How to check competitors traffic?

[preciousbags]

Is this possible? I wanted to see what sort of traffic my competitors are getting? Even if it is an estimate

Thanks

 

[simmo28]

You can use http://www.trafficestimate.com/ but sometimes the results can vary..

Sometimes these traffic estimate sites cant get the required data so you might have to try something else
I personally check the competitors main keywords that there trying to rank for, note there position on the Search engine results page and load there keywords into the Google adwords tool and get a rough estimation of what there traffic brings in each month.

 

[chetanmadaan]

search for that keyword on google adword tool.

check their alexa and compete ranking.

 

[simmo28]

search for that keyword on google adword tool.

check their alexa and compete ranking.

Hi chetanmadaan - the thing about alexa rank is that it can be just a tad out of date so wont give you an accurate measure of the competitors traffic. It can however give you a detailed analysis of previous rankings which can also give an indication of past traffic

 

[RedEvo]

Check out Market Samurai. It will help you develop an understanding of the amount of traffic search phrases can send to sites based on Google data and supposition.

d

 

[GNU]

Is this possible? I wanted to see what sort of traffic my competitors are getting? Even if it is an estimate

Thanks

As mentioned G's keyword tool is one place to get wildly innacurate figures, I think Market Samurai takes its figures from there too.

What I would be more interested in is coverage for which you can use something like SemRush.

Also, if they are using PPC you can use SemRush or KeywordSpy to see what terms they are appearing for... if you do this look for themes and patterns rather than specific phrases that are picked up.... not exactly what you were asking... but kinda related ;-)

 

[mobyme]

Is this possible? I wanted to see what sort of traffic my competitors are getting? Even if it is an estimate

Thanks

Give compete.com a whirl. Open a free account and you can compare your own site with a couple of others.

 

[crossdaz]

Is this possible? I wanted to see what sort of traffic my competitors are getting? Even if it is an estimate

Thanks

You can't know unless you ask them - and they won't tell you
Your biggest competitors have affiliate schemes so aside from natural traffic which could be very high they also have lots of external sites driving traffic towards them.
In short, it could be astronomical - but that doesn't mean they are making more money than you.
For instance, Faith are loosely related to your market and went bust for the second time last month. Another big name shoe retailer is looking like they might follow.

 

[fisicx]

Agree with crossdaz. You could assume if they are ranking higher than you that they get more traffic but they may convert less. You won't know what their best converting keywords are nor the worst pages.

In short, it's not worth worrying about. Just concentrate on your own ranking and conversion rates.

 

[GNU]

Agree with crossdaz. You could assume if they are ranking higher than you that they get more traffic but they may convert less. You won't know what their best converting keywords are nor the worst pages.

In short, it's not worth worrying about. Just concentrate on your own ranking and conversion rates.

I always take a look at what competitors are doing. Some of my best terms were filched from competitors PPC campaings and backlink analysis.

If your competitor has been using PPC for a while then they will have found some decent terms. The natural step for them then is to try and rank on those terms, analyzing their backlink anchor text, titles etc to see what they are actively trying to rank on is a good place to start.

You can test actual traffic levels and conversion rates with PPC before committing to organic campaign.

Its pretty easy to find the better terms in this way as they are often obvious transactional terms.

Of course you cannot beat a competitor by simply copying them.. the real gems come from getting inside the mind of your customers / searchers and finding the stuff others have missed.

Back to original question... to quickly dig into competitors terms I would consider blowing $19 on a months subscription of

http://www.semrush.com

But bear in mind these tools only report terms that are in their database which are subsequently scraped, they do not have the whole picture.

Also bear in mind that most traffic data used in these tools comes from Google adwords, which is grossly over estimated. On some terms most of the traffic is actually site owner / bots checking the SERPs, not customers.

 

[fisicx]

If your competitor has been using PPC for a while then they will have found some decent terms.

I'd change this to may have found some decent terms.

Equally you can only guess at how sucsessful their campaign actually is. They may get the clicks but not the conversions.

But I agree, it's always worth lookijng at your competitors campaign to see if there is anything decent. Problem is there may be one long tail hidden aways that is bringing in a steady stream of converting customers. Finding someone else's niche is rarely easy.

 

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

You could also try using Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends?q=bbc.co.uk,+autotrader.co.uk&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1

Compete.com really only looks at US traffic.

Fore real data here in the UK it is available through Hitwise but it is NOT cheap! We used to use Hitwise in my last job to gather all sorts of data on the competition, we could even see which sites where referring them traffic and what keywords/phrases drove traffic and much more. Worth it if you can afford it!