You can quickly spy on your competition with free tools. Start today and use these tools by reading our step-by-step article.

1. How to Quickly Spy
on Your Competition
Steve Williams

2. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
You just surfed to a cool website. It may be a competitor’s site. You may
wonder how they built it. What kind of WordPress theme is in use or what
plugins? How about their traffic volume? What are their traffic sources?
Which social networks are the most prevalent?
Imagine having quick and free ways to get this information.
Here’s how to get there.
The Tools You Need
All you need is a Chrome browser and the following five Chrome extensions:
SimilarWeb
SpyBar
Open Seo Stats
Mozbar
BuzzSumo
BuzzAndTips.com

3. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Let’s begin with SimilarWeb.
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is one of my favorite extensions. It provides statistics for:
Estimated monthly visits.
Traffic sources
Top referring and destination sites
Top organic keywords
Social network sources
Top Ads networks
Related mobile apps
Let’s examine the estimated visits tab:
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4. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
The above example shows you estimated visits on a website. Please note
these are estimates. It gives you a good idea about how that site is active.
Next the traffic sources tab:
From that graph, you can determine where the traffic comes from.
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5. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Next, the social network sources tab:
That one is quite interesting. It reveals the social networks that bring the
most traffic.
The above three tabs are the ones you should focus on.
BuzzAndTips.com

6. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
SpyBar
SpyBar is a Chrome extension from Rob Cornish, a respected and honest
digital marketer.
Here is what you can discover with SpyBar on your competitor’s website:
WordPress Theme in use
WordPress plugins in use
Domain authority and page authority
Inbound links
Linking domains
Top pages
Reverse IP
Google site search
Let’s see how this works. When you click on the SpyBar extension, it will
display the following three sections:
BuzzAndTips.com

7. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
In Section 1, the WordPress theme and child theme are displayed. You can
click on the theme name to discover more. In this example from my website,
the Rise theme is in use. If you click on it, it will take you to the Thrive
Themes website.
Section 2 lists all the discovered plugins. Only plugins retrieved from the
page HTML code will be displayed. This provides you with a good idea of the
plugins used on that site. If you click on any of these links, SpyBar will open a
new browser tab to the plugin site.
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8. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Section 3 has several links. Let’s examine them:
Moz: invokes Moz Open Site Explorer. It will display metrics such as Domain
Authority and Page Authority. You will also see a list of Inbound Links. that
is, external websites that point to the website you are analyzing.
MajesticSEO: launches a new tab to Majestic Site Explorer. You will get
several stats and graphs about external links, referring IPs, backlink history,
backlink breakdown, etc.
ReverseIP: A new tab will take you to viewdns.info. It will display all the
domains hosted on the same server. In shared hosting environments, it is
common to see dozens of domains parked on the same server. However, you
may also uncover other domains owned by the same blogger.
WhoIs: Tells you about the website’s domain registration details.
WhoHosts: Reveals the website’s hosting provider (e.g., SiteGround).
Search: This starts a new browser tab with a Google search focusing on the
website you are analyzing. E.g., site:www.buzzandtips.com
Download: This will download a text file containing the plugin list.
You can get SpyBar for $12.95 here (non-affiliate link).
BuzzAndTips.com

9. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Open SEO Stats
The Open SEO Stats extension provides you with the following information:
The number of indexed pages by search engines
Geolocation information
Site info
Page info
Page speed
The user interface is divided in several tabs. Let’s take a look at the most
interesting ones.
The next figure displays the SEO stats tab. On the top right, the Pages
Indexed reveals how many pages were indexed. Look at Bing and Google.
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10. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Let’s have a look at the Page Info tab:
The Page Info tab reveals information such as meta description, this is what
displays in a Google search results. It also tells you about the number of
internal and external links on that page, the canonical URL, etc.
The Link Stats tab (next figure) lists all links found on that page. It also
shows whether the links are follow or nofollow. More on this later with the
MozBar extension.
BuzzAndTips.com

11. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Finally, the Page Speed tab displays how long this page took to load.
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12. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
MozBar
The MozBar extension is maintained by Moz.com. When you visit a website,
the MozBar will provide the following information:
Domain authority
Page authority
Highlight links: followed, non-followed, external, internal
Note
You will need to sign-up for a free account with Moz.
Clicking the MozBar icon will toggle one of three states: Inactive, DA mode
and Full bar mode. Depending on the state, the MozBar icon will display as
follows:
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13. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
When in DA mode, the value represents the Domain Authority score.
When in Full bar mode, an additional bar will display below your browser’s
URL bar as follows:
From the above picture, you can determine that the Domain Authority (DA)
is 23. The Page Authority (PA) is 34.
If you click on the pencil icon, it will display extra icons like this:
This allows you to determine whether links are followed, no-followed,
external or internal. This feature is quite useful.
Now, if you select the Page Analysis icon, it will allow you to inspect the
following:
On-Page elements (see example below)
General Attributes
Link Metrics, etc.
BuzzAndTips.com

14. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Related reading
Follow Links Vs. No Follow Links: What’s the Difference?
How to Add Title and NoFollow to Insert Link Popup in WordPress
BuzzAndTips.com

15. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
BuzzSumo
The BuzzSumo extension provides you with the following Social shares for a
given page:
Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Pinterest
Google plus
Here is it in action:
Based on the above, Twitter and Facebook are the biggest sharers.
BuzzAndTips.com

16. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
Key Takeaways
Here you go. You now have five quick ways to take a peek at your
competition. All of them are free except one. The paid extension, SpyBar, is
worth its cost.
You may want to use these techniques on your website too. They will help
you track your progress and pinpoint issues.
BuzzAndTips.com

17. How to Quickly Spy on Your
Competition
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