Competitor analysis is one important factor crucial to the success of any SEO initiatives.

Understanding your competitors – their strategy, their strength and level of success, their weakness etc. – is important for any SEO strategist to identify opportunities and threats so as to formulate an effective SEO strategy.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. – Sun Tzu

You can start the process of competitor analysis once the top web pages for your targeted keyword are displayed in the search engines.

When conducting competitve analysis, some of the factors that you need to focus are:
* Who are your competitors?
* What are the similarities and differences between them and you?
* What are the strengths and weaknesses of their websites?
  - What is the age of their domain?
  - How many of their web pages have been indexed?
  - How many backlinks do their web pages have?
  - What is the pagerank of their web pages?
* How do you plan to compete?
* How are your website uniquely suited to compete with them?

The process of competitor analysis requires time and effort. Nevertheless, you will be well rewarded when the outcome of your SEO campaign shows that your website has successfully beat your competitors in the search engine’s ranking.