Every week, I spend a few hours checking the SEO progress and tactics of dozens of different websites.

I do the same for certain search queries and even entire business verticals.

Many of the sites are the clients I currently work with (obviously!)

But I also monitor many websites I don’t work with:

• Websites of past clients I am intimately familiar with
• Competitors of both current clients and past clients
• Websites that have caught my attention because they’re using interesting SEO strategies
• …and some completely random websites I came across over the years

I keep an eye on how the website looks, what content they’re publishing, and I use SEO tools to keep track of their metrics and trends.

I don’t check every website on my list every single week – that would end up taking way too much time. Some I follow more intensely than others.

But it’s a habit I enjoy and will keep doing.

Here’s some of the benefits you’ll get from regularly observing websites and figuring out what is and isn’t working for their search engine visibility.

Sharpens Your Skills

Sometimes I discover SEO strategies and ways to optimize pages – or structure websites – which I wasn’t familiar with yet.

Other times, why a certain page ranks for a certain keyword is absolutely beyond me.

It gets me to think and try to figure out why the Google algorithm ranks an objectively less useful page higher than more useful pages.

There’s not always an obvious answer.

But these cases do usually lead to several hypotheses as to why websites are ranked in a certain order.

Sometimes I find a clue that could be it, make a mental note, and move on. Sometimes curiosity gets the best of me and I can’t help but go down the rabbit hole and do a more in-depth analysis.

The point is this.

In order to become a good SEO and stay a good SEO, few things are better than spending time in the trenches and sharpening your skills.

If you don’t have your own portfolio of clients or websites, the internet is free and you can learn a ton by observing and analyzing what others are doing.

You’ll start to see patterns and trends.

You’ll start to understand what works in a particular industry and that SEO isn’t the same across the board.

Helps You Understand Online Business

Coming back to websites and their competitors over and over again will make you very familiar with them.

You’ll start to understand why they are targeting certain keywords.

The more websites you regularly look at, the more you’ll understand about different kinds of online business models and the role websites play in the overall strategy.

Understanding how businesses make money is important, because it’ll help you think and talk like a business owner.

It’ll help you identify “money keywords” and figure out the highest-value strategy for a given website.

This leads into the next benefit:

Helps You Sell SEO

In general, the more hours you spend doing something, the better you will be able to articulate and talk about it.

You’ll be able to mention examples and speak about SEO with confidence during discovery calls and sales calls.

Of course, nothing beats actual experience in SEO.

But even after a decade of working in SEO, there’s going to be a ton of verticals and business types you have never personally touched.

Here’s some examples of websites you can follow:

• Niche B2C ecommerce stores
• Large B2B service providers
• Freelance one-man-band service providers
• Affiliate websites
• SaaS websites
• Niche industry publications
• Local brick-and-mortar businesses

If a prospective client is a business type or industry you don’t have hands-on experience with, chances are you’ll be following at least one type of website that’s close enough to be able to say something useful about it.

In my book, that’s still better than only speaking theory.

All of this builds trust and it helps you sell your SEO services.

Benefits Your Clients

Clients want to know they are in good hands.

When my clients ask whether certain SEO tactics work, I can often provide an answer and give an example of a website I’ve actually been looking at.

They benefit from the fact that I am always busy working on my understanding of SEO and expanding my knowledge.

After all, expertise is what they hired me for.

If something I see is interesting for a client, I share it with them. Sometimes, I use something I discovered as an example to make a case for trying a new strategy.

But what I’m really communicating is “I am on top of my craft.”

I don’t have hard numbers to back this up, but I am convinced it benefits client retention rate too.

The Bottom Line

Monitoring websites and spotting trends is a large part of SEO. If you’re only ever looking at your own websites and/or your clients’ websites, you run the risk of living in a bubble.

Actively following other websites and search queries helps you sharpen your skills and exposes you to different ways of achieving SEO success.

It makes you a better SEO.

And being a better SEO is beneficial for your clients, your sales process, and ultimately your bottom line.