If you’re not currently using SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer to keep an eye on your competitors, then you’re missing out on a wealth of information.
Open Site Explorer keeps its very own index of the internet using a similar crawling process to Google, with the ability to return the majority of links to a certain website or page – information normally reserved for the webmasters of a particular domain.
With links to a website still being such a powerful factor in Google’s ranking algorithm, knowing where your competitors are getting links from and how you can match or even better them is essential.
One of the most basic uses of Open Site Explorer is to see which links your competitors are getting, and if they are “easy-gets” like relevant directories, then going ahead and acquiring those links yourself.
Open Site Explorer also uses Moz Metrics, which are some superbly useful numbers to allow you to quickly size up how powerful and competitive a website is.
Watch our extensive tutorial below for a complete run down on how to use this great piece of software.