During Part 1 of this series, I explained how you could spy on your competitors’ websites using free tools like Alexa online. Now I’m going to show you exactly how to develop a focused Search Engine Optimization strategy for yourself that will have you starting to catch up to those you envy in no time.

If you followed my instructions in Part 1 carefully, you’ll now have a comparison chart showing your website versus others in terms traffic rank, the sites linking in, the keywords that drive traffic to your competition, and their position versus your current position in Google.

Take the keywords driving traffic to your competition and plug them into a tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s readily available online and will give you the EXACT average Monthly Search Volume for each keyword online. Store that data in your spreadsheet  for reference later. Also, use the Keyword Tool’s synonym and relevant keywords suggestion feature to find the search volumes for other keywords that Google ties to your set. Highlight the ones that match exactly with what you’re offering online.

This overall set of your competitors’ keywords and the keywords you liked from the Google Adwords Tool gives you a basis now to select the keywords YOU will target. Only take the keywords that have medium to medium high search volume when compared to the top producing keywords on that list. They’re going to be easier to take position on. To under the interplay between search volume and search results placement read How to Get 1000 Visitors.

Now go and look carefully at the Sites Linking In data for websites on your list with the highest traffic ranking. Pick the top one and go visit all the links from their data. Mark which ones are free link resources or directories and start seeing if there are ways to get your own website linked. Try to get linked from as many of the same websites as your top competitor. The ranking and ratings they receive from inbound links from these other websites can be yours as well. HERE’S AN IMPORTANT TIP. For the websites that allow you to provide the link and anchor text as part of the link submission process, you must use the keywords you are targeting in the link! This tells Google something very important: your website is a destination and resource for information pertaining to that keyword.

Now go into your own website and revise your text content. Get those same keywords to appear about 10 – 15 times per page within the writing. Make sure you use them semantically and grammatically correct.

This is all a good start in getting your website to be in the same competitive space. In my next article in this series, I’ll tell you exactly how Google looks at other elements of your website’s content and how you can best optimize it to make Google’s work easier.