By: Jodi Reid
Keeping current on SEO changes is difficult, even for those who work in the industry. This task can pose an even bigger challenge for self storage owners who do not have a specialized knowledge of SEO. The best way to get ahead is to determine your most successful customers and try to meet or exceed their best efforts. Here are a few tools that can help to monitor competitors’ efforts:
Google Alerts – Use this free service to determine which sites are mentioning your competitors. Setting up search terms can achieve this. For example, setting up an alert for “self storage Houston” will give results on all web hits that match the search term. The frequency of these alerts can be set to daily, weekly or as the results become available.
Tracking social mentions – Services like Social Mention allow for the easy tracking of what people are saying about your company, or others, across various social media platforms, in real-time. With over 100 social media properties being monitored directly, Social Mention currently provides a point-in-time social media search and analysis service, daily social media alerts, and API.
Spy tools for SEO – Go further in tracking the self storage competition by using sites like Open Site Explorer and SEOMoz which offer tools like, Competitive Link Research Tool, Keyword Difficulty Tool and Crawl Test. These tools show which sites are linking to your competitors as well as the anchor text in use.
Spy tools for PPC Campaigns – SpyFu, a downloadable program, can help to take your search marketing power to the next level by giving you the keywords competitors are using. You can use this information to organize successful PPC campaigns.
Remember that keep track of your competitors is not about stealing ideas. You should use what you discover to build upon and improve the existing strategies. Use these tech tools wisely to learn more about what your self storage competition is doing right.
