Finding out what keywords competitors are targeting ...

I was wondering how I could know wich keywords my competitors are targeting ....

Before everyone tells me : the sites that come up after a search are the ones that target the phrase you typed into a search box....

I do this all the time ... but the problem is that sometimes there is a site about a specific topic .... but it doesn't show up in the results for the keywordphrases wich seem to be the main ones ...

How is this possible ? And are there any tools wich will extract the target keywords (averaged I guess) out of a site or blog ?

-FOP-

check their meta tags

I don't know if there is an exact answer to your question.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of additional things that go into site rankings than simply on page factors that can be "evaluated" and "extracted" as to what they are targeting / ranking for.

Mostly I review their site and code and keep in mind how you SEO then your can review their strategy and it should be fairly clear what they are "targeting".

Unfortunately you will never know the full spectrum as to what they are ranking for (including long tailed terms) due to the many variables involved that no one but the SE are previous to.

If you could get their server analytical data then you would be set but we all wish that

I am not a PPC guy but supposedly you can use tools like http://www.keycompete.com to see what their PPC campaigns are which could help. Again I haven't looked into this other than it being mention to me and a quick review so I don't know validity or usefulness for what you are trying to achieve.

Hope it helps,
-Flat4

If you enter a search term in "quotes", you will be able to see what websites are targeting that specific keyword and have that specific keyword on their page. You can also look at the web pages title tag as this also relates to on-page factors of SEO. Competitive companies will not just throw any ole key term into their title. You can also check their back links to see what anchor text they are using for the links that point to them. A great tool for this would be backlinkwatch dot com. Hopefully this helps.

Have a look at their meta tags.
Have a look at the keywords used in their content.
Check their backward links and the keywords they have used in their anchor text in the process of exchanging links.

Thank you can get the exact idea of the keyowrds which your competitors have targetted.

lol...you may try this http://www.apogee-web-consulting.com/tools/keyword_tool.php

But this will extract the keywords out of the META keywords tag.

To identify your competitor's targeted keywords, just look at their Page Titles and their backlink anchor texts. Those are the real ones. Don't go by Meta tags, they are so easy to manipulate.

Be aware that there is a huge number of people out there who run websites but don't know anything about SEO. They don't target anything and don't have a strategy. You can always stumble upon one of these and make up a fine story about their assumed strategy ;-)

Well, thank you all for your replies ..

I just checked out backlinkwatch ... and typed in some of the top blogs that are in my niche .... surprisingly they most of the anchor text are jus the name of the sites / blogs ... and sometimes the owners .... and NOT the keywords that describe the topic ... why would this be so ?

-FOP-

That would be so because these links are natural and people who write about a given site triggered by a press release for instance almost always use the domain name to link to a site, in my experience. Unfortunate, but true. And it emphasizes the importance of a good domain name.

See the title thats all.

My buddy just told me about a piece of software called Keyword Spy which tell you every keyword your competitor is bidding on in major search engines. I never used it and I don't see how it cold work but he says it works.

Maybe worth looking into, if anyone has any expeirence on it please pm me.

Plaboon ... yes I know the tool ... but that's for PPC campaigns ... and I don't think that it works on content of page ....

As mentioned above, checking the backlinks of your competitors and seeing their anchor text is a pretty good indication of what keywords are being targeted.

You can try the spy software and see if they are running any AdWords campaigns and cross reference the key terms you find them for on the paid side versus the organic side as well as comparing those keywords to the titles of their webpages.

Without specifically asking them, I am not sure there are many ways to do this. Plus I dont think its likely that they will answer if you ask :-D