Discovering and Using Your Competitive Advantage Online

Any online business owner will tell you that discovering and building your own competitive advantage is essential to Internet success. Using that advantage, once it is identified, is even more vital. However, that task is not always easy considering the huge number of businesses online. What ultimately makes a difference is your ability to analyze your competition and use that information to advance your company.

There are two success strategies that are continually promoted on the Web. One is competitive analysis - finding out who your competitors are, what they are doing, and whom they are connecting with. The other is building link popularity, which offers a two-fold purpose: increasing search engine positioning and driving qualified traffic to your site. In order to build a competitive advantage, however, you have to do both at the same time.

This plan of action sounds simple on the surface: Find out which sites are linking to your competitors and get them to link to you. In practice, however, it can get much more complicated. The steps can be a bit time consuming, but the benefits are tremendous! Let me share the steps youll need to follow in order to be successful.

1. Make note of sites that compete with your own.

2. Use several search engines or link popularity software to find who is linking to your competitors. This will need to be done one site at a time. Youll want to specifically connect with those who link to your competitors in order to reduce the effects of your competitions sales efforts.

3. Sort through the links you find and contact the most applicable sites.

4. Request a link from them to your site. When you contact them, youll want to offer the benefits of linking to you (such as membership in an affiliate program, a reciprocal link to their site, or a referral bonus for any business you receive from their link).

This particular type of competitive analysis is extremely helpful, and one of the only ways to level the playing field between you and your competition. Once you identify your rivals link strategy, you can gain more ground and position yourself with much greater visibility in front of those who specifically need your products or services.

The results? More qualified inbound links to your site, greater sales, reduced impact from your competition, a higher quality of traffic, and a boost in your search engine positioning.

Lewis Hong © 2002

About the Author

Let Lewis show you how to discover & use your competitive advantage. No more searching countless sites manually! Search multiple sites at once & compile all the findings into easy-to-read reports. LinkSurvey software means you get all the link info for your competitors immediately & effortlessly. Get the details today - before your competition does!

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