One of the best ways to learn how to dominate the search engine results pages (serps) is to analyze hundreds of top ranking sites. You will more than get back what you put in to this excersise! YOu are bound to learn something new almost everytime you really dig deep in to a top ranking site to see why it is ranking so well. I have come across many cool techniques by spying on my competition. You can find their links and copy them or you can see if your competition is cheating and report them (yea, it's all fair in business!), but for me the most satisfying thing is learning new techniques.

I have gained a lot of insight from analzing top ranked sites. I have a program I use called SEO Elite. With this program, which every serious internet marketer can not do without, I can look at the back links of my competitors. I just type in my chosen keyword in to Google and go to the top site. I then just copy the url and put it in to SEO Elite and it will analyze the backlinks for me.

It shows all of their backlinks, the anchor text used in the link, the alexa rank, the page rank and the title of the linking page. It actually does a whole lot more than that but for the purposes of this article that will do.

One thing I like to do is make a list of all the high page rank links that my competitors have. I'm fussy so if I make a list of links I only go for the do follow type. I also disregard any links that seem to be paid for as I look for freebies. I like high page rank blog posts and forum posts. So by analyzing many top sites you get the added benefit of finding their secret high PR links! I keep track of them in files and folders on my desktop. This is how I found over 50 do follow PR5 links.

Other things you might notice when analyzing your competitors backlinks is how many anchored text links they have for your keyword. This will tell you how many links you will need to get to rank number one. No guessing needed when you do your research. It is all about anchored links with Google. If you are trying to dominate the keyword "very purple fingers" and you see that the top ranking site has 23 anchored links for "very purple fingers" then you know how many anhcored links you'll need.

Sometimes I've noticed that the top ranking site in fact has very few anchored links featuring the keyword in question. Yet they rank number one. How is this? Well, one answer is that no one at all is working that keyword with anchored links. It is a soft niche and is wide open for domination. The other answer is that although the top ranking site has few anchored links for that term, the links it does have are coming from very relevant pages.

You can't really understand this stuff until you do your own research.