We all know that, before we optimize our pages for the search engines, we need to find out exactly how sophisticated the competition is, or isn't. Our goal is to determine what the top ranking pages are doing within our keyword categories so we can look for weaknesses while quantifying their strength. Then we duplicate their efforts before going one better in order to achieve our success in the rankings –easily!

One problem is that, ordinarily, such competitive analysis is time consuming. Another problem is that the time consuming analysis needs to be repeated again and again for each site and each competitive keyword. Then, when compiling each metric one by one, it's the kind of task that can make you want to tear your hair out (is that why so many SEOs are bald? ...just wondering).

Anyway, in an effort to keep our own hair, we built an indispensable tool which removes the drudgery, speeds up the task, does all of the heavy lifting, and even adds some fun to the job. We call this tool our Site Strength Indicator (SSI). In just a few seconds, the SSI analyzes 9 critical competitive data points and delivers an overall site strength score.

In other words, in one click, and all at once! ...we learn:

1. Domain Registration Date: This refers to the age of a site. The older the site, the more of an advantage in the rankings it will have. Google likes sites that are aged. If the site's 'birthday' is a year or two old, the site has a slight ranking advantage over a newer site within this data-metric. Older sites tend to have developed more links over time and inherently are more trust worthy than a brand new domain name. If you click the date displayed, the SSI tool will display the WHOIS data for the domain name.
2. Google PageRank: This refers to the Google Toolbar PageRank that rates the importance of a Web page i...