What tools should i use to research the following site

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi i am researching the following site http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ and i would like to know what keywords they are using to gain traffic and i would like to know what tools i need to use to research how they are achieving great success with google.

i am new to the semoz tools so i would like help in using them to study this site and other sites, can anyone please let me know what i need to do and what tools i need to use to research this site and find the links to the site and how they are achieving great success

many thanks

[evolvingSEO]

You can try SEMrush to get possible competitors keywords, although I hear you shouldn't trust the data 100% but it could give you some ideas.

You can also run the domain through Google AdWords tool and see what words it suggests.

-Dan

PS - Look at their meta keywords tag. The tag does nothing, but most people don't realize that and put their keywords in there anyway.

[ClaireH-184886]

on the site i shown you, it is part news but then mostly holiday reviews and ideas, travel advice, it is only very small amount of travel news.

My site, the home page, i want to focus on holiday news, about travel agents, good deals etc and then other parts of the site i will focus on cheap deals, travel reviews, uk holidays etc

[RobertFisher]

Diane,

You have asked a great question as it is one that is regularly asked and it points out a common error we all make when looking at a competitor's site. Thanks.

You said, "i would like to know what keywords they are using to gain traffic and i would like to know what tools i need to use to research how they are achieving great success with google." There are two things here: first  what keywords they are using to gain traffic  and, second _what tools you need to use to research how they are achieving great success with Google. _

On keywrds they are using to gain traffic, I would say they are using travel and review (I simply looked at the page and then used the mozBar to look at meta, title tags, url , etc. You could also use the term extractor from SEOmoz.

On tools to research how they are succeeding with Google, I am going to ask that you keep this private (and anyone who reads it as well) because it is a proprietary methodology that I have developed but will share with you. I call the tool - my eyes. Yes, my eyes. I look at the page and see what someone else sees. When I look at this page and then at yours, yours is a travel site and theirs is a news site with fresh content, not cramped, real stories, etc. So, they have made a travel site into a source of information and there is no blatant, in-your-face this deal or that deal. They are not worried about how many times a given keyword is used and that is smart. They simply report happenings, etc. the first two things I saw when I opened the page were: A solitary polar bear and a nipple. In no way was this a screaming travel site.

So, term extractor and my eyes are the only tools I would use for this.

Best,

[Jolora]

I'm new to seomoz as well but I believe this is what you want: http://www.seomoz.org/term-extractor in order to find out the targeted terms.

Discover information about backlinks with http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/. Choose to filter the results down to just external links as it is no surprise that telegraph pages will contain highly valuable internal links.