Spying on the competition...

Let's talk backlinks for a moment, but first let me take you up to date.

I'm doing local & organic SEO for a law firm, and as we all know, law firms are one of the most competitive niches on the web. Of course, when I started off with this firm all I wanted was to make a better looking website for them. It was crap. I hate an ugly interweb. I'm sure I'm not in very good company on that one. Anyway, after I completed the site I then realized it wasn't ranking - and so my new love/hobby with SEO & BHW was born.

That was in November, and for the next 8 months I've tried everything: buying high pr links, buying crappy fiverr gigs, doing as much white posting as I could, etc. It always just seemed to be hovering on page 2 because I have a hard time fighting with the guys that have no problem spamming links anywhere they can cram them. They buy them, trade them, etc. and I just won't go that route (no money/authorization for that).

So now I've decided to try once more for top ranking.

Step 1: re-did they G+ Local page with geo-tagged pics (hope it helps) and just googled competitors name and address to find their citations. The way I figure it, big G theoretically will rank citations in order of importance, right? Who needs citation finder services - G is the only one you need. Wrote them all down and cross referenced them with other top rankers in local search. There seems to be only 40 good ones, the rest are just crap directories (checked in other states too). Of course, there's pay directories in there as well, but I can't see G liking those. Scammy.

Step 2: I need to do the same thing with organic links now. G search isn't good for that sort of thing, so I'm going to have to bite the bullet and pay for a service, hopefully grabbing a few they already have. I figured majestic seo would be my only choice, but I recently found ahrefs.com (from a BHW post!) and i like the way it's designed WAY better. like i said, I'm allergic to ugly.

My question, oh great ones, is what do you find to be the better service: mejestic seo or ahrefs? Do you know any others? What do you think about all of this?


Spying on the competition.... I love it.

I have come across a tool called SEO spyglass which acts as a spy tool on your competitors.

I used to use majestic seo, but I actually favor seo spyglass- they've got a free version which allows you to analyze up to 1000 links

hmm...

yeah i have seo spyglass and the rest of the software from them. i think it all sucks. maybe i should pull it out again.

I have used Majestic SEO, OSE, and Ahrefs - of the three I definitely prefer Majestic hands down.

just "subscribed" for ahrefs. they're really skechy on their language and the paypal payment page said "recurring" instead of "subscription." So I wrote an email saying to explain if it's actually a pay-by-month. Better be...or their gonna feel the wrath (I work with lawyers).

Majestic has the better index compared to seomoz. Compare sites with both of the free versions and see what a huge difference there is. seomoz in my opinion sucks. they are lucky though with their additional funding. their tools suck. the service is constantly not working in some sort of way..

Get raven tools. Takes data from majestic AND seomoz. I think you'll like it.

By the way... I have several legal clients and with their site I noticed I have to jam PACK that thing with content. I mean all the competitors have over 2000+ words/page which is crazy. Don't forget to do author link- helps out a lot with visibility. Post blog comments on legal blogs (that's what my competitors did so I copied them). Legal directories? AVVO? Get 'em in every single one you can. Are you microformatting the address? KML file upload/geositemap? Try all that stuff out if you haven't. If you already did all that then oh well sorry for wasting your time lol. If you want I can take a peep at your work too- I do only local seo and deal mainly with legal/bail/contractors/finance.

Yeah I agree...SEO Spyglass works good.

RedClover

Spyglass is very nice, it's a great program, upgrading it to the paid soon. Market Samurai is what I've been in love with recently too.

If you need competitive keywords that your competition uses, check out SpyFu. The free version isn't good, but their paid 'recon reports' has given us a ton of opportunity.

Since you're doing a law firm, consider some legit press releases as well, since it'll get you noticed on the local level. Takes a lot of effort, but worth it.

reverseinternet

-Export data from Majestic for each competitor
-Group data by pages from either Semrush or Spyfu (I prefer Semrush because they seem to have more data-varies by niche)
-Analyze each page for on page factors and words listed per semrush, etc.
-Import backlink data into Advanced Link Manager and let her rip (I wrote a thread earlier on how I got a copy for $5) or do it manually with excel or online service like Raven, Cognitive SEO, etc.
-Get the low hanging fruit links and figure out how the other sites are ranking.
-A lot of sites are doing very well with image links, bullshit private domains with links sprinkled (footer, sidebar, image, rss feed, etc.).

I hope this helps.

Dude SEO spy glass is the best tool for these type of observation. please take a look

SEO SpyGlass, Majestic SEO, and SEM Rush are excellent tools for spying on keywords and urls.

jefferymavers said:

Step 1: re-did they G+ Local page with geo-tagged pics (hope it helps) and just googled competitors name and address to find their citations.

Click to expand...

What are "geo-tagged pics" ?

Yes, competition monitoring is vital. At the same time, though, since the goal of competition monitoring is to figure out what are the best positioning techniques you can use for your own business, it's essential that competition monitoring does not take up too much time and effort. Perhaps already available apps and tools will make this easier. Nonetheless, with or without focusing on that, high quality content and authenticity could easily rule out competitors who are only good at pulling strings through social media.

I happen to like Ahrefs. There might be better out there but the first time trying it out was like new shows that were made for me. I would look at the Bing and Yahoo business places counterpart. Author Tags, G+ Profile, Feedburner, LinkedIn, would also be a great way to go.

knockoutlocal said:

By the way... I have several legal clients and with their site I noticed I have to jam PACK that thing with content. I mean all the competitors have over 2000+ words/page which is crazy. Don't forget to do author link- helps out a lot with visibility. Post blog comments on legal blogs (that's what my competitors did so I copied them). Legal directories? AVVO? Get 'em in every single one you can. Are you microformatting the address?

KML file upload/geositemap?

Try all that stuff out if you haven't. If you already did all that then oh well sorry for wasting your time lol. If you want I can take a peep at your work too- I do only local seo and deal mainly with legal/bail/contractors/finance.

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language