Often times you will see rank position fluctuation when you rank for a competitive keyword.  Non-competitive keywords are much easier to sustain for a long period of time, but competitive keywords you must have a continued SEO effort, because your competitors are doing SEO to stay competitive.  How do you do better than your competitors?  Know how — DO BETTER THAN YOUR COMPETITORS! 

The best way to achieve this goal is to stop trying to outrank the search engine and try to outrank your competitor.  Learn what your competitor is doing and do better.  Many times competitors are ranking for natural reasons without any SEO effort, this mean you have a grand advantage to take the lead.  Just make your website growth seem natural at a more appealing rate.  :)

Here is my list of my favorite competitor analysis tools:

1. Google Keyword Research Tool- this tool allows you to get an indication on how popular a keyword is and an indication on how much competition you have  for that keyword.  The data from this tool is based off of Google Adwords data.  Since that is the case I will caution that Google may have a bias on transpiring this data because they are vested financially by offering this tool.  If they choose, they can simply display keywords in order of bidding value oppose to its organic value.  I doubt Google is so “EVIL”.
2. Compete- Compete is a web-based site analysis tool which gives you information about competitor websites, such as total visitors, total unique visitors, total pageviews, total pageviews per visitor, etc.  This information can be used in a number of ways.  I typically use this information to see how my website stacks up against my competitor and their traffic.  I also use this data to research new markets I plan to break into or to research multiple sites which I want to market on, such as to see if site A gets more traffic than site B — then I’ll make a more wise and informative marketing decision.  They have a paid version that goes deeper.  It’s a great tool!
3. Quantcast- Quantcast gives (seemingly accurate) estimation of website traffic and demographics.  It shows the average monthly visits and  demographics for the site, such as: gender ratio, age ratio, household income ratio, ethnicity ratio, household education ratio, and children ages in household ratio.  As you can imagine such data can be used to target your competitors audience.  This can be very useful data if used right.
4. SEO SpyGlass- One of the better tools out there for competitive analysis.  This tool goes deep and provides friendly reports.  It does cost a fee to have full access to this tool, but the free version will allow you to see how it actually works.  Well worth the money once you see it in action.
5. SEO for Firefox - SEO for Firefox is a free and easy to use tool jam-packed with useful information.  It calculates the number of links and analyze data right from a Google search query.  The results are displayed in the search listings.  It is a must have plug-in on Firefox for any SEO.

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