How do people find my competition?

I know that this is very basic and foundation stuff but I have never really needed it before as I have always focused on my own product that I sell.

I am now going to be selling a service that I see others already sell.

I know that 2 of the competitors generate a lot of sales but I know they spend a fortune on Adwords.

Okay so here's what I need help with. What steps and tools do I need to follow to get this info:

1) What keywords do customers search for to find their site
2) What amount of traffic/visitors do they get

Is there anything else I need to analyse before I go head to head?

You could use a service like keywordspy.com to see what keywords they are bidding for on adwords.

and spyfu.com

yeah I have seen both, didnt know if they were any good. Ill give them a go and see what I discover

Give them a call, say your from an SEO company and your offering your services as a free trial, ask them what methods they are currently using and say you'll do some free work from them blah blah.

everything is shown in the same G...
1) look 4 ur keyword
2) see who ranks well
3) use yahoo site:____.com search to find who links to your competition.
4) use any tool online for finding keywords related to your competitors many around
5) link where they link if possible and use the keywords they use and
6) Yes work 20% harder than they are and you will beat them all in white hat camp.
7) Thank me

Enjoy!
Dave

1)Use google adwords: keywordexternaltool. Choose '[SIZE=-1]Website content[/SIZE]' option to generate keywords
2)spyfu.com