Comments on: It’s 2011. Do You Know Who Your Competitors Are?

By: Ken Jansen

Ken Jansen — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:31:23 +0000

So I did a little bit of testing. Adding a tagged image made a big difference. a newer page with very little content was not showing up in a long tail search. I drove out to the subdivision, took a photo of the monument, loaded it, tagged it, posted it. a few days later SEOMoz shows me I showed up for the first time in the top 50 (for that term) at #7 on web search. On google image, my photo came in #1. It might be a case of QDF since it is an older subdivision and the internet was not abuzz with subdivision websites and interactive maps etc. Anyway, thanks again for the advice. My lovely wife and I have been taking a lot of photos in the last week, thinking that you were correct and this was a good ‘ah-ha’ moment.

By: Henry Louis

Henry Louis — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:28:05 +0000

The competition in the online space can be categorized as Web Competition, business competition & content syndicators. We more oftenly come across web competition & content syndicators. For a few businesses most of them would be business competitors only. Everyone should be considered while looking out for competition to attract more business online.

By: Ken Jansen

Ken Jansen — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:02:08 +0000

Hi Lisa,

This might be beyond the scope of the post, but here goes, say I was a real estate guy and I had unique photos of subdivisions. I know enough to make the file name say the subdivision and the city its in. LOTS of duplicate subdivision names around the country btw, so the city is important. Should I also put my name in the file name abc-sub-in-xyz-city-photo-by-yours-truly? There are at least a half dozen agents around the country with my same name so I was wondering if that was a good idea. Guess I may owe you starbucks card for this one as it is more than a comment. :) I don’t doubt that some of my photos will end up hot linked into some competitors sites so it might be good to identify myself as the photographer too I suppose. Did I put you to sleep yet? Dear Wifey says I need to learn to summarize.

Thank you.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:20:03 +0000

It’s amazing to think how much this changes. As a primarily virtual company, the brick-and-mortar part of the equation doesn’t factor much any longer, though it’s not hard to think back to a time when all we cared about was the place across town with radio ads. It’s a completely different world now.

By: Justin Dupre

Justin Dupre — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:54:34 +0000

Very timely and relevant post. Thanks for sharing this.

By: Michael c. Craven

Michael c. Craven — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:14:28 +0000

Dear Lisa-
Great Post! It is so true our world has totally changed with the internet, some good and some bad. As a Chicago divorce lawyer I realized I needed a blog, (http://www.divorcelawyerschicago.org) to compete with other divorce lawyers in Chicago. We all need to be aware of who is our competitor in this new world.
Michael C. Craven

By: Nick LeRoy

Nick LeRoy — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:58:16 +0000

I’m always talking to clients about the types of competitors that they have. Most of the time they refer to their brick and motor competition. As while its important im always explaining to them that they have ‘online competition’ gunning for their targeting keywords. With a little clarification clients are able to give me a list of sites that they routinely find showing up in Google for the terms they want to rank for.

By: Rufus Dogg

Rufus Dogg — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:32:50 +0000

Sometimes, the worst competition are your own customers who are looking for ways to automate what you do or DIY what you provide. You need to keep an eye on them as well and always be in front of them.

By: Mike Roberts

Mike Roberts — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:11:27 +0000

And #5 reminds me of why I get annoyed every time the management feels that social media is far less important than ranking position 1 for every keyword under the sun when we already rank extremely well for our niche.