The Pittsburgh SEO Group recently held their free September meeting at the Pittsburgh Tech Council offices in the South Side. Chris Hornak, Director of Operations at Eyeflow Internet Marketing, presented the session Five Legit Ways to Spy on Your Competitors.

Chris created the fictional company “Yogamatic,” and walked the SEO group members through ways to conduct research on one of Yogamatic’s top competitors.  The following is an overview of the techniques he presented:

Google Tools

Most of us are familiar with the Maps, Videos, News and Images tools on Google. But Google has other vertical search options that allow you to conduct targeted research on your competition.

The Updates tool will allow you to see what social media your competitors are using, and what users of social media are saying about your competitors.  The Discussions tool allows users to see threads and forums that mention your competition. This is a great place to look for – and capitalize on – complaints that people are making. And the Blogs tool allows you to see what blogs are saying about your competition.

Backlinks

OpenSiteExplorer.org is a free tool that allows you see which domains are linking to your competitors.  You can view by page, domain, anchor text, or a full list of metrics. You can use this information to help determine what direction to take your own website.

Traffic Patterns

Compete.com is another free tool that allows you to spy on competitors by peeking at their traffic levels. You can graph your own traffic against that of your competition to get a direct comparison. You can see from these graphs who is growing and who is shrinking, and by how much.

Keyword Rankings

SEMRush.com and SERPAnalytics.com will allow you to enter the domain name of your competition and see what keywords are organically ranking for that site. You can also see which keywords they are bidding on and how much they spend per month on PPC.  SEMRush includes a handy estimated traffic graph with the data.

Alerts

Setting up a Google Alert for your competitors means you will know when new pages appear in search rankings.  Through SocialMention.com, you can set an email alert or an RSS feed that helps you keep tabs on your competition.

Hey Everyone!

I wanted to give a quick up-date on what’s going on with the next Pittsburgh SEO Group meeting as well as mention some cool SEO stories being spread around the web that are related to Pittsburgh. First off the Pittsburgh SEO Group has been delayed a month due to construction at our meeting space. We are currently aiming for mid-September and we have some interesting presentations lined up. I appreciate everyones patience.

On to the fun stuff…

1. Simple Pittsburgh SEO Tips for Beginners

2. Eyeflow Introduces SEOzio: An SEO Grading Tool (see also: Strong Correlation Between SEO & Website Traffic)

3. How To Post Better Facebook Status Updates

4. Pittsburgh BlogFest 20: The Return of the BlogFest

Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing you at the next SEO meeting! Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.

The Eyeflow blog has a post with Phil Laboon’s presentation notes on how search has changed over the past eight years. This presentation was during our November 2009 seminar.

“One trend that I think we are going to hear a lot about next year is how search engines are going to depend more on User Reviews from various community sites like Yelp, e-pinion, and their own locals. In the past, the great hurdle was spammers creating hundreds of bogus accounts and hyping up their own companies.”

We’ve had such a high demand for the November SEO Group meeting already all 25 seats where booked. I’ve checked to make sure we have enough space and bumped up the available seats to 40.  Make sure you RSVP today to secure your place!

The next Pittsburgh SEO meeting has been scheduled!

Cost: Free!
Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Time: 7:00PM -9:00 PM
Location: The Productivity Center at Discover Organizing, Pittsburgh
672 Washington Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15228

The June 24th Pittsburgh SEO group meeting was an enjoyable, conversational event. Chris Hornak of Eyeflow Internet Marketing made a presentation on the evolution of search engines that sparked a lively, if tangential, discussion on the different ways that SEs have attempted to improve their results and how to adapt to an ever-changing online environment.

Hello Everyone! I’m happy to announce the next official Pittsburgh SEO Group meeting. (RSVP)

Cost: FREE!
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Courtyard by Marriot Pittsburgh Waterfront
Street: 401 West Waterfront Drive
City/Town: Pittsburgh, PA

We are working out some details for the next meeting. Hoping to have everything finalized early next week. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or would like to present.

Thanks to those who made it to the March 09 Pittsburgh SEO Group meeting. Some really great discussions formed around the presentations and I look forward to the possibility of having some of you present at future meetings.

We were luckly enough to get two books donated for Monday’s Pittsburgh SEO Group meeting.

1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible
2. Landing Page Optimization

Everyone gets a chance to win. We’ll put everyones name together and randomly pick the winners.

Details: Pittsburgh SEO Group Meeting Monday March 23rd @ 7pm

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