1. Alexa.com: Alexa’s key strength is that provides easy-to-read graphs that allow you to directly compare your company’s traffic to the traffic one or more other companies are generating over the course of months, or even years. This way, you get a sense of what promotions, campaigns or products drove the most traffic and how you can use that to increase your own online visibility. Alexa’s one downfall is that it isn’t 100% reliable when it comes to current numbers, as those sometimes take weeks to aggregate. Despite that, it still provides tremendous insight.
2. Compete.com: Whereas most Web analytics sites are built for generic online users, Compete is specifically designed with Marketing executives in mind. This site allows you to regularly monitor competitors’ traffic, but it also has resources that determine how companies can maximize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search terms. Finally, Compete can help companies pinpoint where and how their key demographics spend their time on the Web, so companies can target those areas for ad campaigns, brand messaging and customer feedback.
3. QuantCast: The key difference between Quantcast and Compete is that Quantcast takes a company’s Web traffic statistics and uses them to help companies identify who their (or their competitors’) most common Web visitors are (i.e., age, location, interests, etc.), and what other sites they frequent. This is a valuable tool for companies that are unsure who visits their website on a regular basis and how they can capitalize on that info. It may be even more interesting to do searches based on your competitors’ websites to see if they’re attracting a market or demographic your site isn’t (and how they’re doing so).

Source: “7 tools to monitor your competitors’ traffic,” by Sam Crocker, SocialMedia.biz, 1/10/11.

• e-mail
• search engine optimization (SEO), and
• paid search (pay-per-click or PPC).

That’s what 1,200 marketing execs said in a recent survey conducted by MarketingSherpa.com.

When asked what was generating “great” ROI:

• 51% of execs said paid search. Why is it so popular? Laser-like targeting and results that are easy to measure.
• 44% of execs said e-mailing their house lists still produces the greatest return, and
• 39% of execs said they love SEO because all it costs to generate returns is a little time and effort.

The full results of the survey are available here (registration required).

Yes, SEO takes time and technical smarts but you’re not shelling out big bucks.

Search engine optimization delivers quality leads

In this survey by MarketingSherpa.com, B2B marketers were asked to rate the quantity and quality of leads generated by search engine optimization (the free organic results that appear on the left-hand side of search engine results pages) versus paid search on Google and other search engines.

Conclusion: Only 17% of marketers found leads generated by search engine optimization (SEO) a disappointment. But the quality did vary enormously.

Only 13% said leads were high quantity and high quality, 24% said leads were high quantity but low quality, 17% said leads were high quality but low quantity, while another 17% said leads were low quality and low quantity. (The numbers didn’t add up because some marketers didn’t use SEO.)

But it is interesting to see that the results for paid search via Google weren’t all that much more inspiring.

That’s why spending money on SEO in tough times can be a good bet, especially if you have a good in-house SEO expert to make sure your Web site hits the right keywords.

Julie Power is editor in chief of the Internet Marketing Report and the blog, Internet Marketing Report Online.