Now that you have a good on-site structure it's time to take a look at what your competitors are doing. With SEO as I've said before, there isn't one set thing you can do across all niches that will take you to the top, it is all about analysing who is at the top in the niche you are in and replicating their success but in your own way.
Now there are loads of different ways and tools you can use to get an idea of how your competitors are doing. Obviously, you are never going to be able to see things like the revenue a competitor is making but you can get real close with some of the tools out there today.
Before I go onto some of the tools I use for competitor analysis you can also do some things manually. Doing your research this way is definitely cheaper but is a lot more time-consuming.
For example, you can visit a competitors site and look at all of their title tags to see what kind of keywords they are ranking for, you can also see what kind of linking structure they have and if they have a sitemap etc. However, a lot of this will be educated guessing and while you may be right about a few things there's no way to know for sure.
That's where marketing tools will come into effect. The next few topics go onto to explain some of the tools I use for competitor analysis along with other features.