Your exploratory SEO tactics?

You have a website or a blog and you want to know a few exploratory steps to help you rank higher. Here are a few tactics that you can use to improve your SEO. Instead of taking you through all the on-page and off-page things you can do, here are tactics that are going to improve your SEO by giving you the right information where you need it the most. Here you will see the numerous ways to make yourself more informed. Metaphorically, instead of teaching you how to drive, these tactics will tell you what to look for when you are on the road.

Google your products/service to check out the competition

Do not be a competitor looking, be a customer. Do not Google phrases like “X for sale.” Google things such as “Where to buy X” or “Cheapest X on the market.” You need to Google the service or the products themselves. There is no point in Googling yourself or your competitors, because if your customers are typing in yours’ or your competitors’ names, then it is pretty obvious what they are searching for and what they are going to click on.

You need to Google your products or services and see what your customers see. You need to see what deals they are going to come across and see if there is a way you can counter those deals. Is it possible that they are going to base their next search one key-phrase that they see on the results page? You also have to assume that this preliminary research is all the research that your customers are going to do. Just because you know which competitors are cheaper or better than yours, does not mean that your customers know.

Look at what your competitors are blogging about

Little do your competitors know, that when they blog they are giving a lot of information away about their current marketing strategy. This can be used by you when you construct your own marketing strategy. You are able to use this information to pick the right keywords and to pick the right things to say on your marketing campaign. You can counter the things they are saying, and if they are generating a lot of web traffic because people are searching for their deals, then you can capitalize on that by optimizing for the same thing.

Set up a Google alerts account and use it

You set it so that it alerts you when blogs or articles are published that relate to your niche. You can then see what the newest trends in SEO keywords are by examining the tagged words in people’s tagged words section. You can also stay up to date with some of the things that are going on in your market or niche. You may discover up and coming trends that you can jump onto before your competitors do.

Use Google Suggestions on the search bar

This is a simple exploratory SEO trick. Start typing in some of your keywords and see what sort of suggestions appear. You can do this for hours, and each one you see is a plausible search phrase, because it is possible that people are going to try to type in your keywords and then use the suggestions section to search. You should also try typing in the wrong spellings and slightly awkward phrasings to see what corrections are offered up. When you see the results for the corrections, have a look to see if any of your competitors have sneaked onto the search results for keywords that are spell incorrectly or written awkwardly.

Use Google trends the free keyword tool

You can use this for free to have a quick look at how popular your keywords actually are. Basically, if your keyword illicit a high result on the graph, then it is popular. And, if it hovers around the bottom of the graph then it may not be worth your time (in other words you should do more research before using it). You can also see how popular your certain keyword is around the world, which is always good if you are optimizing your website for certain locations.

Run a backlink check on your main competitors

This is a very simple tactic that you can use in order to steal all of your competitors links. All you need to do is use a backlink checking tool but use it on your competitors URLs. You will be able to see what sites are linked to them. You should then try to get links from the same domains. Not only will you enjoy the extra SEO benefit, but you will not have to work as hard to find relevant and good backlinks for your site. You will also find directories that may also drive direct traffic to your site, plus you get to sit right besides your competitors and steal their traffic from under them.

Author's Bio: Hello, my name is Kate Funk. I coach individuals in business networking skills at oktutor.