How frequently do you engage in competitive analysis activities?

[MichaelCorfman]

Yesterday, reading a weekly email I receive from the folks at moz (moz.com), I took the time to read an article the newsletter referenced on competitive analysis. You can see the article here:

Crushing It With Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Best Metrics, Reports

Historically I have not spent a lot of time doing competitive analysis. I tend to stay focused on moving forward, and I'm not inclined to mimic what others are doing or focus on looking in the rear view mirror. But I also know that looking at what others are doing, and thinking creatively about it, can be a great way to think outside the box.

Right now, with the start of a new year, I'm focusing on defining objectives for the coming year (our fiscal year starts March 1st, so it really is just about to be the start of a new year for us). Mostly that is driven by projects that make business sense to us. But some of the decisions we make will be driven by how we are doing in the marketplace, and what we think we need to do to be in a better relative position with respect to our customer and visitor needs in the future than we are today.

For this week's poll I thought I would ask folks to share how frequently they look at the marketplace they operate in from a competitive analysis perspective. On the most basic level, this might mean how often to you look at your traffic and visitor statistics compared with others.

But, more importantly, I ask folks to share what they look at when they compare themselves with others, and the types of insights it provides. Are there particular tools you use to select sites to look at or to determine how you are doing versus others?

In reading the article above, there were many resources referenced I was familiar with. Hitwise, Compete, Quantcast and Alexa, as some examples. But there were others I had not heard of before, like SimilarWeb. What are your favorite competitive analysis tools?

Michael

[Christiaan]

If you look at the basic things like traffic/ranking comparison I do that almost daily. Using search metrics I see my own rankings and those of my competitors.

When I go in more detail I do also a backlink analysis. Using some tools of Link Research Tools I find out who is linking to my competitors, who are my competitors linking to, which of those links I dont have etc...

[sweetbet]

I don't spend much time analyzing my competitors' back links, but I do spend a significant amount of time every week recording who the top affiliate sites are promoting. If I see a handful of reputable affiliate sites promoting the same sponsor, then I'm much more likely to promote that sponsor. Getting links and traffic is not too difficult. There's SEO, social media, PPC, etc. But if you're sending good traffic to questionable sponsors, then there is really no point to it.

[golfbettingsystem]

I've put 'at least monthly' but in reality it's far more frequent than that. Understanding what the competition are up to in terms of content development as well as linking and social media etc is pretty important IMO.

[wettFORM.AT]

I check my stats on a daily basis and this includes also ranking checks. At the same time I monitor all rankings so this is some kind of analysis as well.

[NatalieG]

almost on a weekly basis

[Jenny4Becker]

It's better having it on a weekly basis, but if your site is ranked ok - then at least once a month.