Top Ten Tools For Spying On Your Competitors Results.

Do you wonder why your competitors are getting better results then you online? Strangers constantly ask me for my advice on what their competitors are doing.

I know the motivation behind asking is so these people can get the same results. With Internet growth still evolving and growing how do you monitor what your competitors are doing to beat you in sales?

Personally I like to use a lot of tools for getting things done, but here are my top ten tools and gadgets to get you started on spying on your competitors.

1. SocialMention – For Monitoring Social Media

Socialmention is like Google Alerts only it works for social media only.  It allows you to do a real time social media search and analysis on any keyword/subject. You’ll also be able to get a feel for the sentiment surrounding the particular subject and its popularity.

2. Spyfu – For Competitor Keyword & PPC Tracking

This is a pretty awesome tool that I’ve used often over the years. The free version of Spyfu provides insights into what competitors are spending & their ad copy. You simply type in your competitor and you can download an entire list of these keywords.

3. Google Alert – For Montioring New Web Results

Google Alerts has been around for years. It works as well as ever and it’s a snap to use. Go to Alerts, enter your competitor’s name, or a keyword, or the name of a competing product. Choose how often you want to receive an update and which email address you want the update sent to. And that’s it. Google will send you alerts when new content appears on the Internet that matches your query.

4. Buzzsumo – View their most shared content

I love this tool I can’s get enough of it. It’s really simple to use and gives great insight into your competitor’s most popular posts.

On the homepage of Buzzsumo, just fill in your competitor’s website. And this is what you should get:

5. WooRank – Offers a Little Bit Of Everything

This is a fabulous insightful tool that allows you to see how a website performs. From traffic estimations, to how your competitors are ranking. What keywords they are targeting, to mobile speed and usability plus much more.

6. Complete Digital

This is a tool from Compete and it works very much like the SimilarWeb tool. You type in a domain, and immediately you see competitive rank and unique visitors. You can export the CSV to help get your whole team involved.

7. Simply Measured

Simply Measured is a great social media analytics tool that provides analytics for Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, Klout and even Google Analytics (with Pinterest soon to join), but their reports are also beautiful, and very thorough. You can choose to see your reports either in Excel or online, or even export them directly to PowerPoint, and get very in-depth analysis of your competitors online behavior, followers, fans and much more.

8. Pingdom Website Speed Test

It’s simple and easy to use. Type in the URL you want to view and view the results. You can test your own website against your best competitors. Perhaps it’s a speed issue that is keeping your rankings low.

9. Moz Open Site explorer

This tool comes from Moz, so you know it’s got to be good. It’s one of the most popular tools out there today, and it allows you to follow your competitors’ link-building efforts. You can see who is linking back to them regarding PageRank, authority/domain, and anchor text. You also can compare link data, which can help keep things easy.

10. Affilorama

Fantastic tool that allows you to keep an eye on your competitors. Easily see how your competitors are moving up (or down) in the rankings. View your competitors backlinks and get advanced warning of any potential threats.

You can check out your competitors without using any tools but it does take a little bit of planning and preparation. If you’re not interested in investing in any tools or relying on any free tools, use the help of Google and Bing to find the site owners by doing some advanced query searches. There essentially are two different approaches you may want to take. Both of the following strategies are more advanced “secret cheats,” but they will keep you away from using any tools!

Have you used any of the tools mentioned above? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.