Regardless of what business you're in, you have competition, or other businesses who are clamoring for the same consumer dollars as you. The competition may or may not be in the same industry, e.g. if you own a movie theatre, your competition will be all venues providing entertainment, such as bowling alleys, theme parks, skating rinks, miniature golf courses, in addition to other movie theatres. Take a moment to determine what business you're in and determine if your type of business might also attract consumers from other industries.

As an online business owner, your competition may not be as easy to gauge, especially if you don't have a retail location for your business, or if you have a global virtual company where you can work with clients regardless of location, as many coaches, consultants, virtual assistants, graphic designers, speakers, and website designers do. How do you begin to assess your competition when your business has no geographic limits? It's very similar to the steps that a traditional business might take, but it's all done online.

Here are the ten steps I use to research my competition online:

1. Brainstorm all known competitors. If you've been in business for any length of time, you probably already have a good sense of which other companies offer what you offer. Look up their websites and make a note of the website addresses. You'll be using this information later.

2. Compile a list of keywords your customer would use to find a business like yours online. How would your target market find you online? Create a list of all keywords that they might use. If you have a business that serves a particular geographic region, you'll want to create a geographic keyword listing as well, like "cleaning business" + "Beaumont, Texas" or "cleaning business" + "Southeast Texas".

3. Conduct a keyword search on the major search engines. The major players in the search engine game today seem to be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It is the results from these search engine queries that will be the ones most commonly found by your target market. You should try your search with and without quotation marks, like "cleaning business" and cleaning business and conduct a search by location, as well, if that applies to your business. Make a note of the top 10 listings from each search engine query and those will comprise your top competition, along with other local competitors that you know about.

4 Visit your competitors' websites and analyze their offerings. Create a summary of each competitor's services and/or products. Determine the strength and weaknesses of your competition from the perspective of your target market. Assess how your offerings are better/worse/different from that of the competition. Are your prices higher or lower than theirs? Why? What makes you unique? How can you capitalize on that uniqueness and set yourself apart from the competition? By following these steps, you'll discover your competitive advantage, or the reason(s) your target market does business with you instead of your competition.