Top 5 SEO competitor analysis benchmarks - what are the most useful?

[Whitey]

I couldn't find much out there on these threads, in recent years, with regards to competitive benchmarking. But it's a core SEO activity. A top 3 activity, I'm told, so everybody must be into it [ almost ].

So why not contribute your top 5, or so, competitor analysis points that you use for benchmarking sites, and mention your priority for finding low hanging fruit.

[Pjman]

I basically monitor 2 things:

1) # of quality indexed pages

2) # of quality links

I find throughout time, I doubt anyone will argue it, if I can build a much large site (quality indexed page wise) and attract better quality links, I always end up winning. It really takes about 3 years for this to hold up, but does stand the test of time.

[goodroi]

I suspect many people skip this step of monitoring. Without performing this critical step you make it too easy for your competition to overtake you.

I like to regularly scrape competitor sites. This often helps me spot when they add new content areas and what keywords they are targeting by looking at their title tags.

I also suggest people monitor 301 redirects going to the competition.

Set up news alerts on your competition. I want to know who in the press is covering them so I can then work to get them to mention my business instead.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/4688401.htm [webmasterworld.com]
6:34 am on Jul 17, 2014 (utc -5)