Competitive intelligence guide to finding quality Web information.
Vast numbers of free (or mostly free) tools exist on the Internet that allow researchers to find data about websites. Whether searching for metrics about one’s own website or analyzing the websites of a set of competitive landscape companies, such tools can help a user find insightful information.
Standard Web analysis tools can offer details like the monthly Web traffic of a given website, the banner ads that are used, the existing backlinks, and what type of technology is used on the website. Reasons for using these resources may include performing a competitive analysis of the right SEO keywords, researching the Web traffic ranges of a number of companies within an industry, or reviewing what new content is on a competitor’s website. The various analytical tools have strengths and weaknesses. By using multiple resources, a researcher may be able to obtain a broad breadth of knowledge about given websites.
10 Handy Tools for Analyzing Websites
SimilarWeb – This resource has free features that allow the user to see the monthly Web traffic of a given website, the average time a user visits the website, top countries that visit, organic keywords, and the percent of traffic that comes from social media outlets. As per its name, this tool also shows a list of similar websites to the URL that is searched. This tool also has a paid premium service, with added benchmarking features.
Alexa – This website analysis resource provides a given website’s monthly Web traffic, global rank of the site, audience geography, daily page views per visitor, average time on site, and top keywords from search engines. This site offers some free content and also has a premium offering for more robust data access.
SEMrush – Web traffic, number of backlinks, and competitive positioning regarding Web traffic are offered on this tool. The mobile version of websites can also be analyzed on this resource, as well.
Builtwith – This interesting tool notes the technology that exists on a given website. For example, if the SAP.com website is searched, the resource will note the website’s Web server, hosting providers, E-mail service, content management systems, advertising software, analytics tools, widgets, and assorted other features. This type of tool is useful when wanting to find out if a given company uses a given technology on its website.
Majestic – This site calls itself “the planet’s largest link index database.” This tool provides such interesting analysis as the site’s “trust flow,” external backlinks, referring domains, and assorted other metrics. One especially useful feature is that it provides data on the subpage level of a given domain. Premium subscriptions are available and free access may require sign-up.
Plot IP – This tool offers details on the registration date of the website, page load time, server location, monthly unique visitors, backlinks, and Web traffic patterns.
Moz – This resource provides a website’s page authority, domain authority, spam score, top pages within the domain, and recently created URLs on the domain. This site offers free content as well as premium features.
Serpstat – This resource calls itself a “growth hacking tool” for a multitude of uses. Details of websites from this tool include visibility, organic keywords, subdomains, subpages with the highest visibility, and Web ad examples.
URLmetrics – This tool provides data on monthly visitors, daily visitors, monthly individual page views, the age of the domain (when registered), server location, server type, and similar domains.
Userexp – This niche resource offers analyses of the user experience aspects of a website. The features of records of this tool include daily Web visitors, conversion features (like “call to action” button), social media “likes” and “shares,” readability analysis, and word density.
Conclusion
Many of the Web analysis resources continue to add features to their offerings. For example, SimilarWeb recently added a “total visits” count to their website analysis tools. Armed with this collection of helpful research tools, an information seeker may be able to gauge key details about hyperlinks of interest.
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