Do you know who’s in your online neighborhood? Find out with an Online Market Audit
Buzz posts serve as great social media fodder while displaying your industry knowledge.
Creating the best buzz post is harder than you may expect. It is not as easy as going to your favorite websites and referencing content you think your audience will find interesting. You have to use metrics to truly find the best sources to base buzz posts on.
The process, known as an Online Market Audit (OMA), will help you create the most relevant buzz posts while identifying competition and discovering the size of your entire market.
The Online Market Audit
This metric-based analysis of your competition will help dictate the best sites to monitor while writing buzz posts.
The Online Market Audit consists of the following steps and can be used for any keyword phrase you are targeting.
#1. Determine the primary keywords you want to be the focal point of the OMA.
#2. In Google, search each primary keyword to get an idea of the associated competition.
#3. Capture the list of the top 30 web pages. Copy each URL and paste each into an Excel spreadsheet for easier data collection.
#4. Classify each website by revenue model. Once you’re finished copying and pasting the top 30 web pages, note the business model (content-driven, retail, vendor, etc.) of each site.
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#5. Quantify website traffic history. Put each URL into Compete and get the monthly unique visitor data. Then, paste all of this information into your spreadsheet. Compete should allow you to do five websites at a time.
#6. Capture website keywords. While in Compete, you can find the amount of keywords under the website’s name. The number will be listed next to the Top Search Terms category. Collect the number and put it into your spreadsheet.
#7. Determine the top 10 neighbors. Once you are done with the spreadsheet, you can sort the sites by traffic to determine who the top 10 are in terms of size.
#8. Quantify key metrics for the top 10. To do this, use the Yahoo Site Explorer tool to get the total number of pages and the total number of inbound links for the top 10 websites. Input this data into your spreadsheet.
Make the results work for you
After determining the top 10 websites for the particular keyword phrases you researched, you can use this data to focus on the websites with the most relevant content to your audience.
Additionally, the data will help you determine websites you could potentially create mutually beneficial relationships with. These relationships could include content sharing, inbound links or cross promotions.
Lastly, knowing the statistics behind these websites allows you to better understand your competition. If they aren’t providing the best content on each keyword, you can fight to take a bigger piece of their traffic.
Buzz posts are one of the three main blog types for a complete editorial calendar. To learn specific blog sources for writing Buzz posts, SEO blog posts and Email blog posts, join us tomorrow for our Blogging for Editors webinar at 12:30 pm ET. Be sure to register by 10 am ET tomorrow.
