SEO Tools > Competitive Research Tools

Free Internet Marketing & Search Engine Marketing Competitive Research Tools

Overview: These are free and paid tools which will help you determine how large a competitor's traffic stream is, and which search terms are sending them the most traffic. Watch this video for a brief introduction to using the following tools.

Competitive research tools can help you find a baseline for what to do, but some companies that focus on the competition too much instead of adding value to their offerings actually end up destroying their own profit margins.

SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox - Import useful marketing data (like link details, site age, site size) right into Google and Yahoo search results.

General Competitive Research Tools

• Alexa - shows traffic trends for competing websites. Alexa has a heavy webmaster bias that is nowhere near as noticeable at Compete or Quantcast.
• Compete.com - shows you traffic trends for competing websites. Allows you to compare sites head to head. Also offers a paid search analytics tool which is both exceptionally useful and affordably priced.
• Quantcast - shows site traffic and demographic trends and details. Also allows you to download a list of their top 1,000,000 websites.
• Archive.org - see how old a website is and what it looked like in the past
• DomainTools - see Whois data and how many times a domain has changed hands
• Xinu - lists some SEO related data plus more general web related data points like Alexa ranking and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

Paid Competitive Research Tools

• Compete.com Search Analytics - low cost competitive tool showing keywords that send competing sites the most traffic.
• HitWise - similar to Compete.com Search Analytics, but costs about $10,000 and up.
• KeyCompete - shows keywords that competitors are buying
• SEMPhonic - tracks keyword rankings and provides competitive reporting
• SpyFu - shows terms that competitors are buying or ranking for in the organic search results.
• Trellian Competitive Intelligence - shows keywords that competitors rank for and keywords that send them significant traffic.

SEO Related General Competitive Research Tools

• IndexRank - scores how well your site is getting indexed in Google compared with related sites.
• SearchRascal - shows the top 10 rankings in Google and other major search engines, and tracks how the rankings have changed over the past day, week, or month. RankPulse offers a similar service, but for a smaller set of keywords.
• SEODigger - free tool which shows you keywords that a site ranks for out of a database of 44,000,000 keywords
• SEOMoz Page Strength Tool - estimates how strong a page is based on inbound links, age, PageRank, etc. Grabs some of the similar datapoints that SEO for Firefox grabs.
• Top 10 analysis tool - shows how your site's age and backlinks compare to the top 10 ranked sites
• URLTrends - shows a sample of keywords that a site ranks for using a database somewhat smaller than SEODigger

Research the Competition's Keyword Strategy

View our keyword research tools section, or use some of the following free tools to get a view of their keyword strategy.

• Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words and phrases on your site, or competing websites. grab the source code
• Page Comparison Tool - tool compares the page titles, meta information, and most common two and three word phrases between different pages. grab the source code
• Spider Test Tool - shows the page size, source code, meta tags, page title, textual copy of the page, keyword breakdown by density (including 2 and 3 word phrases), number of words, number of unique words, and outbound links on a page. grab the source code

Research the Competition's Link Strategy

View our link analysis section, or use some of the following free tools to get a view of their link strategy.

• SEO Book Competitive Research & Keyword Research Gadget - use almost every useful competitive research tool from our free gadget. You can place this gadget on your site or on iGoogle.
• Back Link Analyzer - free Windows based downloadable software allowing you to deeply explore through a competitor's backlinks.
• Link Harvester - web based tool that allows you to dig deeply through a competitor's backlinks grab the source code!
• Link Popularity Comparison Tool - allows you to quickly and easily compare your link popularity scores to other websites. grab the source code
• Myriad Search - allows you to search all 4 major search engines at the same time. grab the source code!
• Competition Finder - tool looks at how many competing pages there are in Google's index that have your desired keywords in their page title and anchor text. learn more about Competition Finder or download it here
• SEO Link Analysis Script - extend Yahoo! Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Central using this free script from Joost De Valk. It verifies the link is still on the page, adds PageRank scores, displays anchor text, and highlights if the link uses nofollow.
• Search Engine Saturation Tool - helps you compare how many pages you have in the search indexes compared against competing sites. grab the source code

From the Search Engines

• Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool - allows you to plug in a URL and shows you what keywords Google thinks the page should be advertising for
• Google Traffic Estimator - estimates the number of Google AdWords ad clicks and bid prices for the top ad position.
• Google AdWords - if you bid broad match on competing brands you can track your ad impressions to see how much traffic they get.
• Google AdSense - if your competitor is running AdSense ads on their site you can run a site targeted ad to see how much traffic they are getting.
• Yahoo Mindset - let Yahoo show you how they can change results for commercial and informational queries
• Yahoo Term Extraction - delivers a list of most important keywords contained inside a piece of text. grab the source code
• MSN AdCenter Labs - offers many keyword tools, including a content classification tool and demographic prediction tools

Competitive Research & Keyword Research Extensions

• Browser extensions which make it easy for you to access cool free SEO tools from anywhere on the web.
• SEO Book Gadgets - add free link analysis, competitive research, and keyword research tools to any web page or iGoogle.
• Google Toolbar Buttons - Allows you to add quick links to SEO tools and RSS feeds to the Google toolbar. They only works with the new beta Internet Explorer version of the Google Toolbar.
• Firefox Bookmarks - Links to various useful free SEO tools that you can add to your Firefox bookmarks toolbar.

Know Any Other Tools Worth Suggesting?

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SEO Tools > Competitive Research Tools