Speakers: Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc. Kristopher Jones, President & CEO, KBJ Interactive Thursday, March 24, 2011 SES NYC An essential component of any search marketing plan is understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. This knowledge helps you comprehend what links to gain, ad prices to pay, content to offer and customers to seek. In this session, we take a close look at what tricks you can use with search engines to analyze your competitors' game and also what free and premium tools are available to deep dive into their strategy. Join us for a candid discussion as panelists reveal their secrets for monitoring competitive forces and threats while sharing tips that can be successfully applied to any business intelligence effort. After attending this session, you'll have the skills to easily discover what keywords your competitor is targeting, how much your competitor is spending on ads, and be able to identify opportunities your competitor is missing.

1. Competitive Research
Kristopher B. Jones
Founder / CEO of KBJ Capital
Founder and Former President / CEO of Pepperjam
Author, “SEO Visual Blueprint”

2. About Kris
• Founder of Pepperjam, a full-service internet
marketing agency / affiliate network sold to GSI
Commerce (NASDAQ – GSIC) in 2009
• Best selling author of “SEO Visual
Blueprint” (Wiley – 1st ed. 2008, 2nd ed. 2010)
• Founder of KBJ Capital, an early stage
technology angel fund (i.e. APPEK Mobile Apps,
Highlighter.com, VigLink.com, Yumm.com)
• Internet Marketing Consultant / Overpaid Public
Speaker; New Venture is Supposedly Imminent.

3. Why Do Competitive Research?
• Identify your competition; benchmark for SEO /
PPC purposes
• Better understand your competition for purposes
of optimal resource allocation
• Gain insights into trends; identify opportunities
• Save time; Create efficiencies
• Duplicate success; Avoid failure
• It’s fun!
• Sometimes too much fun!

4. Search-Based Competitive Research
• Helps you understand what, why, and how high
your competition ranks for specific keywords
• SEM / SEO competitive research tools are a
great source for keyword generation, as well as
comparative analysis (How you rank for specific
keywords versus competition)
• Provides insight into keyword popularity and
serves as a measure of duplicating rankings
• Using the following “retail” tools will save you an
extraordinary amount of time and resources

5. Trend Analysis with Google Trends
• Serves as a great resource for you to identify all types of
trends; trends allow you to anticipate demand and take
action before your competitors do
• Provides relative data on how often a particular search-term
is entered relative to the total search-volume across various
regions of the world, and in various languages.
• Google Trends is a great place to begin thinking about
competitive research; it gets the juices flowing
• DEMO - http://www.google.com/trends

6. Search Trend Data with Google
Insights for Search
• More advanced version of Google Trends; Provides
insights into the search terms people have been entering
into the Google search engine.
• Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search
provides a visual representation of regional interest on a
country's map.
• It displays top searches and rising searches that may
help with keyword research. Results can be narrowed
down with categories that are displayed for each search
terms.
• DEMO - http://www.google.com/insights/search

7. Keyword Research with KeywordSpy
• Allows you to perform keyword research based on what
keywords your competition is bidding for on a pay-per-
click basis, as well as what keywords your competition
ranks for organically on major search engines.
• Offers real-time keyword tracking technology which
allows you to easily assess the effectiveness of your
keyword ranking, which in turn can influence your
keyword research strategy.
• Offers limited free version; Prices range from $90 up per
month.
• DEMO - http://www.keywordspy.com

8. Keyword Research with KeyCompete
• KeyCompete is an online keyword research tool
that identifies the keywords your competitors are
using in their pay-per-click campaigns.
• KeyCompete also identifies the competition that
is bidding on your keywords.
• Pricing ranges from $19 per day to $300 per yr.
• Popular tool with affiliate marketers

9. Analyze Your Competition with
SEMRush
• Shows you how well you rank for specific keywords
versus your competition (PPC & SEO)
• Provides estimates of keyword popularity
• Includes international competitive research data
• Offers limited free version / monthly plans start at
$49.95
• DEMO – http://www.semrush.com

10. Analyze Your Competition with
Compete.com
• Allows you to analyze your competition, including
the keywords your competitors rank for on search
engines, as well as how Web site users interact with
your competitors’ Web sites.
• Compete’s large data set is made possible through
the distribution of the Compete toolbar, which
collects information as a user surfs the Web
• Limited free version; Costs $199 and up per month
• Learn more at http://www.compete.com

11. “Other” Research Tools that Deserve
Your Attention
• Google Keyword Suggestion Tool -
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool -
https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• SEObook Keyword Suggestion Tool -
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
• Facebook / Twitter / Delicious / Reddit / Digg

12. Building Links: Evaluate Potential
Linking Partners
• One of the most effective ways to find potential
quality link partners is to mimic the efforts of your
most successful competition.
• However, not all links are created equally, so
you should evaluate each potential linking
partner for quality. This can be accomplished by
analyzing numerous link-quality factors.

13. Determine Link Popularity and Analyze
Backlinks with Open Site Explorer
• Provides high level data on a range of metrics,
including page authority, domain authority, linking
domains, anchor text distribution, and a range of
other important link analysis data
• Free version provides limited data; part of the
SEOmoz premium family of tools; offers a 30-day
free trial and plans range from $99 per month up -
http://www.seomoz.org/plans
• DEMO - http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

14. Enterprise Competitive Research Tools
• Enterprise tools are used primarily by large
corporations and agencies. Tools range in price
from a few thousand dollars per month up and
include competitive intelligence on the internet’s
most popular Web sites.
• Enterprise tools are derived from very large data
sets and tend to be highly functional versus retail
tools.
• Enterprise examples include ComScore,
HitWise, Adobe’s Omniture, and Conductor

15. Other Competitive Research
• Google Analytics – mine your own data!
• Google News Alerts -
http://www.google.com/alerts
• FlipBoard (for the iPad) and other news
aggregators
• Neilson helps media companies better
understand viewers, listeners and the industry as
a whole.
• Industry conferences

16. Now what?
• “It's not what you know, it's what you do with what
you know.”
• Competitive research is fun, but you can suffer from
Paralysis of Analysis or over-analyzing (or over-
thinking) a situation, so that a decision or action is
never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome.
• In short, my recommendation is to take action in
baby steps; Understanding that solid, actionable
competitive research is integral to your success, but
shouldn’t dictate your every move. J

17. Thank you!
• Stay in touch with me!
• I blog @ www.krisjones.com
• E-mail - kris@krisjones.com (I answer all emails)
• Twitter @krisjonescom
• Facebook - www.facebook.com/krisjonescom
• Linkedin – www.linkedin.com/in/internetceo
• My book “SEO Visual Blueprint” is available in all
major bookstores, online, and digitally on the Kindle

18. Seth Besmertnik
Founder / CEO of Conductor Inc.
Tweet @conductor

19. Founded in 2005
Most Widely Used Enterprise SEO platform
Optimizing Over $3 Billion Worth of SEO revenue
Powering SEO for Over 100 Leading Brands
Largest SEO Technology Company in the World
Tweet @conductor

20. Tweet @conductor

21. ”…who are my search
competitors?”
Understanding who your traditional and non-traditional
competitors are is the first stage of a long term competitive
intelligence strategy
Google Operator SEMrush
Tweet @conductor

22. Tweet @conductor

23. ”…where is my competitive
keyword overlap?”
Determining the competitive overlap is a sure fire way to
begin identifying new opportunities and tracking your
competitive progress
SpyFu Kombat
Tweet @conductor

25. ”…why are my competitors
outranking me?”
Intelligence into the search strategies of your competitors
gives you the power to make accurate business decisions
and stay ahead of the curve.
Yahoo SiteExplorer Backlink & Anchor Text
Analysis
Tweet @conductor

26. Tweet @conductor

27. Tweet @conductor

28. ”…can competitive intelligence
help me get investment for
search?”
Analyzing how much your competitors invest in search and
resources they have will help you build a business case for
search.
Conductor Share of Search Report Linkedin
(Free Resource)
Tweet @conductor

29. ”…how do I balance my natural
and paid competitive
strategies?”
Integrate your paid and natural platform to maintain high
rankings and keep the edge in search while your
competitors use up resources and budget.
Google AdWords Keyword Paid & Natural Integration
Research Tools
Tweet @conductor

30. Download All Todays Material From
conductor.com/sesny-2011
Got a Question?
Twitter @besmertnik
or
Call 1.888.9CONDUCT
Tweet @conductor