Mumbai University > Information Technology > Sem6 > Advanced Internet Technology

Marks: 5M

Year: Dec 2015

Sometimes you need to get back to the basics and carry out a simple overview strategy of where you are in the marketplace, and where you would like to be. A simple SWOT analysis is a great starting point. It creates a grid from which to work and is very simple to execute. As you can see from the SWOT chart in Figure 3-3, Strengths and Weaknesses usually stem from internal (on-site, business operational, business resource) sources, whereas Opportunities and Threats are from external

sources.

Take Business X. It has a website that was built on WordPress, makes use of category tagging, adds at least one page of content every two days, and has excellent knowledge of its industry. Its domain name isn’t ideal—Businessnameandkeyword.com—but it is decent. Business X does not get much traffic from search engines, but its rival, Business Y, does because Business Y has had its website up for a long period of time and received some great links along the way. Business Y doesn’t have any SEO plan and relies on its main page to bring in all traffic. This is because Business Y has a keyword-rich domain name and people have linked to the site using the domain name (giving it keyword-rich anchor text), and because of its longevity on the Web. There aren’t a lot of target search queries; in fact, there are fewer than 50,000 for the core set of keywords. Business X’s site ranks on the second page of Google results, whereas Business Y is ranked #3, with Wikipedia and About.com taking up the top two positions. Neither of the businesses is spending money on PPC (paid search) traffic, and the niche doesn’t have much room for other entrants (there may be 10 to 15 competitors). Both sites have similar link authority in terms of strengths and numbers. The businesses deal in impulse purchases— the products evoke strong emotions.

Figure shows what the SWOT for Business X might look like

The preceding analysis suggests quick wins for the Business X site, as well as where the priorities are. It also forms a great starting point for a long-term strategy and tactical maneuvers. This example is simplistic, but it illustrates how instructive a fleshed out SWOT can be. It does require you to have analyzed your site, the main competitor(s), the keywords, and the search engine results pages (SERPs).