As a business owner, when you think of your competition, chances are that you probably think of the businesses down the road or the big household names in your market.
While they may be competitors, they’re what we would call market competitors.
Market competitors are the businesses that offer products or services like yours. They often target the same customers.
The game changes online. Your online competitors aren’t necessarily the same ones you have in the offline world.
Your search engine competitors, or what we’ll refer to as ‘SEO competitors’, are those websites that appear in Google or Bing when a person is looking for the services or products that you offer.
Your search engine competitors could be big retailers, smaller, lesser-known blogs, or even companies in completely different industries that accidentally rank for the same keywords that you’re targeting.
It is important to remember that your market competitors may not be the same as your SEO competitors.
While your market competitors may influence your pricing, your SEO competitors reveal where you stand in the search result.
You can be completely dominating the market locally, but if some other website is outranking yours on Google’s results, they could be stealing customers away from you without you even realising.
Identifying your online competitors is not a case of guessing which sites will appear on Google for related searches. It requires a lot of keyword research and search analysis.
With keyword research, you can discover the actual phrases or words people search when looking for a specific product or service on the web.
For example, just because we know the letters ‘SEO’ stand for search engine optimisation, it does not mean that individuals looking for this service do. They may refer to them as ‘search engine marketing’ or ‘search engine ranking’.
Keyword research can also reveal online competitors you did not know you had.
The number one site for one of your target search phrases may not be a company you would have considered a competitor, however, individuals looking online may choose to visit their site instead of yours.
Recognising both your market and online competitors is key to winning in business and can be the difference between flourishing or failing. At Engage Web, this is exactly what we specialise in. Speak to our team today and discover how we can take your business to the next level online.
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