It’s good to get to know your competitors from an online marketing perspective. Odds are, they have something going on that’s succeeding better than your own efforts.

We will look at their web sites and identify their core strengths. It’s worth studying their content to see what ideas appear to be working for your competitors.

In our evaluation, we will analyze their source code, design, calls to action, keywords, search engine rankings, domain names, web site age, social media use and more.

When diving into competitor information, you can also see examples of what not to do. We’re more interested in what you can do than picking on competitors’ deficiencies, but it’s not a bad idea to take stock of their design choices, content, etc.

Ultimately you need to shape your online marketing efforts around your small business and your customers. If competitors can give you some ideas along the way, you can’t go too wrong in most cases.