Analysing your Competition
This is something that many people over look and its once of the easiest and most obvious things to do!
You are trying to achieve a #1 position, so search for your targeted keywords and see who is ranked in the top ten. There you go, they have already done all the work for you, you just have to replicate and then improve upon this. Well, actualy its not quite that striaght forward and its not something that I practice.
I will always look at the competition to get an idea of what I am up against and its a good insight into what works. Read this article to see how to do an in depth competitor SERPs Analsysis
At a Glance
Ok, so lets assume you don't have time to go to those lengths (it can get tedious to say the least!), what can we find out at a glance. Well Google is a good place to start. Type the URL (web address) of each of your competitors into the search box. You get some useful information here.
The ares you will be interested in are web pages that link to the site and pages from the site. Its also useful to see what Title and Description Google is using for the site. It should be noted that the google only shows a selection of links for any given site. To get a better picture go to Yahoo or MSN and type link:http://www.thesiteinquestion.co.ukin the search box. This will give a more realistic number.
Have a look at the code
To get an idea of onpage optimisation techniques go to each competing web page and click view -> source to have a look at the HTML code that builds the page. Note their use of all the HTML elements and where they put their keywords.
What to tkae form this
This quick glance at your competition will give you a good grounding for what is required. After all, this is what you are trying to emulate. you probably won't go far wrong basing you optimisation on your competition ut remember, SEO is an ongoing pricess not a one time event. Everyone is trying to pip you to the post!