Ever wish you could peek at your friend's hand while playing poker? He's wearing such a smooth poker face, what could he be hiding? Is it a Royal Flush? How much is he going to bet? Maybe he's bluffing!

In the world of Search Engine Optimization, the stakes are much higher than in a friendly game of poker. Knowing what your competitor is up to behind the scenes can help you improve your own optimization efforts. Wouldn't you like to know...

• How they've organized their incoming link structure?
• Which keywords they're optimizing for?
• How long they've been online and listed in the engines?

There are many tools on the market that offer what's known as Competitive Intelligence. These tools are like a behind-the-scenes pass that let you analyze your competition and determine what aspects of their search marketing are working successfully for them.

However, one of the drawbacks to most of these tools is the high price of admission. For example, a company called Hitwise offers a package costing $20,000 per domain—a price that places them out of the affordable range of many small businesses.

Fortunately, there are ways to do a fairly detailed analysis of your competitors for free. While you don't get the same level of detail as you might from the paid packages, you can often get a very good idea of why your competition is doing well in the search engines.

Why Yahoo? Even though Google and Yahoo both use very similar linkage data, Yahoo's information is more readily available, while Google tends to keep their linkag...