You start by entering the keyword you want to rank for in the search engines, visit the website that is number one and see what they are doing. Search engines love what they are doing, that is why they placed them number one.

You can see what meta tags they are using, how many pages of content they have or how they are adding content. Is it by creating articles or they have a forum?

Your goal is to grab ideas from them. Then use those ideas on your website. Do they have a linkspage? Then visit each of their link partners and request a link from them. Feel free to trade links with your competitors, it is something people worry about. But it is funny if you think about it.

You are probably not ranked anywhere close to them yet, so they do not even know you are going to be their competitor. Links are important, get as much of them as possible.

Who is linking to them and why they are doing it? Is it because they are doing a link exchange or there is some other reason. You found out several things by exploring your competitors. Things that can help your website rank well.

Let say they have a forum. You should add one too. The idea is to make your website as good as theirs or better. If they have lots of articles, you can hire someone to start creating articles and add them on your website. (Notice in my seo articles, how I use Internal Linking to optimize my website for the keyword, improve search engine rankings)

However this simple strategy can also be used while you are doing keyword research. The better your competitors are, the more difficult it is to outrank them. However it can still be easy if you have the time or money to create a better website than theirs. But if you want that easy keyword, you should find other types of sites.

If a website with practically no content and few backlinks is ranked number one in a search engine, then it will be easier for you to outrank them. Sometimes instead of a homepage you see internal pages ranked top in the search engines. Most of the time the website has lots of content and probably quite a popular website.

This simple research helps you to determine how you want to conduct business. You know if it is going to be though, easy or moderate journey towards the number one position.

Obviously the best thing to do depends on yourself. If you are an seo expert you can practically outrank any website.

The website that is number one for a particular keyword is like a blueprint of what search engines want for that keyword. Your competitors can teach you how to optimize your website for the keyword just by looking deeply at what they are doing.

You can also check if they are listed in the Yahoo Directory. That costs a lot of money, so probably they have a high budget.

If you are on a tight budget, find the opposite of all that. Remember that once you start optimizing your website for a keyword you cannot go back. So careful check out what is the best possible keyword you can optimize your website for. Research well before you start, then relax and start the optimization.