The Top 6 Free Online Marketing Tools To Spy on Your Competition

If you want to succeed online you need to become a spy. Spying on your competition allows you to effectively know how well your business is performing online and what steps you can take to overtake your competitors. First, start by making a list of the top companies in your industry, then use these tools to see where you stack up.

6. BuiltWith

 
BuiltWith allows you to type in any URL and instantly find out what platform a site is built on. Amongst other things it also lets you know what type of analytics tools are installed and if they have any remarketing codes installed. This is useful for identifying if there is something that you aren’t using that is holding you back. Unlocking their paid version will allow you to run reports and generate lists of other sites using those platforms. www.builtwith.com

5. Moat

 
Moat allows you to enter in the name/brand of the competitor you are spying on and get a look at any display ads they might be running. Moat does a pretty good job of indexing display network ads across the web but be aware that there still might be ads running that Moat hasn’t indexed. www.moat.com

4. Open Site Explorer

 
Open Site Explorer from Moz is a tool which shows you the number of backlinks and root domains a URL has. In addition, it predicts both domain authority and page authority on a scale of 1-100 (100 being the best).  Open Site Explorer is useful for when you want to see why a particular page/site/company is ranking higher than you. Because part of Google’s search algorithm is based on the number of(quality, not spammy) backlinks a site has you can get a better idea of how much link building you will have to do in order to overtake a website in search rankings. Remember to try out websites both with and without www in the URL because Google views these separately. www.opensiteexplorer.org

3. ahrefs

 
Like Open Site Explorer, ahrefs is another tool you can use to look up you and your competitors backlinks. Both Open Site Explorer and ahrefs do a lot of similar things. Personally I like the layout of ahrefs a little bit more and I like the anchor cloud which shows you the top anchor text used on you and your competitor’s backlinks. However for best results you should use both tools in order to see exactly where people are getting their links from and how powerful those links are. www.ahrefs.com

2. Moz Local

 
Moz Local is another Moz tool and will allow you see what local listings you and your competitors have listed. You might be surprised to find some sites listed that you yourself haven’t claimed. This is because listing sites and directories tend to share information with each other and receive business information from a few aggregators. This can lead to your listing information being changed without you doing anything so it is a good idea to stay on top of your local listings. While it is not always 100% accurate this service can save you a great deal of time by saving you from going to every single listing site to see if your are properly claimed. www.moz.com/local

1. Spy Fu

 
Spy Fu is a great tool that allows you to enter the URL of a competitor and get a basic idea of how much search traffic they are getting both paid and organically. Spy Fu indexes paid searches and shows you how much people are spending daily on paid search. It also allows you to see a list of keyword rankings organically. Their Kombat tool lets you enter in both your URL and your competitors and see how much both you and your competitor are spending and how much of an overlap there is on the keywords you’re bidding on. www.spyfu.com
Not only will these tools help you see what your competitors are doing it can give you some insights on how you’re doing and what you need to do to improve. Using these tools periodically to keep tabs on what your competition will keep you a step ahead of the game.
 
How do you stack up to your competitors? Contact Trellis today to see where you stand.