Tools To Analyze Competitors’ Website Traffic

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Here is a list of websites/tools to analyze other websites' traffic and traffic sources. Few of them also provide additional details like traffic trend over a period of time, link popularity... A couple of them provide you details of keywords used in Adwords by your competitors. So, go ahead and use them for SEO and PPC and kill the competitors if you can :). If you don't beat the competition using PPC or SEO then you are giving business to your competitors. So, better know the competitor website's performance and then analyze your online marketing strategy to over shadow them. More over these tools are still free to use.

Alexa.com - Compare traffic and trends of websites up to three websites. Provides Alexa rank, reach and page views of the websites. But, I guess it takes data only from the visitors who have the Alexa toolbar.

Google Trends – use commas to compare unique visitors to multiple sites.

Quantcast – Will be helpful if at all the competitors are “quantified”. Also, you need to register to get the complete report.

Spyfu – One can know the keywords the competitor is bidding on Adwords.

Compete.com – They claim as - Competitive metrics for every site on the web powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry. Here again the competitors need to have considerable traffic for Compete to track it down. Basic numbers are free, but to get more traffic details you need to purchase monthly subscription ranging from $199 to $499 depending on the data you want.

comScore - Is definitely not cheaper and not completely accurate either. I think they use an aggregate data, based on what is available to them.

Hitwise - Hitwise reports offer a concise analysis of market trends in any one of Hitwise's 160+ industry categories or on thousands of categorized websites. Again it is not a free tool. You can contact them with your specific needs and numbers you are looking for and they can very well make a customized report for you. One can try for it in case you have the budget.

Popuri.us - A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more. This tool may not provide updated results.

MarketLeap – Is a leading provider of integrated digital marketing solutions. They have three different tools to check the link popularity trends, search engine saturation and keyword verification. Of course this can be had manually using Google, but using these tools you can see the trend and compare websites.

Website Grader by HubSpot - Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. This can be used as a reference to know how websites have performed over a period of time.

dataopedia.com - Gathering together data from more than 50 sources, dataopedia.com is an aggregation web service that lets its users find out all the valuable facts about any website, such as traffic, online buzz, contact information, popularity in social bookmarking services…in short, all the essential facts about every website you can come across on the internet. dataopedia.com has been conceived as the one-stop-resource for finding website facts.

It's always better to use a composite of all the sites above, to give you a general sense. None of them are completely accurate. dataopedia.com summarizes most of the stats and trends from various sources (compete.com, Alexa..) at one place and it is very easy to see the performance of various sites on one screen/browser.

Let me know if I have missed any good websites here. If so, I will add them as soon as possible so and it will help all of here in the online marketing world.

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Admission opens for the TechTarget Online ROI Summit

Know your audience and how to reach them effectively.

In a down economy, this point is more pivotal to marketers than ever before. And, no other event brings you face-to-face with more IT buyers than the TechTarget Online ROI Summit -

Complimentary admission opened last week for the 2009 TechTarget Online ROI Summit on April 14th at the Boston Marriott in Newton, MA - the only event dedicated to helping you reach your IT buyer audience. Apply today at www.techtargetsummit.com

Highlights of this year's Online ROI Summit include...

• Real-world case studies given by the peers
• Proven marketing strategies for these hard economic times
• More senior IT buyers open-panel discussions
• Best Practices guidelines on converting leads to revenue
• Latest Google research on search marketing
• Research and insight into the IT buying process
• And of course, detailed ROI from real online marketing campaigns

Visit the new Summit website to watch videos of recent panels and catch a glimpse of the new content - www.techtargetsummit.com.

Google PowerMeter…. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin

Imagine, you are out of money at the end of the month. What will you do? You will try recall where all and how much you have spent. You will make a note of is it worth that spend or you can try other alternatives. You are just trying to analyze and restrict your expenses.

In a household, if you do not know which electric appliance is taking what measure of the energy then it will be difficult for to reduce the usage and save energy. Without the numbers and analysis you can’t reach to a perfect conclusion. This is where Google wants to chip in to help the people to know which appliances are taking more energy and which are taking less - A good opportunity to save money and fight global warming. The PowerMeter provides the analysis with easy access to energy consumption.

Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activities.

What a contribution to make the world a better place to live!!

What Google’s Has in Future

Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of Product Management, Google has recently posted his thinking and the future of Google as well as the internet and the challenges that lie ahead, on Official Google Blog.

I have summarized few things below with my inputs as well (I may have missed few important things). You need to note that, I have added my comments too below and that everything below is not of Rosenberg. You can access his original post on the blog.

• More internet-enabled phones will be activated in coming years than computers. I guess China and India will be the main markets for this growth as there lay more number of mobile users in these countries. But, the internet bandwidth and the speed which these country offer may hamper the growth.
• May be in future the computer for the world will be a mobile phone. So, Google sees the mobile area more strategically and profitable.
• Presently users are searching for the information they need. Google wants to provide the solution to the user before the search is made. So, depending on personalized/customized search, news alerts and RSS subscribed or comments saved, the users will get what they are interested in before a search is made. So, don’t they lose revenue on Adwords? They are smart people; they will have a way out. May be this will have more CPC as it is a WARM lead.
• More and more user generated content is being created every day mostly by way of blogs. Google will keep a tab on such content and will segregate crap content from authoritative and interesting content written by known or unknown experts. Not sure how they will judge such writers. May be social media spam or content spam will be the next problem for internet. Bullet proofs for posting articles on all the blogs one has? But, I surely think Contnet Marketing and Content Marketing Optimization will be next.
• People will use computers differently. They will have all their files and data back-up on network cloud. So that, they can access from anywhere with anything – laptop or a mobile phone. They will be going to create more and more competition for Microsoft. This network cloud need to be robust and secure to be successful.

This is just a glimpse of what he has posted there. I do agree with what all Rosenberg talked about and time can prove it. No doubts about this.

What do you think about Google's or Internet future?

Yahoo Introducing Video Ads in Search Advertising

Yahoo is introducing a new type of search advertising that integrates images and video in paid listings, the company plans to announce Thursday.

Search advertising typically shows only text advertisements and links. Marketers usually devote part of their online budget to search — which shows text-only advertisements and links — and part to display, the banner and box advertisements that show images or video.

By introducing video and images, the new offering from Yahoo, called Rich Ads in Search, gives search some of the advantages of banner advertisements. “It moves the advertising experience from just the blue links, to a more engaging experience for advertisers,” said Tim Mayer, the vice president for search monetization and distribution at Yahoo.

Yahoo has been trying to win back paid search advertising from the market leader, Google. Yahoo’s market share in paid search has fallen from 13.8 percent in 2004, to 10.5 percent this year, according to the research firm eMarketer. In the same time period, Google’s market share has more than doubled, from 32.8 percent in 2004, to 67.7 percent this year.

Yahoo’s strength has been its display advertising, where it sells boxes and banners on its highly trafficked pages. However, as the recession has deepened, many advertisers have shifted money to search, which gives them direct, measurable results.

Source: NY Times

Google Analytics To Track Telephone and Live Chat Leads

Google Analytics recently stated in a blog post that they will be integrating a system to track telephone and live chat leads into Google Analytics.

Google has teamed up with Mongoose Metrics to allow users to track the offline calls into the analytics tool. Mongoose Metrics provides toll free number and Google Analytics tracks the calls made to the numbers by assigning that number to a hidden web page on your site containing the analytics tracking script/code.

This is what Jeff Gillis from Google Analytics team has to say – “When a phone call to the tracking number is connected, the technology will place a web browser visit to your hidden tracking web page and in this way insert the phone call event back into your Google Analytics account. Each phone call generates a unique visit which is clearly labeled inside of Analytics”.

As far as tracking of live chat, they have teamed up with Live Person. Live Person created a Google Analytics integration that allows users to track conversions after chat and provide the following data:

• The Map Overlay Report which provides the volume and quality metrics of live chat interactions by geographic region
• Provides the sources and keywords that drive interactive chats and thus resulting in conversions
• The Goal Path Report which lists the navigation flow that led to the chats and so the conversion

Are they still missing any offline tracking of leads or conversions?

Corporate Blogs – Why the BIG BUZZ?

There are millions of blogs around and hundreds get launched daily. Currently Technorati tracks over 71 million blogs. More and more corporate are turning to blogosphere to connect with their prospects and customers. It is a good platform for them to listen to their prospects and customers and respond to them. In turn the customers also feel that they are being listened by a person and not auto-responders or IVRs. Blog is an effective access to the frustrations and desires of a company’s target audience.

Corporate and business folks are going towards blogs as:

• Blog is an effective media for brand awareness
• Blog is the fastest growing form of consumer generated media
• Blog can change the way a business interacts with customers
• Blog can engage your target audience and it is easy here to convert them as customers
• Blog as an effective media to put before what you have learnt and bring it to action
• Blog is the most economical way to promote the business – if you do it effectively and strategically
• You can also market your business through other blogs or asking other bloggers to write about your business and build company’s reputation and address criticism

The few hitches which can the corporate folks can have with a blog are:

• Finding a good blogger – should also be a part of the decision maker
• Should balance the sales push and information on the blog to build a loyal readership
• Negative comments/blogging (on other blogs) can occur and companies need to be ready to tackle such customers/bloggers

There is a very good tool which can be used to track other bloggers which write about your brand, comments being submitted on other blogs or social media websites. This tool is called Trackur. The internet has given a powerful voice to consumers, bloggers, forums and other internet users. You can arm yourself with Trackur's intelligent online reputation monitoring and you'll never get caught by a surprise attack on your good name. The good news is they also have a free trial.

SearchWiki Making Its Way To AdWords?

Yesterday, I saw the Google Adwords ads with a cross (x) mark. So, one can remove the ad if you do not want to see it.

Not sure, if one closes the ad once, then it will not be shown again it is from the same website or advertiser.

Pretty tough...Yet to hear from Google about the update or news.

Can a small card solve your problem?

Yes, a small plastic card was my most loyal and dependable thing in the journey which solved my major problems.

I just wanted to share this with you all folks... may be this is a bit deviated from the main purpose of the blog. BUT, I just wanted to share how searching on Google solved my problem. Thanks to Google.

The card I am talking about is the calling card purchased online from a UK Calling Cards online shop.

I landed in UK and the main purpose of my travel was to give a surprise to my friends. So, they really do not know that I am already in London. When I landed, to my surprise, I found I was out of money and my debit card has only a balance of 20$.

I just thought that I am pauper now and I did not have anything than open my laptop and browse through. What I did - I went to Google and searched for cheap calling cards. Yes, I used cheap because, you should understand my problem. And I reached a website which has a vast variety of calling cards. More over, I can call from UK.

The solution was using the Google power to find a UK Phone Cards shop to buy them online and make a call to a Amy (my best friend who stays in UK) and ask her to come and pick me up and help me out.

So, to summarize the story - On Google, I typed cheap calling cards, I reached the UK calling cards website - http://www.eurocallingcards.com, I used $11 from my debit card to purchase a good calling card. And I was on the go to talk to Amy.

After talking to Amy, I was surprised that I still had balance on my debit card (of about $9) and also on the calling card. I did not wait longer and I called my family in India and other friends in UK.

So, I learnt - Google and SEO can be your friends and can rescue you in times you are in problems.
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SEO Job site

Good news to SEO and SEM guys in India. Especially those who want to aspire their career in search engine optimization. There is a dedicated website only to post SEO and SEM related jobs - SEOJOBS.in

This makes me imagine, how far will SEO and SEM will go. I guess this will become the next most wanted skill set, just like software skills. Good to know that India's online marketing is spearing ahead.

Google India Search Masters'09

Glad to inform you that Google will have the Search Masters'09 in their office, at Bangalore on Feb 28. I guess it will have loads of information about the webmasters tools and we will know how to exploit the webmasters tools and resources available there. More over, they have a session on Google's new custom search which I would love to know more about.

If you are in Bangalore don't miss it - SearchMasters'09

SearchCamp 2009

I have been reading the emails of the guys which are working hard and effciently to make this session a great one. These young chaps are enthusiastic and trying all contacts and exploiting all enrgies to make this a succesful one.

SearchCamp is a two day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing space to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. The event is scheduled for the 28th February & 1st March 2009 at Chennai.

Cheers and best wishes to the team.

Search Engine Marketing 2010

I have a strong feeling that local search optimization will be the real beast which will be more complex and challenging than SEO of a website or a dynamic website. I was just browsing and thought the below few points can be the tips for local search optimization.

So, here are my two cents -

Some tips here can be -

1. To have the keyword in the business name (similar to have keyword in the domain name in SEO)
2. To have a business name which is alphbetically on the top. Ex. to have a business name starting with number(s) 0 or 007 :)
3. To have multiple listings in local areas/cities where one can provide the services (this again is similar to link building)
4. To provide better customer service and request satisfied customers to rate you (I can say PageRank here)
5. In your ads on local search directory, include all the names (or different names the area is known for) of the lane or road your office is located at.
5.