Who are my competitors
-
Hello,
Quick question.
for the term
"NLP" and the site nlpca.com
I'm analyzing backlinks of competitors. Is wikipedia a competitor, or are competitors only sites like mine. I'm thinking that if someone links to wikipedia they wouldn't necessarily want to link to nlpca.com
Thus, should I still analyze wikipedia?
Thank you.
-
Yes, Brad I would like to know too.
-
Great articulate reply Brad..what tools do you use for longtail research? Wordtracker/SEO Samurai?
-
Wow, I will keep that in mind EGOL
-
What a nice thorough answer, thank you.
-
John, I don't think your images got posted right. I'm curious what they are.
-
Hi Link
All of the comments above are on the money, but the qualification here is that there are two types of competitor.
-
Competitors for Search (includes Wikipedia and other authority sites, but has no effect on your business unless the information there either endorses or disendorses the type of services you offer)
-
Competitors for Business as addressed by Brad.
As to whether you should analyze Wikipedia back links, the answer is absolutely yes. One thing to keep in mind is that we now have evidence that linking out to authoritative sites is correlated with improved search engine rankings. This is discussed in the Free Webinar Video Ranking Factors 2011 and Blog post Search Engine Ranking Factors 2011. Before watching the video you might find it helpful to read Rand's Blog post New Edition of Ranking Factors for 2011 is Now Live! and watch his explanatory video in that post.
Since Wikipedia is an authoritative site, but not seen as a business competitor, it is highly likely there may be business competitors who link to Wikipedia as a benign information source. Therefore, analyzing Wikipedia backlinks can identify other competitors in your market.
-
-
My feeling is that back links are important but much more important is your long tail key word. Who is your competition based on sites that provide training and services like you do? What is your long tail term vs theirs. If they are a match then ding they are your competition. Are you local or national, look for local competitors with qualifiers in your area. I do not know much about your subject but this site appears to be your main competitor on a national basis. http://www.nlpcoaching.com Wikipedia is a resource search engine but not a tool for goods and services. Ask these questions first. 1. what are my main long tail terms 2. Does my offer or site have a local, national or global appeal? 3. Have I added qualifyers to my search if it is local or national, such as San Diego or United States? Build your search based on that. NLP Traning vs. NLP Traning California. Type that in and the top 3 who actually do what you do, are your competitors. I hope that helps. Use that to analyze your linkage vs. theirs.
-
Your competitors are anyone who has a website in the same SERPs as your important keywords. So, yes, Wikipedia is your competitor and they can really damage your traffic.
Also... keep in mind that your traffic is just one new page away from many other websites. For example... if you start making a lot of money selling widget cases and widgets.com hears you are making big money. They could place a new page about widget cases on their website and be at the top of your SERPs tomorrow.
The most dangerous competitor is usually the one who has not yet arrived.
-
If your goal is to rank #1...then yes wikipedia is a competitor..however wikipedia does not offer training and people will would naturally go to your site at #2. I would analyze the wiki page for links.
[http://imgur.com/vwP1z.png](<a href= "Hosted by imgur.com")" target="_blank">a>
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How can i build back link for competitor website
please tell me how can i build back link for competitor back link how can i check competitor back link
Link Building | | Vikran0 -
Why is this working for a competitor? Non-relevant backlinks helping them out?
A competitor is using a weird strategy, one I know isn't legit, however it's not only helping them, but doing in with a lot of speed. I've ran their info through ahref, majestic, moz, semrush and for backlinks they have 225ish, here is their breakdown. 169 follow links from their parent distributor site ( which is located in their parent's site's footer ) and then 3 to 5 links from sites that relate to SEO, marketing, unrelated things like pocket calling article and comment spam. maybe 5 of those links are from anywhere close to a related site, and those are from spammy directories from out of country. Why would these backlinks be helping them so much, and how can I get in front of them when these craptactics are working for them? They have 250 backlinks - 25 of them are follow We have 300 backlinks - 90 are follow and from relevant sites like EPA.gov, some EDUs and related sites to our niche. Some explanations or words of wit would really be helpful here, as I feel like something isn't adding up.
Link Building | | Deacyde0 -
How Are Competitor's With Zero Links (According to SEOmoz) Ranking Highly?
Hey everyone! This is my first post in the community after just signing up for SEOmoz. I've already got a ton of value from this community so I'm looking for to giving back as much as possible. The keyword gets 8000+ monthly searches on Google. Not so many, but the keyword indicates high buying intention. The funny thing is that the top ranking page has 0 backlinks (according to OSE). It seems as though there are some black hat tactics being used, as I doubt that they are ranking solely with on-page optimization. Any idea what's going on? Have you guys/gals seen this before?
Link Building | | EdLeo0 -
Will a link from a competitor help me to out rank them?
Greetings mozers, One of my competitors and I both rank on the first page for our main keyword. They have 37k+ links, me only like 300 or so. My company actually has a business location though. This other site is just a listing of locations and they build sites for most of my competitors. If I were able to get listed on their site, would that make me a stronger competitior with them? And we would probably only get a brand term link from them but not a main keyword anchor text. Will it be as effective to get the link from them if it's only for my brand name? Thanks, Cy
Link Building | | Nola5040 -
When a competitor site jumps from 4000 to 10000 links in 2 months are they most likely spamming?
One of my competitors site's jumped from about 4000 links 2 months ago to about 10000 links today. That seems REALLY unnatural to me given the market (roofing products), but if it isn't what are they doing? My gut tells me it's fake, but I'm just curious what some of your takes on it are.
Link Building | | kadesmith0 -
Competitor research
so i was doing some competitor research for the following domain and seomoz seems to be telling me that this domain has over a thousand links but that only 2 are external. from surfing the site it seems that most of those links come from several years of weekly blogs. will this domain be easy to overtake by setting up a good number of external links? what kind of number would i be looking at? <cite>www.diehlorthodontics.com/</cite>
Link Building | | dad7more0 -
Competitor links on unmaintained pages
hey all, this is my first posting... I have a webpage that is a great resource (ranked 3rd for my keyword) , and unarguably better than the site that is taking the first 2 places. Because my page is a much more useful resource for the same thing I have been looking at who is linking to them and asking them to take a look at mine in the hope that they will replace their link with my more up to date page. The problem is a LOT of the high value links they have (many .edu links) are from old, now unmaintained pages, where I have no chance of getting a link (or even contact with a webmaster) Its frustrating that they have so many good links to such an out of date page. I just wondered if any of you have had a similar situation. It just seems very hard to knock someone off that top spot if they have been established a long time, regardless of the quality of their content. I guess there is no solution to it except to find lot of other high value links myself - so not so much a question as a comment really! but happy to hear peoples own experiences of that sort of situation.
Link Building | | ricalebro0 -
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside? By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998. But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe. Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords. So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too? Or is that too simple?
Link Building | | brianmcc0