Spying on your competitors? It’s not dirty – it’s another type of market research. Plus you make new friends and connect with others in your niche or topic area. Day 4 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (affiliate link) focuses on how to find out more about other sites in your niche.
Not only should you surf the site to find out who’s commenting, the type of content that is being published, the voice and style, etc. but you should also do some more detailed research on the site as well. Here’s where our investigation can get technical.
Digging Deeper Into Site Analytics
Go to Google.com and search “link: www.URLofBlog.com” to see which sites are linking back to the blog you’re researching. This gives you a great idea of where you could be commenting, guest posting or contributing because you’ve highlighted sites that you know will be interested in your topic area. Check out the activity on the site, what content draws readers, and even the site rankings on Alexa or Website Grader.
Now here’s the rub. Don’t get caught up in this too much. Really you can become obsessed and/or lose your own unique voice by focusing TOTALLY on others all the time. However, I feel that some bloggers avoid doing this exercise completely out of a fear of being somehow “influenced” and miss on the opportunity to connect. To learn. To study. To grow.
Homework – select one of the top sites in your niche topic area and run through a few of these stats. Come back and report which site you looked at, what you noticed and learned about the site, what ideas you got from your own blog by studying the site, and what OTHER sites and resources you found by searching their incoming links. Go forth and spy!
Oh, what a day.
Amid all the other clutter of daily living, I did the Day 4 thing and went looking for blogs on my topic, which for this challenge is officially German PoWs in Canada during the Second World War.
Nothing leapt out, surprise, surprise.
So I turned to my love, travel.
And was pleasantly surprised to see how Alexa is ranking TheVacationGals.com because Jennifer Miner, my friend, is one of them. Yahoo!
So … top travel blogs … leaving Vacation Gals aside, I found the top-ranking travel blogs and websites (kind of blurring the lines again) were all kind of busy. Lots of sidebars, columns above and below the fold, text boxes, many voices.
Nice graphic design, but a lot going on.
Thinking of Bootsnall.com (I really like them) and gadling.com (which I think does well because of the AOL connection, but I don’t know their history at all).
What did I expect? I suppose more personal blogs, less multi-person.
But it depends on how you frame your search of course.
Leading blogs all have uncluttered design. Even when there are lots of elements on the page, there is a balance of white space and boundaries so it doesn’t feel cluttered.
Like all the exercises so far, definitely worth repeating.
I love that your site is so unique. I think I might widen the search to include similar – less-geo-specific sites. Perhaps WW2 memoir sites, or even German POW sites.
My niche is a bit specialized – business blog for childbirth professionals, and there really isn’t anyone out there doing what I’m doing. But I guess if I were to think outside the box I could look for other bloggers who are helping wellness pros with their businesses. I haven’t taken the time to do that research, but it will be something that I add to my list to tackle soon. There are quite a few bloggers that I like who write about different business topics, so perhaps I can start there.
I’m admittedly jumping around in the 31DBB and not following it day by day. I’m enjoying the information and it’s helping me to recover from a recent slump.
I love that! I’d actually thought about adding a section for childbirth educators on my (new) birth and pregnancy related blog but may email you about doing a couple guest posts instead. 🙂 I had my childbirth class outline posted here and got lots of thank you emails for that resource (which will be moving to my birth blog as soon as I catch up). I’m glad you’re finding the information motivating! Since you’re tackling a marketing angle with your blog you might also appreciate some of the guest posts in the Ten Habits of Blogging Success that is linked in the sidebar.
I’d love to do a couple of guest posts! When you get your class outline posted again, I’d be happy to write about it and link to it. There really aren’t a lot of online resources for CBEs. I’ll take a look at the Ten Habits too! Learning lots from the program and from all the great links!
OK I am waaay behind but jumping back in today! I plan to look at other lifestyle/Mom blogs that I love.