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As with any business, you need to know what your competition is doing. As such, there are much easier ways that you can keep an eye on your biggest competitors when you do business on the Internet by checking out these ideas.

Google Alerts
Google Alerts can tell you whenever someone mentions you, your company, your products or your competition. There are various alerts you can sign up for.

• News alert: A news alert will tell you whenever your search term has shown up in the latest news articles.
• Web alert: A web alert will show you the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice.
• Blog alert: A Blog alert will show you the latest blog posts that contain your search terms.
• Groups alert: A Groups alert will let you know of any new posts in groups that contain your search term.
• Comprhensive alert: A Comprehensive alert will show you the latest results from many sources allowing you to check out multiple sources at once.

The Internet Archive: You may very well already be familiar with the Internet Archive which shows you year by year and month by month how a website has changed. So why is this important to you? Well, not only can you tell how your competition has changed its appearance and content over the years and find out how often they do so. You can also see what changes have been made to their sales copy as well. Don’t underestimate this very valuable tool!

Search Status Tool: This tool is one that a webmaster should not be without and one that I personally use. This convenient free tool for your Firefox browser shows you at a glance what a webpage’s PageRank is, what their Alexa popularity rank is, where incoming links are coming from via Alexa, a WhoIs search what’s in their meta tags, what kind of keyword density a page is using and more. This is an incredibly useful tool and you sure can’t beat the price!

Be sure to keep a lookout for more competitive analysis tips and ideas in the future!

If you run a web site or are simply just getting started, you by no doubt know that the key to success is driving traffic to that web site.

And not just any traffic, highly targeted traffic.

With web site competition getting fiercer each day, targeted traffic is even more important than ever. The problem is that most business owners aren’t sure where to start getting this traffic that is so desperately needed. Especially if you’re running a brand new business online.

This is where the Google AdWords program comes in.

You have no doubt noticed the ads running at the top or along the right hand side of a Google search results page. These are companies who have decided to use the Google AdWords program in order to drive targeted traffic to their web site in the hopes of selling a product.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “it takes money to make money” and that holds true regarding the AdWords program as well. But, as with all good advertising programs, you need to spend less than you take in.

The best thing about Google’s AdWords program is that if you use the right kinds of words, otherwise known as keywords, you can drive highly targeted traffic to your web site without spending a fortune.

To put it plainly, you tell Google which keywords you’d like your ads to show up for and set your daily budget. Google will then show your ads if one of the words you have chosen is searched on, and if someone clicks on your ad, you then get charged a certain amount of money which is what you pre-determined before starting your advertising campaign.

Unlike some other advertising sources, Google only charges you when someone clicks on your ad.

Not only can the Google AdWords program drive targeted traffic to your web site but it can also help your web site gain notoriety. If you have just created an online business or are struggling currently, then the AdWords program will help you get that sale.

Quite possibly the most complete guide ever written on AdWords is Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - I highly suggest you check it out.

An easy way to get your website indexed quicker (that is, faster than sitting around and waiting for a bot to find you), is to have someone who is already indexed link to you.For example, let’s say that you’ve just finished your brand new website and you’re anxious to get it indexed in the search engines.

One way to do that - that I don’t recommend - is to submit your website to the search engines. This is an outdated technique and one that will take weeks if not months to come to fruition.

The second, more preferred method, is to have someone who is already indexed in a search engine (preferably Google), place a link on one of their indexed pages to your brand new site.

This way, when the Googlebot pays a visit to this already-indexed website and finds your link, it will follow that link to your brand new website and index the pages it finds there.

Here are a few additional tips that you might find helpful:

• When finding someone who is already indexed, try and get a link from a website whose content is relevant to yours. In otherwords, if you’re selling wedding dresses, see if you can find a wedding invitation website to link to you.
• Additionally, use anchor text that is relevant to your website. Anchor text is the “clickable” portion of the link. So for your wedding dresses website, you’d want the anchor text to be something like “wedding dresses” or “wedding gowns”.
• Be certain that all of your webpages you want placed in the search engines index can be found by the search engines. Ideally, make sure you have a site map on your website that contains links to all the other pages on your site, and that you link every page on your site to that site map.

These few tips should get your brand new site indexed in no time. As for what page they end up on once their indexed, is another story. Make sure you read the other tips contained on this site to help get you noticed.