4 Easy Online Tools Your Competitors Can Use to Spy on You

4 Easy Online Tools Your Competitors Can Use to Spy on You

Posted by · on March 14, 2013 · in Uncategorized · with 0 Comments

You need to get on the front foot when it comes to the internet. With Google’s index of over 1 trillion unique URL’s, you need to work hard to ensure that your site is reaching the right prospects and not hiding in the mass of information on the web.

Here are four handy tools you can use to get ahead…  which your competitors may already be using to get ahead of you…

1.       Bruce Clay – www.bruceclay.com.au

Bruce Clay is a highly respected search engine and competitive research authority on the net. His website provides several free-to-use tools that provide valuable insight into your website. Your competitors can use them to learn more about your online business.

Page Analyser – Your competitors can enter your site information and the tool will return with reports of information found on each page of your website – they can now write this information down, copy the keywords that feature heavily and use them to rank higher than you in natural searches.

Server Page Tool – Competitors can search the ‘spider-ability’ of their existing site – use this to detect any redirects or issues that may prevent their site from being well ranked. Utilising this tool, and making changes based on these results can again help them appear higher than you in natural searches.

2.       Google Alerts – alerts.google.com

This is a very easy and yet very powerful tool to use. Your competitors can type in any keyword or website address and whenever Google finds a new reference to the keyword(s) it will send an email with a short summary and a link to it.

With this tool, your competitors can tag your company – receiving ‘as it happens’ information about you, your company, your products or people you are linked to without spending any human resource time.

3.       Domain Tools – www.whois.domaintools.com

Your competitors can use this to search your site information. They can access publicly available information that covers the legal ownership of your domain, naming servers and the names of companies that have ownership over aspects of your site. It can give admin information, such as direct contact numbers, and names of company members.

Sometimes, we find companies that don’t own their own domain name! This tool can be used to check domain status – someone could buy yours from under you! Visit the site and type in your own company’s website address – you may be surprised.

4.       Facebook

As harmless as it seems, having personal information about yourself or your company on networking sites can reveal a little too much or show disgruntled cracks in the business.

‘Facebook Stalking’ is very easy to do, particularly with public profiles. Your competitors or prospective clients can simply type in a staff member’s name into a search engine, and often a Facebook profile is within the top results.

Comments made by clients in their personal lives can reflect how you will be treated as a client, so the way your staff conduct themselves on sites like this can impact on decisions made elsewhere.

Try to keep a clean profile, and perhaps stress that your staff do as well. Do regular searches for yourself and your company online to see what pops up.

Of course, you can put all these devices to work for you as well. If you don’t have the time or energy, give us a call or send us an email and we can do the hard work for you.

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