Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Competitive intelligence, the "what else", is one of the core tenets of Web Analytics 2.0.

The reason is simple: The ecosystem within which you function on the web contains mind blowing data you can use to become better.

Your traffic grew by 6% last year, what was your competitor's growth rate? 15%. Feel better? : ) When should you start doing paid search advertising for tours to Italy for 2011? In May 2010 (!). What is your "share of search" in the netbook segment compared to your biggest competitor? 9 points higher, now you deserve a bonus! How many visitors to your site go visit your competitor's site right after coming to yours? 39%, good god! Where to do display advertisements to ensure you get in front of men considering proposing to their girlfriends (or boyfriends)? Go beyond targeting men between the age of 28 and 34, use search behavior and be really smart.

I am just scratching the surface of what's possible.

It is simply magnificent what you can do with freely available data on the web about your direct competitors, your industry segment and indeed how people behave on search engines and other websites.

The secret to making optimal use of CI data lies in one single realization: You must ensure you understand how the data you are analyzing is collected.

Not all sources of CI data are created equal. It is key that before you use the data that comScore or Nielsen or Google or HitWise or Compete or your brother-in-law shove into your face that you understand where the data comes from.

Once you understand that you choose: 1. The best source possible that is 2. The right answer for the question you are asking (which implies you have to be flexible!).

Here are the sources of competitive intelligence data.

#1: Toolbar Data.

Toolbars are add-on's that provide additional functionality to web browsers, such as easier access to news, search features, and security protections. They are available from all the major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo! as well as from thousands of other sources.

These toolbars also collect limited information about the browsing behavior of the customers who use them, including the pages visited, the search terms used, perhaps even time spent on each page, and so forth. Typically, data collected is anonymous and not personally identifiable information (PII).

After the toolbars collect the data, your CI tool then scrubs and massages the data before presenting it to you for analysis. For example, with Alexa, you can report on traffic statistics (such as rank and page views), upstream (where your traffic comes from) and downstream (where people go after visiting your site) statistics, and key-words driving traffic to a site.

Millions of people use widely deployed toolbars, mostly from the search engines, which makes these toolbars one of the largest sources of CI data available. That very large sample size makes toolbar data a very effective source of CI data, especially for macro website traffic analysis such as number of visits, average duration, and referrers.

Search engine toolbars are a ton more popular which is the key reason that other toolbars data sources, such as Alexa, are not useful any more (the data is simply not good enough).

Toolbar Data Bottom-line: Toolbar data is typically not available by itself. It is usually a key component in tools that use a mix of sources to provide insights.

#2: Panel Data.

Panel data is another well-established method of collecting data. to gather panel data, a company may recruit participants to be in a panel, and each panel member installs a piece of monitoring software. The software collects all the panel’s browsing behavior and reports it to the company running the panel. Additionally the person is also required to self report demographic, salary, household members, hobbies, education level and other such detailed information.

Varying degrees of data are collected from a panel. At one end of the spectrum, the data collected is simply the websites visited, and at the other end, the monitoring software records the credit cards, names, addresses, and any other personal information typed into the browser.

Panel data is also collected when people unknowingly opt into sending their
data. Common examples are a small utility you install on your computer to get the weather or an add-on for your browser to help you auto complete forms. in the unreadable terms of service you accept, you agree to allow your browsing behavior to be recorded and reported.

Panels can have a few thousand members or several hundred thousand.

You need to be cautious about three areas when you use data or analysis based on panel data:

The panel methodology is based on the traditional television data capture model. In a world that is massively fragmented, panels face a huge challenge in collecting accurate and complete (or even representative) data. A rule of thumb I have developed is if a site gets more than 5 million unique visitors a month, then there is a sufficient signal from panel-based data.

Panel Data Bottom-line: For companies such as comScore and Nielsen panel data has been a primary source for competitive reporting they provide their clients. But because of the methodology's inherent limitations, recently panel data is augmented by other sources of data before it is provided for analysis (including for a subset of data you'll get from comScore and Nielsen – please check & clarify before you use the data).

#3: ISP (Network) Data.

We all get our internet access from Internet Service Providers (ISP's), and as we surf the Web, our requests go through the servers of these ISP's to be stored in server log files.

The data collected by the ISP consists of elements that get passed around in URLs, such as sites, page names, keywords searched, and so on. The ISP servers can also capture information such as browser types and operating systems.

The size of these isps translates into a huge sample size.

For example, Hitwise which chiefly relies on isp data, has a sample size of 10 million people in the United states and 25 million worldwide. Such a large sample size reduces sample bias (surprise!). There are also geographically focused competitive intelligence solutions, like Netsuus in Spain, that provide analysis from excellent locally sourced data.

The other benefit of ISP data is that the sampling bias is also reduced; since you and I don’t have to agree to be monitored, our ISP simply collects this anonymous data and then sells it to third-party sources for analysis.

ISP's typically don’t publicize that they sell the data, and companies that purchase that data don’t share this information either. So, there is a chance of some bias. Ask for the sample size when you choose your ISP-based CI tool, and go for the biggest you can find.

ISP Data Bottom-line: The largest samples of CI data currently available comes from ISP data (in tools like Hitwise and Compete). Though both tools (and other smart ones like them) increasingly use a small sample of panel data and even some small amount of purchased toolbar data.

#4: Search Engine Data.

Our queries to search engines, such as Bing, Google, Yahoo!, and Baidu, are logged by those search engines, along with basic connectivity information such as IP address and browser version. In the past, analysts had to rely on external companies to provide search behavior data, but increasingly search engines are providing tools to directly mine their data.

You can use search engine data with a greater degree of confidence, because it comes directly from the search engine (doh!). Remember, though, that the data is specific to that search engine—and because each search engine has distinct user base, it is not wise to apply lessons from one to another.

With that mild warning here are some amazing tools. . . .

In Google AdWords, you can use Keyword Tool, the Search-based Keyword Tool and Insights for Search.

Similar tools are available from Microsoft: Entity Association, Keyword Group Detection, Keyword Forecast, and Search Funnels (all at Microsoft adCenter Labs).

Search Engine Data Bottom-line:Search engine data tends to be the primary, and typically the best source you can find, for search data analysis. If you are analyzing data for your SEO or PPC campaigns and you find the search engine providing the data then you should instantly embrace it and immediately propose marriage!

#5: Benchmarks from Web Analytics Vendors.

Web analytics vendors have lots of customers, which means they have lots of data. Many vendors now aggregate this real customer data and present it in the form of benchmarks that you can use to index your own performance.

Benchmarking data is currently available from Fireclick, Coremetrics, and Google Analytics. Often, as is the case with Google Analytics, customers have to explicitly opt in their data into this benchmarking service. But this is not always true for all vendors, please check with yours.

Both Fireclick and Coremetrics provide benchmarks related to conversion rates, cart abandonment, time on site, and so forth. Google Analytics provides benchmarks for visits, bounce rates, page views, time on site, and % new visits.

In all three cases, you can compare your performance to specific vertical markets (for example, retail, apparel, software, and so on), which is much more meaningful.

The cool benefit of this method is that websites directly report very accurate data, even if the web analytics vendor makes that data anonymous. The downside is that your competitors might not all use the same tool as you; therefore, you are comparing your actual performance against the actual performance of a subset of your competitors.

With data from vendors, you must be careful about sample size, that is, how
many customers the web analytics vendor has. If your web analytics vendor has just 1,000 customers and it is producing benchmarks in 15 industry categories, it might be a hit or a miss in terms of how valuable / representative the benchmarks are.

WA Vendor Data Bottom-line: Data from web analytics vendors comes from their clients, so it is real data. The client data is anonymous, so you can’t do a direct comparison between you and your arch enemy; rather, you’ll compare yourself to your industry segment (which is perfectly ok).

#6: Self-reported Data.

It is common knowledge that some methods of data collection, such as panel-
based, do not collect data with the necessary degree of accuracy. A site’s own analytics tool may report 10 million visits, and the panel data may report 6 million. To overcome this issue, some vendors, such as Quantcast and Google’s Ad Planner, allow websites to report their own data through their tools.

For sites that rely on advertising, the data used by advertisers must be as
accurate as possible; hence, the sites have an incentive to share data directly. If your competitors publish their own data through vendors such as Google’s Ad planner or Quantcast, then that is probably the cleanest and best source of data for you.

One thing to be cautious about when you work with self-reported data. Check the definitions of various metrics. For example, if you see a metric called Cookies, find out exactly what that metric means before you use the data.

Self-Reported Data Bottom-line: Because of its inherent nature, self-reported data tends to augment other sources of data provided by tools such as Ad Planner or Quantcast. It also tends to be the cleanest source of data available.

#7: Hybrid Data (/All Your Base Are Belong To Us).

Competitive intelligence vendors are observing you from the outside. Any single source, toolbar or panels or isp or tags or spyware etc, will have its own bias / limitation.

Some, smart, vendors now use multiple sources of data to augment the data set they started their life with.

The first method is to append the data. This is what's happening in the case of Quantcast and Google Ad Planner, in both cases they have their own source of data to which your self reported data is added. The resulting reports are "awesomely good".

The second method is to put many different sources (say toolbar, panel, isp) into a blender, churn at high speed, throw in a pinch of math and a dash or correction algorithms, and – boom! – you have one "awesomely good" number. A good example of this is Compete or the DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Google's Trends for Websites is another example of a tool that uses hybrid data for its reporting (see answer #2 here).

The benefit of using hybrid methodology is that the vendor can plug in any gaps
that might exist between different sources.

The challenge is that it is much harder to peel back the onion and understand some of the nuances and biases in the data (sometimes mildly frustrating to analysis ninja's such as myself!).

Hence, the best-practice recommendation is to forget about the absolute numbers and focus on comparing trends; the longer the time period, the better.

Hybrid Data Bottom-line: As the name implies, hybrid data contains data from many different sources and is increasingly the most commonly used methodology. It will probably be the category that will grow the most because frankly in context others look rather sub optimal.

[Update:] #8: External Voice of Customer Data.

This is one often overlooked source of competitive intelligence (/benchmarking) data. There are several ways to use Voice of Customer data.

For starters various companies such as iPerceptions (like CoreMetrics, Google Analytics, Fireclick above for clickstream) publish Customer Satisfaction & Task Completion Rate (my most beloved metric!) numbers for various industries.

If I am in the internet retail game I can use these benchmarks to compare my performance:

Or I can dig deeper and compare my performance by the Primary Purpose segments:

Both of the above are from the iPerceptions Q4 2009 Ecommerce Benchmark report. You'll find other reports in the Resource Center.

With other sources like the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) you can get a big deeper. Just choose an industry from their site, I choose Internet Travel, and bam!

If I am Travelocity I am wondering what in the name of Jebus did the other guys do last year to have all those gains in Satisfaction where I got a zero.

And really what are those guys at Priceline eating! 5.6 points improvement just last year, 15 points over the last 9! Sure they started with a smaller number but still.

What can I, sad Travelocity, learn from them? From others?

In both cases above the intelligence came from a third party doing the research and giving you data for free.

But you can also commission studies, from the two companies above or one of thousands like them on the web.

Or you can do it yourself.

I just met a Top Web Company the other day and I spent $300 on 20 remote usability participants to go to the website of Top Web Company and their main competitor. I gave the usability participants the exact same tasks to do on both sites.

The scores were most illuminating (and embarrassing for Top Web Company). It allowed me to (without working at either company) collect competitive intelligence about how each were delivering against: 1. Task Completion Rate and 2. Customer Satisfaction.

You could collect your own competitive intel using UserTesting.Com, User Zoom, Loop11, or one of many other tools.

Or for even "cheaper" (and a bit less impactful) insights you can use something delightful like www.fivesecondtest.com. Upload how your pages, upload those of your competitors (or complete strangers not in your industry) and learn from real users which designs they prefer and what works best.

Hybrid Data Bottom-line: I love customers, I love Task Completion Rate as a powerful metric, I love VOC. Above are three simple ways in which you can collect competitive intelligence using Voice of Customer data and drive action perhaps even faster than the first seven methods!

[PS: Nothing, absolutely nothing, works better to win against HiPPOs than using competitors and customers!]

The Optimal Competitive Analysis Process.

A lot of data is available about your industry or your competitors that you can
use to your benefit.

Here is the process I recommend for CI data analysis:

Don’t skip the steps, and glory will surely be yours.

See the additional posts linked to below for types of analysis you can do once you choose the right tool [OR you can also start on page 221 of my new book Web Analytics 2.0!].

Ok now your turn.

Do you use a source of competitive intelligence data not covered in this blog post? Which of the above 7 is your favorite? Was there something surprising you learned in this post? What is one thing you would add to the critical analysis above?

Please share your tips, best practices, critique in comments.

Thanks.

PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:

• Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Metrics, Tips & Best Practices
• Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data
• Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google / DoubleClick Ad Planner
• Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Insights for Search
• Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Trends for Websites
• Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool

How do you measure success of a online webinar?

I recently did a webinar for the Search Engine Strategies conference (I am doing the opening conference keynote at SES London and SES New York) and my Market Motive co-faculty member Greg Jarboe sent me this KPI via email:

"Your webcast was a big success. Your KPI questions per attendee was off the chart!"

I don't know why I had not thought of this wonderful KPI. So much better than # of attendees.

As always though context is king.

It could be a good thing ("you were great, engaged the audience") or a not such a good thing ("no one understood a thing you were saying, hence so many questions"). Only upon reading the actual questions could I figure out which case it was (mercifully case #1 for me!).

End of a minor web analytics lesson on going beyond obvious metrics and never, ever, never forgetting context.

Back to our story. . . an hour is too short a time to answer all the questions (even in a webinar just focused on attendee questions). So here is a small selection from the 80 questions I could not answer in the wide ranging webinar.

We will cover measuring success of SEO efforts on one web page, how to do search engine optimization for b2b websites, how to rank for highly saturated industries / categories / keywords, and which competitive intelligence tools do I use for search program optimization (and targeting display ads using search data!).

I hope you all find the answers to be of value.

#1. How do you measure SEO performance on a page level? I'd like to know how well my seo efforts for a particular pages have performed.

Every measurement question should start by taking one step back and thinking of goals.

In this case here are some obvious ones:

Now it is not hard to figure out how to measure performance! [Before you do any kind of measurement please consider going through the above exercise. It is simple, effective and works like a charm - not to mention allows to get going faster.]

Before you analyze do one small thing. Log into the Advanced Segmentation tool in your web analytics tool. Create a segment for Organic Search traffic. Sources -> Contain -> Google, Bing, Yahoo! etc. Save. Another way to cheat at this is to simply use Medium Matches Exactly Organic.

If your web analytics tool requires you to call the vendor to set up advanced segments or re-tag your site to get segments then switch. There are too many choices in the market.

Now log into whatever web analytics tool you use and drill down to the specific page you are interested in ("Top Pages Report" / "Content Title Report" etc). Apply the Organic Search segment to that report (in Google Analytics segments are on the top right, in other tools please refer to user manual).

More traffic, not that hard. Stretch the time period to six months (or some large date range – remember SEO takes time). What do you see? Nice and gradual up and to the right trends. Do your happy dance! Something's working. Now look down at the table under the graph that shows traffic sources. If you did your segment correctly you'll see just the search engines and how much each is contributing to your overall traffic. Does the distribution match your goals?

Ready for the next step? Click on Referring Keywords and now you are looking just at the keywords bringing traffic to this page. Do the keywords match the intent of the page? Do they contain keywords you were specifically targeting? No? Why not? On the other hand what are the surprises? Is the customer intent contained in the keywords telling you how to change / improve the page? Do it!

Indexing. . . I am a big fan of Google's Webmaster Tools because of the wealth of data available, if you are not using this free resource (no matter if you are a SEO or not). Bing's Webmaster Tools have also evolved a ton, please claim your account right away and dive in. [I have not had much fun with Yahoo!'s web master resources.] In either tool you are looking for how well your site is indexed (report: Your site on the web -> Top search queries -> Impressions), how well your pages are indexed and, my absolute favorite, which keywords your search results are showing up. You are checking to see if:

1. the pages you are targeting are being indexed frequently and

2. if your site is showing up for the keywords you were targeting.

You want validation that you are showing up for the set of keywords you are optimizing for (above) and that your pages are being recorded as being optimized for the right keywords (above the above :).

Success. . . I humbly believe that the biggest mistake most of us doing SEO make is that we are far too obsessed with ranking and meta this and that and how to work back algorithms etc etc. We should focus more on what was the business impact of our SEO efforts.

So in this context go back to your page report (from step 1 where you applied the organic segment) and look at the $Index [which is: (goal value + e-commerce revenue) / unique views of the page you are analyzing]. That is a crude measure how how efficient your page is being at converting. Of course look at our favorite metric bounce rate by keyword (that tells you if you can get people to give you one solitary click, the most primitive measure of SEO success).

If you truly want to kick it up a notch as a SEO please please please go to the Goal and Ecommerce / Conversions reports and apply your organic segment, stretch the time period, and report (aggressively) how well your SEO efforts are delivering value to the business.

Do it at a overall level, do it by country, do it by search engine, do it by specific keywords you were targeting. . . . and take two minutes to straighten your clothes because a new level of love and praise are about to be dumped on you by your company / client!

[Does the above seem like a lot of work even if it is straight forward? It is. I know we look for short cuts. There is no such thing in real life. But if you are willing to put in a little bit of sweat equity then you'll stand miles apart from your SEO competitors. Not a bad trade off, right?]

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#2. Is there a fundamental difference in SEO strategies for business-to-business sites vs consumer focused ones?

[It is worth pointing out I am not a hard core SEO, that would be Todd Malicoat, I just play one one TV! Think of below as my personal lessons from the front-line of doing this work to the extent my humble skills allow.]

The basic techniques you use to do search engine optimization between b2b and b2c do not change all that much.

Ok All that is the same, no matter if you are a b2b, b2c, b2a (business to aliens, yes they do exist!). Do all that first to make sure you are not coming to play the super bowl naked.

Here are a few things that are different with b2b. . . . .

* Some very effective SEO strategies like allowing users to add reviews and comments and extend the scope of the page do not work as well with b2b as it is a differ net type of engagement and experience with your customers. Well don't give up. You have many many white papers, though leadership papers, webinars, Big B2B Association publications where you contributed and more locked up in pdf or, much worse, behind a forced "give me your login" / "create a account" page. I am going to give you a false email, why not just give me the content, AND let the search engine index it efficiently after all you want people to consume the content.

Did I say already content is king?

* One of the most common issues with b2b websites is that they often have a very specific understanding of their space when it comes to how their potential customers search for information. This results in not speaking the same language (say keywords) as their customers. When I work with b2b websites I spend a lot of time in the AdWords Keywords Tool, Insights for Search, Compete etc analyzing keywords and search behavior in my category. This knowledge goes back into re-doing content, urls etc.

This is of course a good method for b2c as well, but it is significantly more important for b2b.

* Start a conversation. There will likely be a lot fewer individuals talking about you / your industry, a lot fewer tweeting and expressing their love (or hate). I get it. But conversation on your site and away from your site is key (obvious fact). Why not host a user forum on your website for current and future customers to come together and share their thoughts / ideas / complaints / rave about your competitors (scared?)? Why not seek out the few people who do talk about the industry on twitter and engage with them? Why not start a YouTube channel with a series of how-to videos? Why not, : ), start a blog? Not just to highlight your own pomposity and press releases but to really share and lift your industry (not just your company)? Why not become the destination for industry professional?

So few people in the b2b space bother to start conversations, why not use that to your advantage? Even if you can hook 100 people is that not more than worth it?

Three small things that I would prioritize higher when I work with b2b sites.

What do you do differently when it comes to your b2b clients?

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#3. When trying to help your rank in search engines. . . when you are in a saturated industry like health or travel insurance – how does the approach change or differ?

Two words: Long Tail!

When you say saturated most people mean that for the "top" keywords they are interested in there is too much competition. For example: "hotels in las vegas", "cheap health insurance" etc.

When there are a lot of players in the field it can be difficult to show up for the "head terms", especially if there are some strong players in the field. In these cases I have had a very positive experience focusing not on the head terms (terms for which there is a lot of traffic) but rather focusing on the long tail (usually key phrases that individually have little traffic but collectively these key phrases can deliver a ton of traffic).

So, if relevant for your business, try to rank for "california health insurance plans" or "california individual health plans" etc. Key phrases (not just words) that each have much less competition (and will likely deliver more relevant audiences).

You can use various keyword tools out there to identify these key phrases and then adapt your SEO strategy (pages, content, urls, etc) to focus on them. One way I use is to just type in competitor urls into AdWords Keyword Tool and then research what is working for them and adapt my strategy.

Targeting the long tail with SEO can be a bunch of work, hence I have recommended in the past that one effective and cheap way is to use paid search to monetize the long tail. But I can tell you from experience that it works. For example for this blog the top 10 (head) keywords bring in something like 5k visits and the long tail (around 25k keywords) bring close to 34k visits. All organic (I am not rich enough to afford paid search!).

One more bonus tip: Leverage "universal search".

Videos, pictures, downloads, offers, buttons, maps, uploaded menus, coupons, and on and on and on.

When you search for many terms relevant to me you'll see videos pop up, my book (uploaded into Google book search) show up with preview thumbnails, some of my flickr images and my twitter account and so on and so forth. For many of these searches I don't rank #1. But man do those listings (when triggered by the search engine's algorithms) stand out and grab the Searcher's attention. Often for competitor or big paid web analytics tool queries where I have a snowball's chance in a hot place of standing out.

It is ironic that most big companies (with so many assets to leverage) are pretty bad at this. So you win! :)

Also Google (I work there) Local Business Center is really good: http://www.google.com/local/add If you are a small business then this is one more important arrow to have in your quiver!

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#4. Can you look at your competitors sites in the analysis tools you have discussed?

Yes.

But first. . . . it is important to realize that you need to have two skills before you look at competitive intelligence tools:

If you meet the above two requirements. . . . .

I love using competitive intelligence tools because they give me a perspective and context that is simply missing from Omniture or WebTrends or CoreMetrics or the clickstream tools.

In the search context here are some of my favorite tools and what I use them for.

Insights for Search:

I adore I4S because it is perhaps the most comprehensive "database of intentions" thanks to providing us all with access to worldwide Google organic search data.

Use it to understand the latest trends in your category. For example: "How is interest in the computer security category (All Categories -> Computers & Electronics -> Computer Security) and what are the top 100 search terms and the fastest rising brand names / products / searches in that category?"

Use it to identify opportunities. "What states do people search for credit cards the most? What states do people search for Visa credit cards?" Oh look the states with really high credit card searches don't have really high visa card searches, maybe we should do some offline advertising!

Use it to time your campaigns. "When should I have started SEO and PPC campaigns for Italy Tours 2010?" In April 2009!! That's when people first started looking for them. Now go plan for 2011.

Helpful article: How to use Google Insights for Search.

Ad Planner:

This wonderful tool is really built to help you do better display advertising. You log in and you have the delightful ability to do demographic (male, female, age, education, income etc) and psychographic (baby boomers, extreme sports fan, household decision makers, luxury goods consumers, moms etc) segmentation. You can hone in precisely which websites most likely contain your desired audiences. Show them relevant ads and get clicks!

But in the search context there are two things that you use this tool for.

Type in any website you want, expedia.com in my case, and checkout the site and search affinity data:

[If you don't see the image above, turn off your ad blocker.]

"The affinity score estimates how many times more likely you are to reach an audience who visits a specific site or searches for specific keywords versus an audience on the internet overall." Source.

Sweet 'eh?

Second, click on the tab that says Search by Audience and then the Keywords Searched button and now you have an ability to use search behavior to identify audience pools.

To use the examples of my beloved Indianapolis Colts (go Colts!!!). . . . I have an ability to type in a bunch of related keywords (the tool suggests most used ones) and find out which websites are most likely to be visited by people who search for these keywords:

[If you don't see the image above, turn off your ad blocker.]

At the top are keywords I typed. On the bottom are most commonly searched keywords, I can choose these if I want.

I hit ok and then sort by Comp Index, to ensure I sort the data by the highest audience concentration (audience that searches for all things Colts in this case).

I can use this search and web data to identify where audience I am most interested in exists. I can use it to find out the keyword data for those sites. I can use this to identify sizes (visitors, page views etc) of those websites.

Nice right? Actionable too!

Helpful article: How to use Google Ad Planner.

Compete.Com:

Compete is a paid tool (and it only contains US data). I really love using it because of the wealth of search data it can provide, at an affordable prices.

[I have had a complimentary Pro account for the longest time thanks to the nice people from Compete, that might bias my opinion. Other than that I have no other affiliation with Compete.]

In context of Search I use the data for. . .

1. Identifying what are the top referring keywords for any site that I am interested in:

Above data for www.clickequations.com (the paid search analytics company I am on the advisory board of). Of course when you log in with a paid account you would see rest of the data like paid and natural search split for each keyword and time and what not.

Craig will not be happy that he ranks only #12 on the keyword list! :)

I can either use this data to go after keywords that are not currently referring traffic to ClickEquations (more for me!!) or I now know what keywords I need to target to take ClickEquations down in my quest for world domination! Ha!

See how focused you can be with data?

2. Identifying share of search for a keyword:

In this case I would like to own the pear fruit market, though at the moment I only own two trees. So I go into Compete to find who my current competition is (above exact match data for query "pears"). I can get lots of details about volume, paid and organic share, what percent of traffic comes to a site from that keyword, etc etc.

Now that I have a benchmark I can go about my super awesome kick butt SEO efforts and one way I know I am winning is to check this report in a month or two (or three weeks after whenever I think I am done). If I show up here I know I am having a impact.

These are just three of the many tools I use. There are a whole lot out there that sometimes give you similar data to the above three, or often give you a lot more. Just remember that there is a lot you can learn from what is going on in your ecosystem and at your competitors.

Ok now your turn.

Got a couple tips you want to share with us about how best to do SEO for B2B sites? How would you measure success of SEO efforts spent on a page on your website? Would you use any of the four ideas I have suggested? Care to comment on how to do SEO for crowded industries or for keyword categories where one or two players seem to dominate? What is your favorite search competitive intelligence tool?

Please share your tips / best practices / comments / critique.

Thank you.