even I know ways to exploit the data) I have used it to look at trends between two sites. That is, until Jeff Turner came back with an interesting post about Alexa.
He did an excellent job at explaining, and showing, Alexa’s shortcomings. He and I then got into a very fun and lighthearted exchange in the comments of his post. Then suddenly it hit me. This whole thing started because we were trying to determine how much traffic was going to someone else’s website. Obviously we can’t just ask for their Analytics login information. So with this mind, I started researching tools that are available online that will allow you to “spy” on your competition's website.
If you want to go ahead and jump right to the tools, click this link: 15 Ways to Spy on Your Competition. Otherwise, keep reading below..
Why Spy?
Keeping an eye on your competition is vital. Maybe they are capitalizing on a resource you are not aware of. Perhaps they just developed a strategic relationship with a local business. Or maybe they just hired New York’s top ad agency to market them. By using creative ways to monitor them, you can follow their strategy and let them keep paying the overpriced agency.
A Word Of Caution
Knowing how to make it your own is just as important as knowing what your competition is doing. You see, as long as you remain a follower, you will never overtake your competition. With this in mind, don't just copy what they are doing. But learn from others and then implement an online marketing strategy that is right for you.
Let’s Start Spying
There are many free tools available to “spy” on your competition. Some I have already covered such as Google Alerts. Other methods put the power of RSS to work. While other resources depend on information freely available on search engines.
You can visit my
other blog to see the complete list of
15 Ways to Spy on Your Competition along with instructions on how to implement them.
Yeah I know, some people are going to probably fuss at me for linking out. But go easy on me. I have been putting so much stuff on AR that I have abandoned my main Real Estate Marketing Blog! Which sounds like a great topic for my next post - Finding the Balance between Your Active Rain blog and your Domain blog.
Until Then,
Brad Carroll
For those of you who just skimmed down here to look for the tools. Click this link:
15 Ways to Spy on Your Competition
Posted by 
Brad,
Thanks.....I will try this. Question for you.....do you use this in your evaluation of a site? I am waiting for my results tomorrow, or next week, and am just curious :)