Ever heard that you need a plan to get ahead? It’s sometimes exceedingly tricky to formulate a plan though isn’t it? Luckily, in online business it’s really easy to formulate a plan to get ahead in your niche–whatever that is.

Finding Your Niche Competition

First you need to identify those websites that are ahead of you in the search results for your chosen keywords. You can do this by doing a search on Google, Yahoo and Bing (and whatever other search engine you’re interested in) for the words and phrases you want to be searched for. Take a look at the top 10 results for each one. Check what other keywords/phrases these sites are using because you can often come up with some interesting new search terms you hadn’t thought of by doing this.

Comparative Analysis

Then you do a comparative analysis on each of the top three, and you’re away. You will have an itemized roadmap that will take you exactly where you want to go, and you will be able to implement it at your leisure-whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

Let’s take a closer look at the criteria:

1. Search terms (we’ve already covered that)
2. Title tags (what you see in the top, left-hand corner of your screen for each page). This is arguably the most important item of optimization. It dictates a large part of how the search engines see you. If you have fabulous content, but your title tags say ‘welcome to (your name)’ you will be sunk. Don’t miss the opportunity to put to or three of your major keywords in here, starting with the most important.
3. Your article/post title should also include at least one of your major keywords.
4. Look at the images your competition is using. Learn from this, and try to get bigger, more interesting images onto your pages, not forgetting that there is a balance: make the images too big and you’ll make your pages slow to load. Oh, and don’t forget the alt-text because this does matter for a number of reasons.
5. Make sure that your web content is far and away more readable, and more informative than that of the competition.

It will help if you arrange your results in a table for at-a-glance assessment.

Avoid putting all your eggs in one basket…

Don’t rely too heavily on a competitive analysis though. Nowadays off-page activity can have a major impact on your ultimate traffic and visibility results. Social media is a must. Don’t overlook Twitter, in particular, as a tool for networking, getting the word out, and even getting valuable links for your website.

SEOs for Self Regulation

I’ve been trying to get things going on the self regulation front for several years now. After approaching a number of big-name SEOs hoping they’d help by taking up the cause, I finally reached the point where I felt if I didn’t do it no-one will. So I decided that I’d start some kind of grass-roots movement myself.

Why high-profile SEOs don’t want to be involved…

The high-profile SEOs I’m talking about (no I’m not going to name them), asserted quite firmly that they didn’t want to be associated with any kind of regulations for the SEO community. Here’s why (my deduction):

They are obviously making a lot of money from SEO: fabulous sums, some of them. And for sure they have their secrets about getting a site onto page 1 of Google faster than the rest of us. Maybe they’re using Black Hat, maybe not, but because they’re so successful all eyes are on them. They know that.

They also know that if they’re a member of some self regulation community then people will be watching them all the more closely to see if they’re breaking the code.

So it’s not difficult to see why they feel the way they do. If I ever want the conversation to dry up, all I need to do is bring up the subject of self regulation with a major SEO.

The Plight of SEOs With a Conscience

But for the rest of us things are a little different. Our plight was brought firmly home to me last week when I heard that Matt Cutts of Google had, once again, referred to the entire SEO community in a denigrating way (he has called us all criminals in the past), I felt indignant. It’s a fact that there are some very bad people lurking in the dark recesses of the SEO community: some Black Hats definitely verge on the criminal. But that doesn’t mean to say we’d all sell our souls for a link. Or that we’d break the law for a large check from a grateful client. I object strongly to being tarred with the same brush.

SEOs in general have a difficult time of it: they would like to join some sort of community that will reassure clients of their abilities and their purity of intention, but none exists. And this is where I come in.

I’ve done the deed and created the SEO Self Regulation Community. I even bought the domain name, but give me a few days to find the time to slot it into the Ning account.

I know a lot of people disagree with what I’m doing, but hey, if you can’t be true to yourself then you’re a big waste of space right?

My vision is that as a self regulating community we’ll gain traction in the business world by proving that our members provide solid, reliable SEO services. In return for complying with the regulations we agree upon, and a small fee, full members of the community will be accorded the right to display the community logo on their site, and their name will be listed on the roll of honor on our website (all in the works).

If you agree that this is a good idea, then please go over to the website, join, and help us draw up the regulations for our community.

As Seth Godin says in his book Tribes, we don’t need to seek permission to change our world!