At this point, you should have a list of competitors for your selected keywords.

For each URL that you have collected, check the site using the following tools to determine various information:

1) whatwpthemeisthat.com - this will tell you what WP theme and plug-ins the site is using, although it's not terribly accurate about the plug-ins. I do this to see what kind of social sharing is going on, whether email is being collected, etc. This tool is also useful when you run across a site that has a look/feel that you desire so that you can emulate it.

2) semrush.com - this will tell you a bunch of useful information about the domain, including the keywords being targeted by the site.

3) kissmetrics.com is another site that provides useful tools to obtain lots of useful information about competitor blogs.

4) Depending on the other information you've already obtained, it may be possible to pull the entire domain's sitemap that was submitted to Google and/or Bing. This will allow you to determine the actual size of the website, including pages that might be 'hidden' from normal navigation.

I hope you've enjoyed the first installment of Understanding Your Competition. Please leave a comment below with any additional tips or tricks that others can use to understand their marketplace.