Every entrepreneur understands that their business doesn’t operate in a bubble. There are many factors that can determine whether or not your business will make a profit – and the biggest factors among those are your competitors’ in the market. Owing to the Internet, your competition has increased multi-fold. That’s why it’s important that you take measures to always remain one step ahead of them.

Positioning yourself as unique in comparison to your competitors is only part of the solution. Another important part is monitoring their growth and tracking their strategies. It sure seems like a difficult task to track and monitor all your competitors, but there are multiple tools available online to help you do the same.

Listed below are a few best ones:

GOOGLE ALERTS

It is one of the easiest tools to use. You just have to sign into your Google account, and you can go ahead. Just enter the names of your competitors you want to track, and the tool will takes care of the rest. You can set up the tool to see their online mentions, links, and keywords.

SOCIAL MENTION

Most businesses today use and depend on social media to gain more customers and maintain an active online presence. So you should be tracking your competitors on social media and Social mention can help you with that.

GOOGLE AD(WORD) AND KEYWORDS PLANNER

There’s a lot of insightful data you can find on your competitors if you know how to use the tool well. One place to start is by plugging in their URL in the landing page field. This way you can retrieve the keywords they’re using and the average traffic they’re earning.

SOCIAL INSIDER: SOCIAL MEDIA COMPETITORS ANALYSIS AND REPORTING TOOL

Social Insider gives you a glimpse into your competitor’s content performance on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter: when they post, their engagement metrics, audience growth since the day the page or profile was created, and their overall digital strategy.

COMPETITORS.APP: UNIVERSAL TOOL TO TRACK YOUR COMPETITORS ONLINE BUSINESS

While many tools target a particular niche, this tool analyzes multiple areas of your competitor’s online marketing strategy to give you an overview of their efforts to spot potential avenues for growth.

There are countless outside factors that influence whether or not you’ll turn a profit. Your competition plays a huge role in the success of your business.

That’s why it’s so important for you to take the proper steps to gain a competitive edge on other brands in your industry. But, as I’m sure you’ve quickly realized, this is much easier said than done.