Competitor reporting

[findtim]

I was asked this week about SEO and directories, i know the answers to directories and gave my usual answer for SEO and that is " i don't do seo"
anyway, i'm starting a new directory this month and decided to get a profile of my 1 and only real competitor in organics, even the adwords businesses i don't care about.
the report came back and i have had a great laugh ( sorry, at someone elses expense....my competitor)

the site is RIDDLED with backlinks to spam sites selling viagra etccccccccccc, articles written about the drugs with links to paypal, just really a piece of crap obviously giving them a false veiw on their sites stats as i know what the stats should be and 3/4 quarters of thier traffic is going to the hidden posts on viagra etc.

a bunch of other things in the report, anchor text, mainpage, trust flow etc all adds up to a mess. GREAT news for me to build a strategy to gain the number 1 google ranking from them, in a reasonably uncompetitive market yet very lucrative.

what it really brings home for me is you should be doing a competitor style analysis on yourself ! and i am sure most people do not, this way you may find out some home truths.

tim

 

[James]

If you are a big brand you probably want to do some type of toxic link audit on a weekly or monthly basis.

 

[findtim]

toxic link audit on a weekly or monthly basis.

small brand/no brand/local brand this one.
shows an easy target to get those links in and basically they will sit forever.
you could build a HUGE link network cocerntrating on these type of sites.

tim

 

[ttfan]

What did you use to get the profile?

 

[findtim]

because i didn't really care about it i just used fiverr