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Using Guerilla Tactics to Spy on Your Competitor’s Keywords, Traffic and Visitors

The following is an article provided by Big Commerce, the highly recommended e-commerce solution we use for our website design and internet marketing clients. This is chapter 1 in their E-Book Guerilla Marketing with Social Media

Let’s get started at the beginning-competitive research.

In this chapter I’ll show you how you can spy on your competitor’s keywords, traffic and visitor demographics for free. If you’ve been doing search engine marketing for a while then you probably know the two sites I’m going to discuss, but if you’re brand new then you may not.

The first website is Compete.com. The second is an oldie but a goodie. It’s Alexa.com and its still relevant.

Let’s start with Compete.com…basically it’s a way for you to look at the traffic, keywords and demographics of people going to your website or any website on the internet including your competitors.

You can compare websites to see graphs of traffic or visitor demographics and keywords. You can look at reach. You can see how popular a particular website is in any country, etc..Compete.com gets all of their data from internet service providers like Comcast so its fairly accurate. They parse their log files and can see where people go opn the internet.

They obviously don’t have data for everyone in the world but they have a large enough sample that it’s thought to be accurate.

Alexa.com is up next, which is now owned by Amazon. With Alexa you have to install a toolbar or an ad-on in Firefox or Internet Explorer and it tracks the websites you go to and sends that information back to their servers anonymously. Alexa compiles the data and creates similar reports to those found on Compete.com.

You can see traffic, demographics, reach, etc…but with Alexa they give each website a number. So the number one website is Google.com, which means it gets the most traffic in the world. Number 2 is Facebook and then it goes all the way down from there. Your website won’t show up on Alexa unless it’s one of the 100,000 most popular websites in the world! For reference, BigCommerce.com is currently the 6,513 most popular website in the world!

So what can you do with this data? Well a simple example is using demographic filtering (such as sex, age, location, education) when you create a Google Adwords campaign. If you see that most visitors to your online store are women aged 18 and 25 then you can set up thoise filters when creating your ads on Google so only people who match the demographics you’ve specified will see you ad. This leads to more relevance which in theory means you pay less per click because each visitor is worth more to your business.

Ideally you would survey your existing customers to get their demographic data because what you want to attract are people who “fit the mold” of your typical customer, not simply more website vistors. Customers buy, but not all website visitors do.

Emailing a simple survey to existing customers using tools like  Constant Contact is a great way to find out the demographics of people buying from you.

You should ask for their gender, age, location and education level. To encourage survey responses you can even give away a prize to one randomly selected customer who competes your demographic survey.

Rhino Ruby Studios offers affordable internet marketing services for small businesses including SEO keyword research, SEO copywriting and content writing, video internet marketing, blogging, and email marketing. We highly recommend to all of our clients the top rated e-commerce service provider, Big Commerce. In addition to a powerful and comprehensive e-commerce platform, they provide extensive ecommerce internet marketing tips, guerilla marketing tips and videos to get your website launched and off the ground!

Our SEO internet marketing services are available throughout the world and  the Roaring Fork Valley including Aspen, Snowmass, Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs Colorado. Contact us today. We’d love to help you grow!

Liz Gracia Founder-Rhino Ruby Studios

You want to be able to accept credit cards via the internet. Here’s what you need to do and know in order to accept payments securely over the internet:

• You must have a secure website. This requires an SSL Certificate and possibly a dedicated IP address, though many e-commerce website hosting sites offer shared SSL Certificates and IP addresses. If you already have a website hosting service, they can assist you with this. If not, Rhino Ruby Studios can assist you with website hosting, a dedicated IP address and SSL Certificate. Contact us and let us know what you need.
• You need a credit card payment processor. Many businesses already have this if they are already accepting credit cards.
• You need a secure payment gateway. This is a necessary requirement to process credit cards via the internet.

Many, myself included,  believed having a credit card processing company was sufficient. In the age of e-commerce and internet shopping this is not the case. A new layer of security was needed to protect this industry….hence the creation  of companies that provide a Payment Gateway for credit card processing ! They operate and charge similarly to credit card processing companies, so it may be confusing to e-commerce newbies! It looks like they both do the same thing!, but they don’t. Your gateway provider offers the added layer of security for your credit card customer.

Rhino Ruby Studios uses and recommends Authorize.net for the payment gateway:

The Authorize.Net Payment Gateway, one of the most recognized leaders in this industry, can help you accept credit card and electronic check payments quickly and affordably.

More than 284,000 merchants trust Authorize.net as their payment Gateway for credit card processing payment processing and online fraud prevention solutions.

The fees for a Card Not Present (CNP) Payment Gateway account are:

• Non-Refundable Setup Fee: $99.00
• Monthly Gateway Fee: $17.95
• Per-Transaction Fee: $0.10

Their application process is simple. Their customer support, if needed is excellent! Click on the Sign Up Button below:

Rhino Ruby Studios uses and recommends Cybersource, parent company to Authorize.net for their credit card processing merchant services. They have very competitive rates

If you are applying for an Internet Merchant Account, the fees are:

• Monthly Fee: $9.95
• Authorization (Transaction) Fee: $0.25
• Qualified Discount Rate: 2.19%
• Minimum Monthly Discount Fee: $25.00

A list of all the fees associated with an Internet Merchant Account can be found at http://www.authorize.net/files/cybersource_pricing.pdf.

You can use the same link as above to apply for this and your payment gateway.