Sizing Up Your Web Competition

In my quest to have the best website for Black Entrepreneurs and Professional plus appeal to Black consumers (www.shreveportblackpages.com) I have learned that in addition to creating good content, I have to know what some of the 'Best Black Websites' actually look like. It's important to know where your online viewers are going when their not quite getting to your site. It took a while for me to figure out what types of Black Sites are most popular to online browsers, and I'm still working on that. I have discovered a few things that help a long the way.

Whatever your area of interest is, do a google search on your keywords, and see what comes up. Browse through the results, taking note of those webpages that have a page rank of 5 or better. You can find pageranking tools all over the web, I like www.seochat.com.

Once you know who the Big Playas are analyze their content and compare it to yours. See what's working for them, and how it could work for you. Look if they have a link exchange program or advertising packages. Placing your link on their site is a great way to reach your target audience and help boost your page rank.

Also, check out alexa.com and run a search for your site. Once you find it, click on your 'site info' link and review your traffic details page. On that page you will find a graph that displays your monthly traffic. Below that graphic is a nifty little tool that I recently discovered. You can plug in the url of one of your competitor sites and review their traffic stats in comparison to yours on the same graph! This is great way to size up the competition and see which sites are REALLY as popular as they say they are.