Suffice to say that I’m a data junkie. Currently I’m tracking my sleep via my FitBit. I look at how many steps I take each day, and I keep a journal of foods my kids like juxtaposed with their age. Excel is my favorite piece of software. Some people think I have a problem.
This OCD drives me to Google Analytics every, single day. Yes, I know that the world of Organic Search marketing is slow moving, but I can’t help myself. I look at the most minute points of data filtered through half-a-dozen dashboards and custom reports. Why? Most of the time for the sake of curiosity alone.
Today I noticed this in a keyword report:
In general, this means that some SEO out there is doing a little competitive intelligence. By doing a search in Google for intitle:keyword you’ll see all the people that are ranking for that keyword. Take the top 5 and you’ve just found your competitors. Do this while being signed into Google, and then while signed out, and you’ll get a rough idea of who you’ll be competing with for that keyword.
Let’s see this tactic in action. Say, I wanted to rank for “animal taxidermists in Dallas Texas”. I do a search in Google for intitle:animal+taxidermists+dallas+texas” and I get this:
Ok, so maybe animal taxidermy is redundant. You can see my search terms are in bold. This type of search will show you the sites that have “animal taxidermy dallas texas” in their title tag. The title tag is arguably the most important part of your site optimization. By doing a search for other sites that have your valuable keywords in their titles, you can get a rough estimate of who your competition for that keyword will be.
Have fun with this one. I’ve gotta get back to counting beans, and sleep patterns, and diets, and …
Related articles
