Another post on my basic SEO tutorial project, in case you missed last two weeks stuffs, here’s the quick links:
> SEO 101: Intro & Basics
> SEO 101: Keyword Research

So here we go, another set of SEO guides for your online business.

The title says SEO, but competiton and market analysis takes a lot more than that. i’ll cover what relates to search engines ranking and put out a little more on top of that.

Basic SEO competiton analysis
This is basic. remember supply and demand we were talking about earlier? go back to our previous example keyword: shoe (what else). when you look for ‘Nike shoes’ at Google, it returns 5,340,000 results. meaning, there are this much of web pages supplying shoe related info to the web user.

And the demand, you can get it from digital point keyword research tools, which returns 1,649 searches (as demand).

Take down these two numbers, link’em up by ratio: supply/demand = 5,340,000/1,649, approximately equal to 3238. do the samething with similiar keywords or keyphrases… for instant, here are some of my findings at the time of writing:

By theory, seller takes better profits whenever the supply is low and the demand is high. put it on our ratio calculation, supply/demand, this means the smaller the ratio, the better the profitability. most so-call SEO gurus would teach you this in their $49.99 ebook.

While looking at these figures might give you a rough idea on how fierce is your competition in term of SEO, it definately doesn’t tell you to whole story.

There are a lot more questions to be answered…

How tough is your top competitors? run a quick check on your competitors website’s back link (search ‘link:www.competitor.com’ with Yahoo! SE) and amount of pages (search ’site:www.competitor.com’ with Google SE) - just to know are you facing a 800lbs King Kong in the market.

Is branding a main factor on your success? you need more than numbers to understand your postion in the market. does brand power play a major role in term of your target users surfing trend. for example people looking for ‘Nike Shoes’ online are more into Nike official websites, it doesn’t matter if you rank first on the SE coz you are just NOT Nike.

What’s your profit margin? how do you learned on an online business profit margin before getting involved? the simple answer is to look at the existing player’s advertisement budget. look at overture, look at spyfu, check how much is your potential competitors paying for CPC ads and text link ads. if the keyword price is high, it means the competition would be steep and in the same time, it tells that the business you are looking into probably has good profit margin. (you can only afford high priced ads if you can make a good return, right?)

To wrap things up on this session, i would like to provide a list of tools online. these are the tools that i tend to use when i need an answer for my questions on market and competition research. go on, click on the link and start do your homework.

• WhoIs domain tools: to check on competitor domain age and hosting location.
• Google Keyword Tools: when i need to look for new ideas or more related keyphrases.
• Word Tracker: to detail research on search volumes.
• Linkadage Metric Checker: use it to check website PR, back links, site page indexed, as well as site ranking for related keywords.
• Digital Point Keyword Suggestion: mentioned a few time on this one, a great tool to check on search volumes from both overture and wordtracker stats.
• SpyFu: great search tools that tell you the bid price for a keyword and competitor’s other bids.
• Mcdar Google DC Watch: a quick tools to follow up on Google dance on different DC

Which one matters more in nowadays? who you are, or what you’ve said (did).

Who you are

Chris Anderson wrote about The Long Tail, and then ‘Whammm..’ everyone talks about it because, you know, it’s Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine.

Is chris the first one to mention the long tail business concept? i don’t think so.

Most SEO or Internet Markters were aware of the new market trend, and HAD shifted their focus on the minor stream in their business. perhaps they have different names other than the long tail, but the idea is not new. in fact, when you read about SEO around Webmaster World, you’ll notice a few mentioning such idea back in year 2003/04. you’ll read about the idea of being a big fish in a small pond (the long tail) when it comes to countering giant websites in SEO.

The Long Tail is not something thing new or ground breaking. But because Chris is the one who’s talking about it, it matters.

What you’ve said
On the other side, have you heard of the name ‘W. Chan Kim‘, before the release of Blue Ocean Strategy? most probably not. now, everyone in the business talks about blue and red ocean. the idea turned out to be the hot thing in business world, regardless of who’s saying it now. seems it’s what you’ve to offer that matters this time.

I’m confused, what matters the most? is identity the main factor of one’s success, or what you have to offer that matters the most?

(Turn your speaker loud)