SEO: Step 2 Competition research (Continue)

On-page and off-page competition analysis

• Search ranking factors are broken into "on" and "off" page factors. Checklist of what your competitors are doing right or wrong as we dissect each on-page ranking factor.

On-Page Factors (20%-30% Ranking Score)	How to find out?
Are there optimized, unique Title tags on every page with no more than 90 characters in the Title?	Use the Keyword Analyzer tool and retrieve the internal links.  Check individual pages for Title tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Does the Body text contain at least 250 words per page?	Check individual pages for Body tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Are headings used H1/H2/H3 effectively?	Check individual pages for Heading tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Are the internal links text based or Flash or Image based and do they contain the target keywords? Note:Image based links are the worst type of internal links you can use since the search engines can't read the text inside them.	Check individual pages for Image tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer and also check the source code for Image and Flash based navigation.
Are the keywords inserted in the file names, folder or the domain name?	Use the Keyword Analyzer tool to retrieve the internal links.  Check individual pages for Filename/URL optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Are related keywords found in the Body text to increase the lexical correlation between keywords?	Check individual pages for Body tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer and pay careful attention to the 1, 2 and 3 word phrase list.
Are the keyword repetition, proximity, and prominence appropriate in the Title and Body text?	Check individual pages for Body and Title tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer. The closer to the beginning the keywords appear the better optimized the page is.
Are there ALT tag attributes in images and links?	Check individual pages for the ALT image tag optimization by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Is the page size and code to text ratio appropriate?	Use the Keyword Analyzer tool to retrieve the internal links and compare the HTML page size to the number of words found in the body. Large page size and low word count indicates too many HTML tags without the use of CSS which can help to reduce HTML code clutter and size.
Are the website pages search engine friendly with no frames in the body or session IDs in the URLs?	Check individual pages for Frames and the URL by running the Keyword Analyzer.
Did the search engines index all the pages?	Run the Links Plus+ tool, and use the Check Indexed pages function to compare the number of retrieved pages.
Do the website main pages show recent updates?	Use the Keyword Analyzer tool to retrieve the internal links that show the last modified date. The more recent the modified dates are the fresher the website appears to the engines.
How many outgoing links can be found, and how closely related are they to the site?	Navigate to the site's resource or link page in your browser and check the outgoing links. Too many links on a single page may be considered a link farm by the engines.
Is there a site map on the site?	Check the site manually for the presence of a site map. Cataloging a website's most important pages is a great way to help the search engines to crawl your website.
What is the top level domain of the site (.edu/.org/.com/.ca/.co.uk.etc)?	Check the URL, .edu domains have an advantage over .com and other TLDs. Country level domains can compete better for geographically related keyword terms.

"On-page" analysis example

• Open the Keyword Analyzer

• Enter the website address into the URL text box

• Click on the Get Links button to retrieve the internal links from the main page and pay careful attention to the website Title and URLs in the links display windows. 

• Both page URLs and Title tags are both very important elements from an on-page optimization perspective.

• Every page has a unique Title tag. Don't make the mistake of putting the same Title tag on every page.

• Analyzing the competition's individual pages

• The keyword highlighting tool really helps to put the spot light on keyword placement and repetition within each HTML element.

• Google cuts the Title tag at approximately 60 characters and Yahoo! at 90, they have managed to place the most important keywords at the beginning of the Title.

• Analyzing your competitors' pages to build your keyword list

• SEO Studio can extract the most frequently used keywords from any web page easily and accurately.

Reference: http://www.trendmx.com/seo/step-2-competition-research.aspx