Keep an Eye on Competitors using Google Search String

There is no such thing as new business hence, the need to channel your inner James Bond. Starting a business that people are already into can be very stressful to push forward as a marketer, that is why a lot of digital marketers take their first strategy as carrying out a competitive research. there are free tools that can be used to carry out qualitative and quantitative data about your competitors that will be helpful in creating a digital marketing strategy and one of them is the Google Search String.

Benefit of Competitive research

Knowing Competitors strength and weakness: carrying out a competitive analysis exposes you to your competitor’s strength and lapses in the market will be helpful in mapping out your marketing plan.
Marketing Trends: when you carry out a competitive research, you get updated on changes in your market and thus exposing market opportunities you need to tap into.
Product Improvement: Products are rapidly developed to meet consumers needs. You need to key into this. competitive research helps you understand these improvements and other unique improvements that can drive in more sales.
Marketing: competitive research also helps you identify key features that can improve your marketing plan. If your competition is successful in selling their product, then they are definitely doing their marketing right.

How to Use Google Search Strings

Google Search String is a line of a command typed into the search engine to find out a specific information. There are three major Google search strings that matter when carrying out competitive research and they are

Site:

This search string tells you how many pages your competitor’s website has. This comes in very handy for people who want to build a website but have no idea on how many pages they need. Using this search string, Google specifically shows you the website pages of your competitors and their titles. On the google search engine interface, type in the search string followed by competitor’s website without any space e.g site:website.com. Google will show you all the pages on the website.

Link:

Link search string shows up the result of other links and affiliates that link to your website. This search string come in handy when you are looking for your competitor’s backlinks or outbound links. The search string shows you several websites, blogs or affiliates programs including apps linking to your competitor’s website.

To use this search string, head on to your Google search engine interface and type the following; link:website.com. Remember there shouldn’t be any space between the search string and your competitor’s website. It is important to note that the first page of the search result normally comes out accurate, but the rest of the result pages can be inaccurate.

This search string comes in handy for those who do not have an idea of all their competitors. The search string is used to find out the websites that are similar or related to yours. For example, you want to start a business and you only have an idea of one major competitor. You will want to also find out other competitors out there who aren’t popular but offer the same services as yours. Using this search string you type the competitor website without any space; e.g: related:website.com.

Remember, when using the search strings, you need to be specific. Do not add space when using it and do not add www. when adding the website.

Keep an Eye on Competitors using Google Search String