How much traffic are your competitors getting

It is always a good idea to keep an eye on your competitors so that you can assess their strengths and weaknesses, and adjust your plans so that you stay competitive. One aspect that should be monitored is how much traffic they are getting on their site. Here are some tips for how you can measure their traffic:

Stat Counter: Many sits post stat counters, where they have a counter for page visits. If you see a stat counter on their site, you will want to visit it each day for one week to see how it changes. Then after a week, visit once a week to note any changes. You will notice when they have a big marketing push, around holidays that might be big for them (such as Christmas), or when there is publicity about your industry. Tracking a company's stat counter can help you better understand the results of their marketing efforts, as well as the results of the environment.

Become a customer: Another way to see how much traffic they are getting is to become a customer yourself. The idea here is to order a little something, usually something inexpensive, and note the invoice number that you get as a receipt. Then, order again a week later, and see how much the invoice number has changed. You can do this as often as you want, assuming they have a numerical invoicing system, with the numbers indicated on the receipts.

Check various toolbar rankings: Many tool bars provide traffic rankings for sites. Of course, you will only be able to see the amount of traffic from customers using that specific toolbar, but if they have a wide enough pool of users, and a good time period used for the ranking, this is a valid way of determining how much traffic they are getting. Be sure when using this option to read what the company says for how they rank sites. You want to make sure you understand their system so you know how traffic is being evaluated. For example, are multiple visits from the same IP address on the same day being counted as one visit, or individually? If you want to use an online tool that is not a toolbar one, you can use something like Statbrain that estimates the rank based on back links, and other offsite factors that indicate popularity.

Google and Yahoo Search: You can use Yahoo Search to see who links to a particular site, which will give you a good idea of the amount of traffic they are getting, especially if their links are growing steadily. When using this tool, you will want to use each of the following, as they can produce different results despite the fact that they seem to be the same:

• "https://www.DomainName.com" with the quote marks


• "www.DomainName.com" with the quote marks


• "DomainName.com" with the quote marks


• https://www.DomainName.com


• https://DomainName.com


• DomainName.com


• link:https://DomainName.com


• link:https://www.DomainName.com


• link:DomainName.com

HTML: Try looking at the HTML. Sometimes stat counters, etc. are not visible, but you can do a view source and see if you can find a stat counter in the code before the closing body HTML.

Using these tactics, you can get a better idea of the amount of traffic your competition is getting.