Did You Include Competitive Analysis in Your Internet Business Plan? Part 6 of 9

January 9, 2009 by Carl Tambeau
Filed under: Internet Business Plan, Online Coaching

Now that you’ve decided to market your business on the Internet, you will need a competitive analysis included in your Internet Business Plan (IBP).

The Internet is a very competitive community, therefore knowing your competition is more important than ever.

It is important to understand what your competition is doing and what their traffic stats are.

How are they getting all that traffic?

What keywords are they using to attract attention?

Where is the traffic coming from?

There are tools available that will give you the stats on keywords, used by your competition. During your research this will give you an idea of what results to expect when marketing, using related keywords and keyword phrases.One service that offers such research information is Hexatrack.com – go here and sign up to a limited free account and review the videos to get a better understanding of how this service can help your business.

You need to identify the top 5-10 competitors in your niche and take a look at what they are using for keywords and keyword phrases.

When performing a search related to your niche – who are the top 5 websites?
What did you use for search criteria?

This is a very important step in the marketing process therefore it is important not to take any short cuts at this point.

Keep researching and maintaining focus when creating your competitive analysis for your Internet Business Plan. (IBP)

Other than keywords there are many other factors you need to concern yourself with that your competition is already doing. That is a subject for another indepth look at how to assess your competition effectively therefore in the interest of time we will save that subject for another discussion.