What is an SEO keyword? SEO keywords are the words or phrases in the content on your website that make it possible for people to find you in the search engines. The keywords that you use should be the same language that your potential customers use to find your products or services. If you do business on the Internet then it is important to learn the significance of good search engine optimization, or SEO. These days, when someone is looking for something online, their first stop is a search engine, most popularly Google, in order to track down the product, service or information they are looking for. SEO is about ensuring that when a potential customer is trying to track down something that you can offer them, you come up higher on the list of potential online destinations to visit.

So what is good SEO keyword utilization? There are a number of things that you can do to improve your chances of being a popular choice in searches. One of those things—though some entrepreneurs may not realize it—is to be aware of what the competition is up to, and take away the useful techniques that they use. So what are the best ways to look at what your competitors are doing and apply that to your SEO keyword techniques?

SEO Keyword Competitor Research – Analyze Their Website 

One of your first stops should be the websites of your competitors. It’s just good sense in any business venture to see exactly how the competition is presenting themselves. In this case, however, you’re not looking at how their website is structured—though this can be important—so much as what they are doing to maximize their own SEO keyword techniques.

For example, if one of your competitors is keeping a blog, you may notice that there is monthly, weekly, or even daily content. A constant stream of new, updated content using important keywords is one more element that can push SEO techniques up in terms of popularity, so if your competition is doing this, but you’re not, that’s one more avenue that you should consider.

Conduct Surveys

While not every answer is going to useful, you’d be surprised at just how much insightful data you can get by simply asking your customers their honest opinion. A customer’s only allegiance is to him or herself, so if you’re doing something good, they’ll tell you. If you’re doing something bad, they’ll tell you, and if you ask “What do you like about some of my competitors that I’m not doing, but you’d like to see” they’ll tell you that as well.

In terms of SEO keyword, this means getting information on what words your customers are using to find both you and the competition and closely examining the differences. For example, if you and your competitor both offer a premium product or service, but your customers are typing in “premium” and you don’t have that as one of your search terms, this is a point you can address. Using a Marketing Consultant to conduct the research or perform the surveys helps you be objective.

Look At Header Tags

Header tags are just like the words right above this sentence. It’s the “title” that denotes a new section of the content that someone is looking at. Header tags aren’t just good for breaking up text and making your content look neater and less intimidating. Header tags themselves can be an important part of SEO keyword placement.

Look at what your competition is doing with the header tags on their website. See how they are using them, and what ratio of header tags are simply there to inform visitors, and what ratio are being used for SEO purposes. You can have too much of a good thing, so balance is important.

Look At Their Social Network Strategy

These days, quite a lot of businesses, especially retail businesses, live and die by the quality of their social media marketing. You can’t reach a large customer base without putting you and your business “out there” on social media, but there’s a right and wrong way to do it. Just doing a “drive by” on Twitter or Facebook with a single, non-responsive statement isn’t going to do it.

If you have a competitor that is doing very well with social media, look at their tweets, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or whatever other social media networks they use, and look at how they engage with customers. If there’s frequent interaction, a lot of notifications, and a deliberate, strategic use of hashtags that also drive SEO effectiveness up, then learn from these techniques, and start incorporating them into your own social media marketing strategies.

Do not underestimate the power of effective social media marketing for your SEO keyword rankings. With the right approach, just a little bit of good social media usage can go a long way towards promoting your business.

Of course, even with all these tips to follow, one of the important things to keep in mind is that you must also differentiate yourself from the competition. Just being a “clone” of another business isn’t going to give people much reason to jump ship, so make sure that your SEO practices are combined with solid selling points that positively differentiate you from your competition.

Think Like Your Customer

Most businesses that we work with start their SEO keyword research with terms they are familiar with.  They are so close to the business they don’t think like the customer thinks. They identify with their products and services in a particular way and really don’t look through the eyes of their customers.  Starting your SEO Keyword research with your competitors website can give you a different perspective and help you see your business from a different perspective.

Additionally, your competitor may have found a sweet spot or a way to communicate with your audience in a way that resonates with the marketplace. You’re not looking to copy what they are doing.  You need to be enough of a spy to get the information you need and leverage that for your success.

FireRock Marketing Boston SEO experts serving clients across a diverse business segments with locations across the country.