Out of the hundreds of millions of domains on the internet most get almost no traffic. We can all agree that it is useless to create a website that no one sees. This is why more and more entrepreneurs are interested in learning how to effectively market online. The good news is there are many free tools available to anyone who wants to take the time to use them. In this article I will discuss the use of Yahoo Site Explorer to analyze the competition.
Of course, the first thing to do is to go to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. This site will allow you to put in any URL and find out how many pages are on the site, how many back links are currently connected to the site, and exactly what backlinks those are! This information will allow you to know what you will need to do to get ahead of those other sites in the search engines. A basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) will allow you to take advantage of this information.
Here is what you will want to do:
1) Pick the keywords that you want to rank for. Run through a few search engines and list at least the top 5 competitors that you want rank ahead of. Most folks like to use Google to do this step.
2) Run your competitors sites through Yahoo Site Explorer. Just enter the URL. Then check out the drop box for "show links."
3) Write a list of 25 to 50 of the top inbound links that your competitors are on. (remember that the links that have the highest Google page ranking will usually carry the most weight. There are a number of sites that allow you to check page rank for free- ex. Prchecker.info)
4) Use the highest ranked sites that have your competitors have links on. Depending on your competitors, you will find that most inbound links are on blogs, directories and websites. You will likely be able to get your link on those sites. Sometimes you have to write an article or post to do so. Usually you can post your link in those places for free. Others may be paid links. Those you will obviously have to pay for it you decide to use them.
Although there are other factors that account for SEO ranking, inbound links are very important. I like to think of inbound links as "votes" for a site. If you have the ability to vote for yourself why wouldn't you. Many folks pay thousands of dollars to online marketer to do what they can do themselves with the use of a combination of free tools!
I work with an organization that provides over 700 hours of internet marketing training. If you are new to the online world, you will be amazed at how easy it is to build simple websites and blogs. I can teach you over 25 ways to ensure that anything you put online is at the top of the search engines.
Click here now to check it out.
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