Quotes or no quotes in Google search when seeing competing number of websites?

[carlos123]

I've heard pros and cons to both sides of this issue and am still unclear as to which is best.

Here's my take on what seems best but I would like to hear from others on this.

When a regular joe schmoe searches on Google they never use quotes. So for example with the keyword phrase "hitachi 50" (whatever that is I have no clue...it is a real keyword phrase but I am just using it for illustrative purposes) a searcher will enter it without quotes. Resulting in a web site count of 22,100,000 (see hitachi 50 - Google Search).

But if one enters the phrase in quotes they will end up with a website count of 26,500 (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="hitachi+50"&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&a qi=g10).

It seems to me that entering a phrase in quotes is near useless for purposes of determining how difficult it will be to rank for a given keyword.

Why? Because people don't search with quotes and because the web sites that one will actually be competing with for a given phrase are those that will show up when searching without quotes.

Does that makes sense?

What are your thoughts on this?

Carlos

[JMartin]

Carlos, I'm a rebel.

Might be wrong, but I don't care if a KWP has 50 competing pages or 50,000,000. My goal is page one (I guess two if I must and if the niche is getting pounded daily).

Therefore, the # of competing pages is highly irrelevant. What's important is 20 pages. If I look at those first 20 results and see they are solid, I'm done. Doesn't matter if there are 21 competing pages because I won't be on page one or two.

Just the other day I passed on a KWP with about 8,100 results. Why? There's no way I was getting anywhere close to page one.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by JMartin

Carlos, I'm a rebel.

Might be wrong, but I don't care if a KWP has 50 competing pages or 50,000,000. My goal is page one (I guess two if I must and if the niche is getting pounded daily).

Therefore, the # of competing pages is highly irrelevant. What's important is 20 pages. If I look at those first 20 results and see they are solid, I'm done. Doesn't matter if there are 21 competing pages because I won't be on page one or two.

Just the other day I passed on a KWP with about 8,100 results. Why? There's no way I was getting anywhere close to page one.

I'm with you on this one Jason. Well...with the exception of the rebel part

I just use the Competition as a way to quickly sort through a bunch of keywords to arrive at some which may be easier to rank for. That's all I use it for. For sure...the only competition that matters is the first 10 for me. I don't even look at anything beyond number 10.

But I just don't have time to manually be checking through the top 10 for every keyword phrase I can think of. So I need some quick criteria to help me weed out those that might be too difficult for me to rank for.

I use competition (trying to stay under 50,000 websites) and the ECPC (staying above $2 per click unless there is a lot of local search volume).

Carlos

[JMartin]

Sounds good. I just point it out often because so many people are picking their KWPs solely on the overall number of competing websites, which is ridiculous.

I do this stuff all day long, so I've got the time to just play with KWPs.

But the theory is fine: lower competing KWPs "probably" have openings on the front page.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by JMartin

Sounds good. I just point it out often because so many people are picking their KWPs solely on the overall number of competing websites, which is ridiculous.

I do this stuff all day long, so I've got the time to just play with KWPs.

But the theory is fine: lower competing KWPs "probably" have openings on the front page.

Great to have you validate how I use the competition number Jason. It's been so difficult to get across to people that I don't use the number as a true indicator of competition but rather as a guide to help me uncover keyword phrases that might in general be less competitive.

People seem stuck on the belief that I must be taught that only the pages that show up on the first page are my true competition...which I completely agree with.

Must be a very common newbie mistake by the way people seem to always be wanting to teach me what I already know.

By the way Jason...if you don't mind me asking and you feel comfortable answering...do you make a living full time with Adsense? Or is this a sideline or hobby for you?

Carlos

[dburk]

Hi Carlos,

For the sake of clarity, let me just say that your Google search never shows the number of "websites", it shows the number of pages. Many of those pages could be on just a handful of websites.

Assuming you are trying to size up your competition, there is no good reason to look at the number of pages without quotes since that reports pages where those words appear randomly and would never actually show up on SERP.

By using quotes you get the number of pages that actually include the term you are researching, so this number is more meaningful. The fact that people typically do not use quotes has absolutely no relevance to the reason that you are using them. Why? Because most people aren't trying to find the number of competing pages, but you are.

There are a number of tools that use "competing pages" and sound reasons you might want to find the number of "competing pages", but in my opinion it is generally useful to narrow the scope of your research and nothing more. Never use this as a deciding factor since it gives no indication of the difficulty level of ranking a keyword, it's just helpful to narrow your focus a bit.

[JMartin]

Whoops, posted in wrong thread.

[JMartin]

Originally Posted by carlos123

By the way Jason...if you don't mind me asking and you feel comfortable answering...do you make a living full time with Adsense? Or is this a sideline or hobby for you?

Carlos, I don't really answer money issues, because it really is a personal issue. And there's no reason to. I'm not selling anything and we should all know that AdSense is a way to make money.

But, I can tell you a couple things:

1. I've been making money online for 16 years, so yes, it's full time.

2. AdSense is one of the ways I make money and I've been doing it for many years (with non-product sites).

I love AdSense, because I'm a publisher at heart even though I spent most of my like selling (started my entrepreneur life in direct mail before the Internet). I find it's enjoyable.

Like you've probably read, not every site is a winner. If you make lots of sites, you'll have duds.

I think it's harder for someone that can only put up 1-2 sites. You're scared about making mistakes. When you can put up 5, 10, 20 in a month, you don't care. Heck, sometimes I put up stuff just to get it in the system and growing for later (perhaps).

[Angela V. Edwards]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Carlos,

For the sake of clarity, let me just say that your Google search never shows the number of "websites", it shows the number of pages. Many of those pages could be on just a handful of websites.

Assuming you are trying to size up your competition, there is no good reason to look at the number of pages without quotes since that reports pages where those words appear randomly and would never actually show up on SERP.

By using quotes you get the number of pages that actually include the term you are researching, so this number is more meaningful. The fact that people typically do not use quotes has absolutely no relevance to the reason that you are using them. Why? Because most people aren't trying to find the number of competing pages, but you are.

There are a number of tools that use "competing pages" and sound reasons you might want to find the number of "competing pages", but in my opinion it is generally useful to narrow the scope of your research and nothing more. Never use this as a deciding factor since it gives no indication of the difficulty level of ranking a keyword, it's just helpful to narrow your focus a bit.

You nailed it completely, IMO. If someone is trying to see how many pages are actually competing with THEIR keyword, they would use quotes in their query. However, if they want to see what the average Joe Schmoe sees when he plugs that keyword into the query box and wants to know what the "number of pages" shows in that search, they would NOT use quotes in their query.

Quotes/no quotes gives you two different types of information.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by JMartin

Carlos, I don't really answer money issues, because it really is a personal issue. And there's no reason to. I'm not selling anything and we should all know that AdSense is a way to make money.

Thanks for the additional sharing Jason. I just wanted some reassurance that you weren't just a theorist but that your input was coming from real world, real life experience with Adsense.

Glad to hear that it is! (I wish there was a thumbs up smiley).

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards

You nailed it completely, IMO. If someone is trying to see how many pages are actually competing with THEIR keyword, they would use quotes in their query. However, if they want to see what the average Joe Schmoe sees when he plugs that keyword into the query box and wants to know what the "number of pages" shows in that search, they would NOT use quotes in their query.

Quotes/no quotes gives you two different types of information.

Yes I think Don nailed it too Angela (thanks Don).

What I don't quite get yet (if someone could help me connect the dots on this one it would be much appreciated) is this.

The quote searching allows me to get a truer measure of my real competition (I mean as far as a rough Google number as the total number of pages that show up can give me that). No question about that. I see that. That's absolutely true.

Let's call that the SEO Relative Competition.

But...given that a searcher will search without quotes the pages that actually show up for a given search are those that show up without...well...quotes.

Let's call that the Plain Search Competition.

Why is it better to focus on the SEO Relative Competition when the Plain Search Competition is what shows up? Whatever the SEO Relative Competition is do we not have to beat the sites that show up under the Plain Search Competition instead?

Using the competition in the way I describe is just a way to narrow the field of keyword phrases to focus more analysis on but would we not rather focus the field of possible keywords based on actual Plain Search Competition than SEO Relative Competition?

Since actual searchers see Plain Search Competition and not SEO Relative Competition?

I hope my question makes sense.

Carlos

[JMartin]

Carlos, no I'm not a theorist or a "$1 a day per site" dreamer. I put into practice what I know and yeah, sometimes I mess up royally. But, I can laugh about it. You live and learn.

Right now I'm trying out something on a KWP I already built a site for (building 2nd site now). I want to see what site gets to page 1-2 first.

As for the quotes thing, what really matters is what the normal user sees. I think there's less of a difference between 2-word phrases like "sony cd" than there is longer phrases.

For instance, I just typed in a 2-word KWP in quotes and without quotes. 7 of the 10 results that showed up in quotes were in there without quotes (just 1 ranking lower basically).

So what did "in quotes" tell you here? Nothing really IMHO.

Another example:

I just typed in a 3-word KWP with/without quotes. Again, 70% of the "in quotes" version showed up to normal people in about the same order. I did this in a highly competitive niche I'm in where I know people are optimizing. So in a different niche, the difference might be greater.

Where does all this leave us? Beats me. I don't care about the "in quotes" version because the average person doesn't see it AND it is NOT my competition. My competition is what sites I see on page one when I do an Average Joe 6-Pack search.

Should I really care if I'm on page one for my KWP in quotes if without quotes I'm not there?

I think people overcomplicate stuff as usual.

BTW, I get why this all started. People afraid of competition are using it to find the weakest market. But honestly, if these competing pages aren't toward the top of the results, how good of a job are they really doing and if you can do a good job, does it really matter?

[Angela V. Edwards]

Originally Posted by JMartin

Carlos, no I'm not a theorist or a "$1 a day per site" dreamer. I put into practice what I know and yeah, sometimes I mess up royally. But, I can laugh about it. You live and learn.

Right now I'm trying out something on a KWP I already built a site for (building 2nd site now). I want to see what site gets to page 1-2 first.

As for the quotes thing, what really matters is what the normal user sees. I think there's less of a difference between 2-word phrases like "sony cd" than there is longer phrases.

For instance, I just typed in a 2-word KWP in quotes and without quotes. 7 of the 10 results that showed up in quotes were in there without quotes (just 1 ranking lower basically).

So what did "in quotes" tell you here? Nothing really IMHO.

Another example:

I just typed in a 3-word KWP with/without quotes. Again, 70% of the "in quotes" version showed up to normal people in about the same order. I did this in a highly competitive niche I'm in where I know people are optimizing. So in a different niche, the difference might be greater.

Where does all this leave us? Beats me. I don't care about the "in quotes" version because the average person doesn't see it AND it is NOT my competition. My competition is what sites I see on page one when I do an Average Joe 6-Pack search.

Should I really care if I'm on page one for my KWP in quotes if without quotes I'm not there?

I think people overcomplicate stuff as usual.

BTW, I get why this all started. People afraid of competition are using it to find the weakest market. But honestly, if these competing pages aren't toward the top of the results, how good of a job are they really doing and if you can do a good job, does it really matter?

Yep, I agree and that's what I've been saying for over a year. (Some folks are not happy with me for it, too.) But people who are looking to actually compete in the top five results of Google in order to sell a product will HAVE to be at the top of the results without quotes. If Bob, for instance, was number two for blue widgets with quotes but is number 47 for blue widgets without quotes, is he really going to be selling very many blue widgets to searchers who are looking for that product? Of course not. That's because not only do most searchers NOT use quotes (many don't even KNOW about using quotes in a search query), but most of them also won't be looking much beyond Page One. Most of them certainly won't be seeing Bob's blue widgets on Page Five. That's why if you are looking at what you must compete with to be at the top of Google, it's important that you check it without quotes. Yes, we ALL realize that is not your "true competition" and all that, but that is what your customer will see when he or she looks for your keyword.

[JMartin]

Yeah, Angela. Honestly, I think many IMers forget to go outside. They get stuck in the little IM world box.

Talking with "normal" people daily about the Internet and listening to them really helps.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards

Yep, I agree and that's what I've been saying for over a year. (Some folks are not happy with me for it, too.) But people who are looking to actually compete in the top five results of Google in order to sell a product will HAVE to be at the top of the results without quotes. If Bob, for instance, was number two for blue widgets with quotes but is number 47 for blue widgets without quotes, is he really going to be selling very many blue widgets to searchers who are looking for that product? Of course not. That's because not only do most searchers NOT use quotes (many don't even KNOW about using quotes in a search query), but most of them also won't be looking much beyond Page One. Most of them certainly won't be seeing Bob's blue widgets on Page Five. That's why if you are looking at what you must compete with to be at the top of Google, it's important that you check it without quotes. Yes, we ALL realize that is not your "true competition" and all that, but that is what your customer will see when he or she looks for your keyword.

Hi Angela,

I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make with my earlier post. People using quotes to size up the competition do realize that most people don't use quotes when searching and it doesn't matter to them who ranks well "with quotes", that's not the point.

The point is that the number of pages returned when searching without quotes includes pages that don't even have the term any where on the page, so that number is totally meaningless and anyone who thinks it represents the number of competing pages is naive. By including quotes, you are getting the estimated number of pages that include the exact term you are researching, while this in not the most important information, at least it is applicable to your keyword.

@JMartin,

While there might be folks who are afraid of competition, that's generally not the reason folks look at the number of competing pages. I believe most folks are simply trying to decide where to focus their time to get the most results for their effort. It would be silly to ignore all the low hanging fruit before investing in a diesel powered cherry picker to get the hard to reach fruit on the money tree.

I use this number to narrow my research a bit since not all terms merit an investment in time, we can use this information to make a shorter list of potential keywords to research, beyond this use, I don't think it's meaningful.

[carlos123]

After thinking about it some more I believe I will stick to getting a feel for my competition without quotes since that is what will appear on searches made by folks who are searching without quotes. The number I am after in Google for "competition" is just a very rough guide to the overall competitiveness of a given phrase but a guide that allows me to quickly wade through an otherwise endless ocean of possible keyword phrases. It allows me to quickly narrow the field down to focus on those keywords that are generally much less competitive than others might be.

Which lets me work quicker and smarter without too much up front analysis of other less tangible but important criteria (until I have narrowed the picks down).

Thanks again for the input you all. At least now I understand the issues involved in whether to use quotes or not and the relative merit or not of one searching approach vs another one.

I think the reason I will continue to not use quotes is the same basic reason that I do not use Exact matching in Google's keyword tool. Rather I use Phrase matching.

Because web sites that are targeting keyword phrases that have the main keyword in them as well as additional words, who are also my competitors, show up in the Phrase match counts whereas under Exact matching they do not.

Phrase matching being a form of matching that more closely resembles a real world search by an average person as opposed to Exact matching which most closely resembles what an SEO person might be interested in.

Carlos

[InternetMarketingIQ]

There is a whole lot more to evaluating the effectiveness of a keyword phrase than just raw searches exact or not.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by carlos123

After thinking about it some more I believe I will stick to getting a feel for my competition without quotes since that is what will appear on searches made by folks who are searching without quotes. The number I am after in Google for "competition" is just a very rough guide to the overall competitiveness of a given phrase but a guide that allows me to quickly wade through an otherwise endless ocean of possible keyword phrases. It allows me to quickly narrow the field down to focus on those keywords that are generally much less competitive than others might be.

Which lets me work quicker and smarter without too much up front analysis of other less tangible but important criteria (until I have narrowed the picks down).

Thanks again for the input you all. At least now I understand the issues involved in whether to use quotes or not and the relative merit or not of one searching approach vs another one.

I think the reason I will continue to not use quotes is the same basic reason that I do not use Exact matching in Google's keyword tool. Rather I use Phrase matching.

Because web sites that are targeting keyword phrases that have the main keyword in them as well as additional words, who are also my competitors, show up in the Phrase match counts whereas under Exact matching they do not.

Phrase matching being a form of matching that more closely resembles a real world search by an average person as opposed to Exact matching which most closely resembles what an SEO person might be interested in.

Carlos

Hi Carlos,

Can I recommend you to tell all my competitors to follow your research methods?

Your post made me think of that old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

There is a whole lot more to evaluating the effectiveness of a keyword phrase than just raw searches exact or not.

Of course.

The way I look at all this is that it's like a great big puzzle. No individual piece of the puzzle will make the whole but if one can fit a bunch of the pieces into their appropriate place in the overall attempt to solve the puzzle one should be able to eventually solve the puzzle and boil it down pretty much to a step by step way of doing things. A computer algorithm if you will. A sort of artificial intelligence.

People who have years of experience in this know intuitively how to solve the puzzle of keyword selection and to use the most important criteria to do so. But if you were to analyze their thought processes it could most likely be narrowed down to a set of algorithmic steps that lead them to have their "intuition".

I don't have years to spend on this. So I am focused on solving how piece one fits into the overall puzzle and learning how to fit piece one into it's appropriate spot in the whole. As a sort of pure model for that one piece.

Little by little I am figuring out how to work with each piece of the puzzle and ending up overall, far ahead of where I would be if I just went for it and started building web sites today.

I could be all full of hot air. Maybe I am. Only time will tell. I for sure don't just follow along with the crowd without thinking for myself.

Something has to make sense to me before I start to do it.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by dburk

Your post made me think of that old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

Quite true but I am reminded by your statement of the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." too

Hopefully there is a balance between my being a horse that can't be made to drink of a particular bit of wisdom respecting Adsense and my being an old dog who may no longer be open to thinking about things in a different way.

Carlos

[dburk]

Originally Posted by carlos123

Quite true but I am reminded by your statement of the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." too

Hopefully there is a balance between my being a horse that can't be made to drink of a particular bit of wisdom respecting Adsense and my being an old dog who may no longer be open to thinking about things in a different way.

Carlos

I was trying to make the point that page result numbers on keyword phrases without the quotes is completely meaningless, as is using anything but exact match in the AdWords keyword tool to find search volume for a particular phrase.

If you use phrase match in the keyword tool you can't even tell me how many different keyword phrases that the number represents, much less how many searches a particular phrase gets.

You are using meaningless data regardless of whether I'm a young or old dog and regardless of whether I can learn new tricks. Now let me ask which of us is failing to learn a new trick?

Can you enlighten me as to what the advantage is in using "phrase match" keyword tool numbers or how knowing how many pages have the words in your search query phrase but not even used together in the same paragraph any where on the page? If there is a practical use for that information I'm eager to learn what it would be.

[carlos123]

Don,

I meant no offense by what I said in my last response by the way. I kinda felt bad about how I put that and I do apologize if it came across offensively.

Originally Posted by dburk

I was trying to make the point that page result numbers on keyword phrases without the quotes is completely meaningless, as is using anything but exact match in the AdWords keyword tool to find search volume for a particular phrase.

I understand your viewpoint Don. I just don't agree to it being what I should use. There are others on this forum who are very successful with Adsense who would likewise disagree with you so this isn't just me. If I am not mistaken Mark (otherwise known as internetmarketer99 here) uses Phrase matching as well. Don't know about whether he uses quotes or not in a Google search for a quick competition determination (albeit a rough one at that).

I don't why it is but I have experienced several times where people in internet marketing circles who are way more experienced than me start looking down on me or otherwise getting a bit personal because...well...because I don't take their wisdom and apply it as they suggest.

In the end we are all guessing. Making our best guesses. Hopefully we can give each other the freedom to do our own guessing as we see fit without looking down on each other.

If you use phrase match in the keyword tool you can't even tell me how many different keyword phrases that the number represents, much less how many searches a particular phrase gets.

It is my understanding that a Phrase match will match any searches done that used at least the exact keyword phrase in question + additional words.

So for example a Phrase match for "tennis shoes" would return numbers corresponding to the search for phrases...

red tennis shoes
buy tennis shoes
tennis shoes photo

As you probably know users enter in all kinds of search phrases that are not quite exact when searching for something. You and I might enter in "tennis shoes" but joe schmoe user might enter any number of search phrases with additional words in the phrase while looking for tennis shoes of some kind.

So I want to know how many searches were done on Phrase match so that I can get numbers which more accurately return the kinds of search phrases a non-computer literate searcher might search for.

Under an Exact match for the keyword phrase "tennis shoes" the only results returned will be for "tennis shoes".

Which means that I will miss out on knowing the numbers for the zillion of users who might enter in "blue tennis shoes" and "red tennis shoes".

That means that an Exact match might indicate numbers of searches too low to consider whereas the truth (under a Phrase match) might be that there are plenty of searches for tennis shoes of some sort.

I mean I could be all washed up in my thinking Don but what I said above makes sense as to why using a Phrase match is better with respect to getting a more real world picture of true search volume numbers for a phrase I might be interested in targeting.

Please correct anything that is inaccurate or makes no sense to you and maybe I can be persuaded otherwise.

I will believe that you are not an old dog resistant to looking at things afresh if you will give me the benefit of the doubt in not assuming I am horse resistant to drinking

Carlos

[dburk]

Originally Posted by carlos123

Don,

I meant no offense by what I said in my last response by the way. I kinda felt bad about how I put that and I do apologize if it came across offensively.



I understand your viewpoint Don. I just don't agree to it being what I should use. There are others on this forum who are very successful with Adsense who would likewise disagree with you so this isn't just me. If I am not mistaken Mark (otherwise known as internetmarketer99 here) uses Phrase matching as well. Don't know about whether he uses quotes or not in a Google search for a quick competition determination (albeit a rough one at that).

I don't why it is but I have experienced several times where people in internet marketing circles who are way more experienced than me start looking down on me or otherwise getting a bit personal because...well...because I don't take their wisdom and apply it as they suggest.

In the end we are all guessing. Making our best guesses. Hopefully we can give each other the freedom to do our own guessing as we see fit without looking down on each other.



It is my understanding that a Phrase match will match any searches done that used at least the exact keyword phrase in question + additional words.

So for example a Phrase match for "tennis shoes" would return numbers corresponding to the search for phrases...

red tennis shoes
buy tennis shoes
tennis shoes photo

As you probably know users enter in all kinds of search phrases that are not quite exact when searching for something. You and I might enter in "tennis shoes" but joe schmoe user might enter any number of search phrases with additional words in the phrase while looking for tennis shoes of some kind.

So I want to know how many searches were done on Phrase match so that I can get numbers which more accurately return the kinds of search phrases a non-computer literate searcher might search for.

Under an Exact match for the keyword phrase "tennis shoes" the only results returned will be for "tennis shoes".

Which means that I will miss out on knowing the numbers for the zillion of users who might enter in "blue tennis shoes" and "red tennis shoes".

That means that an Exact match might indicate numbers of searches too low to consider whereas the truth (under a Phrase match) might be that there are plenty of searches for tennis shoes of some sort.

I mean I could be all washed up in my thinking Don but what I said above makes sense as to why using a Phrase match is better with respect to getting a more real world picture of true search volume numbers for a phrase I might be interested in targeting.

Please correct anything that is inaccurate or makes no sense to you and maybe I can be persuaded otherwise.

I will believe that you are not an old dog resistant to looking at things afresh if you will give me the benefit of the doubt in not assuming I am horse resistant to drinking

Carlos

Hi Carlos,

Some of what you are saying is making some since to me. I too use phrase search to get an idea of how big a niche might be using a keyword root. I find that helpful in selecting a niche, but that is a very different context from our previous discussion. You may have noticed that I specifically used the phrase "to find search volume for a particular phrase" so as to not confuse research for a niche vs. a particular phrase.

Your example above of phrase match is only relevant to the serving of AdWords ads on the search network and has no relevance to SEO or AdSense ads on the content network.

Once you find a niche it's important, in my opinion, to focus on particular phrases with commercial intent and sufficient search volume. If you don't know which phrases are the money phrases, and which has all the search volume, you could easily end up ranking well for phrases that have no search traffic while missing all the phrases that do have the traffic.

One of the most common things I see people getting frustrated about is getting top ranking for keywords they thought would be good, only to learn that the term gets searched only twice a month. And when we analyse what went wrong guess what we find? "I used broad or phrase match data from the keyword tool".

I'm sorry if I seem a little testy, there must be at least 10 sad stories a month on this board where folks, just like you, ignore our advice and then later show up asking what went wrong. It's like a broken record repeating over and over and sometimes I just want to help someone without them having to learn the hard way. I guess most folks can't learn unless there is a little pain and sacrifice involved to help them accept the truth. Kind of like a kid that ignores his parents warning to not touch the hot stove. Once he gets burned the toddler realizes that old person is actually trying to help.

So tell us Carlos, how many times did you touch the hot stove before you begin to heed those warnings "Don't touch"?

"Watch out, that phrase and broad match will burn!"

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Carlos,

Some of what you are saying is making some since to me. I too use phrase search to get an idea of how big a niche might be using a keyword root. I find that helpful in selecting a niche, but that is a very different context from our previous discussion. You may have noticed that I specifically used the phrase "to find search volume for a particular phrase" so as to not confuse research for a niche vs. a particular phrase.

Interesting. I too am beginning to see some sense in what you are saying Don. You may have a point in using Phrase matching to get a general feel for a niche using a keyword root. I'll have to think about that some to see if I want to use Exact for some aspect of particular keyword phrase analysis too.

Your example above of phrase match is only relevant to the serving of AdWords ads on the search network and has no relevance to SEO or AdSense ads on the content network.

Kinda funny but I see it as the complete opposite where Phrase matching applies to the content network better than Exact and where Exact applies better to the serving of Adword ads. I could be wrong. Again I will think about this more.

One of the most common things I see people getting frustrated about is getting top ranking for keywords they thought would be good, only to learn that the term gets searched only twice a month. And when we analyse what went wrong guess what we find? "I used broad or phrase match data from the keyword tool".

Interesting. I think based on what you said that I will add an Exact phrase match to my analysis to get an even better feel for what a particular keyword phrase might be like using Adsense. I won't get rid of Phrase matching entirely and will still use that for overall weeding of keyword phrases down to a manageable number but I will add Exact matching to my further analysis of a given keyword phrase.

Once he gets burned the toddler realizes that old person is actually trying to help.

I appreciate your persistance in trying to get a concept through my sometimes thick head Don. I still don't entirely see things your way but I am open to what you are saying. Like I said...I have to think about it some more.

My brain is a bit foggy just now as I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night so you'll have to forgive me if I don't do my thinking just now LOL.

So tell us Carlos, how many times did you touch the hot stove before you begin to heed those warnings "Don't touch"?

I don't remember but point well taken.

Carlos

[carlos123]

You know regarding the whole issue of deriving the competitiveness of a keyword phrase as accurately as possible (which is not entirely achievable of course but getting as close as we can to it)...I came upon an interesting method used by someone that does not take into account the Google count of site pages at all.

Basically it involves entering the keyword phrase into Google (without quotes I believe) and then adding the pagerank that appears for the top 10 result pages.

Then dividing that by 10 the result of which he calls the TBPR (Google Toolbar Page Rank). If the TBPR is above 3 he drops the keyword phrase from consideration. If it is 3 or below he keeps it for further analysis.

When I think about it some it seems that this TBPR method is way better than using the Google count of website pages for a given keyword phrase to determine the overall competitiveness.

I mean PageRank is not exactly super accurate either but it's certainly more accurate as a barometer of how tough it is going to be to get ranked on the first SERP than a simple Google count of pages in all the SERP's for a given keyword phrase.

What do you all think of this method?

Carlos

[JMartin]

I think if you look hard enough and talk about things enough, you'll have all sorts of methods. Whether they are accurate or not is another matter.

Perhaps you could look for KWPs that have a PR6 in spot #3, put the site on a dart board and see if you can hit it. If you do, the niche is too competitive. If not, go for it.

As far as PR goes, again, page PR from its own merits is one thing, from home page passing is another.

I think I've looked at the page one results for some 50-60 KWPs in the past 48 hours alone. Not once do I remember PR lining up. Every time it was a jumble.

But, you need to find your own groove. There are tons of theories out there.

[dburk]

Hi carlos123,

All I can say is wow, "TBPR" is classic cargo cult.

"Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important"

Seth Godin

If you study a handful of SERPs you will easily notice that pages are not ranked by PR. They are in fact ranked by relevance, so if you learn which factors effect relevance and how each of those factors impact the relevance you will be way ahead of 95% of your fellow webmasters. TBPR is one of the lessor factors in SERP ranking and applies primarily to weighting the relevance of outbound anchor text.

Your page's PR will influence other pages you link to, but has little bearing on where you rank for that page, it's all about relevance.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by JMartin

But, you need to find your own groove. There are tons of theories out there.

For sure Jason. Just trying to find a theory that will help me pick keyword phrases better.

That is my weak point. It isn't site building or writing articles, article marketing, or any of the other stuff. It's picking good keywords to focus on.

I've spent the last few days trying to pick them and have only come on 16 or so (assuming they are any good). I started another thread here where I give some of their numbers.

Some other threads I have read here make it sound like there are zillions of keywords available for the picking. As if they are almost falling off trees there are so many of them. My experience tells me otherwise though of course I realize that because all this is relatively new to me that my experience is not quite there yet. It is very possible that my keyword methodology is flawed. More so than that those saying there are zillions are flawed in their statements.

Still...I can't afford to fail in my first few Adsense sites. I have more banking on this than my own success. If it was just that I wouldn't care so much. But a client partner who is relying on me completely to pick good keyword phrases is also in the works and I don't want to disappoint him. I have got to pick some winners initially to validate his trust in me.

He realizes that I am learning. That I am on this forum a lot. That my knowledge and skill is improving exponentially every day but regardless I don't want to fall flat on my face by picking terrible keyword phrases that for one reason or another end up being real duds.

So that's part of the reason I am focused on this phase, that of picking good keyword phrases, at this point in time. I mean if I don't the world won't end but I would prefer to at least pick some reasonable good one's before commitment even more time to building the web sites I need to build around them.

I do appreciate your all's input. It's helping me a great deal.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by dburk

If you study a handful of SERPs you will easily notice that pages are not ranked by PR. They are in fact ranked by relevance, so if you learn which factors effect relevance and how each of those factors impact the relevance you will be way ahead of 95% of your fellow webmasters. TBPR is one of the lessor factors in SERP ranking and applies primarily to weighting the relevance of outbound anchor text.

That sounds like...well...some gold there Don. I am a rather reserved person to some extent so I won't say "That there is pure GOLD!!" but gold it is...I think LOL.

So tell me something Don if you don't sharing so...what do you think are the top 5 factors that affect relevance based on your experience?

Carlos

[dburk]

Originally Posted by carlos123

That sounds like...well...some gold there Don. I am a rather reserved person to some extent so I won't say "That there is pure GOLD!!" but gold it is...I think LOL.

So tell me something Don if you don't sharing so...what do you think are the top 5 factors that affect relevance based on your experience?

Carlos

1. Keywords in title
2. Keywords in URL
3. Keywords in text
4. Keywords in outbound anchor text
5. Keywords in inbound anchor text

I don't believe that it is simply a coincidence that they also have search operators for each of these:

1. intitle:keyword
2. inurl:keyword
3. intext:keyword
4. site:domain.com inanchor:keyword
5. inanchor:keyword

Of course there are many other factors, but these appear to be the primary factors effecting relevance. If you nail these you will usually be way ahead of the pack and closing in on the leaders.

[carlos123]

Okay...now you've done it! Leaving my usually reserved nature aside may I say..."PURE GOLD!"?

Thanks Don. Just the kind of gold I like. Succinct and put into a list. A list I can chew on.

I'm pretty excited tonight as I think I have finally hit upon a keyword research strategy that may pan out for me.

1. Look up high CPC lists in various general fields of interest.
2. Look up a keyword from these lists in the Google Adwords Keyword tool.
3. Go down the page until I come upon LSV numbers of around 3000 to 5000.
4. Pick the highest CPC keyphrases that don't sound like the kind of phrases that most people would search on.
5. Pick a number of such CPC keyphrases into a cluster that I can build individual pages around on a single web site.
6. Go to Google and start looking them up...in quotes this time.
7. If I find any with less than 50,000 sites competing...

Do my further analysis and if everything still looks good go and register domains.

How does that sound to you all? I can't believe the CPC payouts on the higher CPC keywords I am finding but then again I suppose most all Adsense professionals focus on these keywords too so it remains to be seen if I can find any that I can beat in the high CPC categories.

But I guess what came to me just today (based on reading Mark's long thread on this a few days ago) is that I can pick a more generic top level keyword phrase and then start building pages around long tails that pay high CPC within that more generic category.

What I have been doing is focusing on just one keyword phrase at a time and finding few that seemed real good. But the one's I had been finding were absolutely unique to themselves and not thematically connected with any others.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Bingo! I think a revised strategy based on your all's input may work much better. Still not sure about using Exact matching though. The difference between Exact and Phrase can be huge.

Here's one I just found.

LSV of 1,300 (but with a global monthly search volume of 9,900) using Exact matching.
ECPC of $12.61.
Competition in Google (with quotes) of only 17,000 other sites.

The top 3 sites are PR3, PR(unknown), and PR4.

Does this sound about right Don (or anyone else)? I mean using Exact AND searching on Google with quotes? The numbers are way different if I use Phrase and search on Google without quotes.

Carlos

[michael_nguyen]

I really should do a video on this, this quotes and competing pages business is getting on my nerves now.

[carlos123]

Mine too LOL. At this point I am just going by faith in what I am being told even though I still don't quite understand it exactly (ha, ha pun fully intended).

Carlos

[dburk]

Hi Carlos,

You have got the basics, but there is so much more to learn. You should learn to master these basics, as that will be required to move on to intermediate and advanced strategies and tactics.

Keep in mind that the CPC data you are looking at is from the Search Network, not the Content Network, and is only for the top three ad positions. Content network bids tend to be much lower and depending on the number of ad unit placements they could be lower positions and much smaller bids. Think of it as a relative indicator for comparison purposes.

[carlos123]

Thanks Don! This thread has been pure gold for me. Wow! A thread almost to help just me. Unbelievable. Thanks so much for anyone who participated in it.

Regarding the CPC Don...I understand what you are saying. Still if the percentage that Jason kindly shared earlier in the thread based on a long standing site of his as being about 25% CPC average holds true a CPC of $12 on the Search Network should in theory return something along the lines of $3 in Adsense commission.

With an LSV of 1,300 and a CTR estimated of only 4% that's only...let's see...

thats' only $156 a month. Not that great but hey...not absolutely terrible either. If I can build additional pages centered on thematically similar keywords a site could end up generating a good $1000 dollars a month with just a few pages.

My head is starting to hurt. All this figuring, reading, analyzing, and discussion. I think I am going to go and have myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watch some Stargate LOL.

Carlos

[michaellive1986]

You have got the basics, but there is so much more to learn. You should learn to master these basics, as that will be required to move on to intermediate and advanced strategies and tactics.

I agree with this, Basic is very important and it should be mastered. Even if we do advance things, we still need to do the basic techniques and theories.

[carlos123]

I am one of those very few individuals who are blessed in having all the time I need (at least for the next month or two) to learn the basics real well. Not that it will take that long but if I need the time...it's there.

All my needs are taken care of for at least the next 25 days or so. I have no wife or kids. My work as a web developer can be limited only to servicing the needs of the most important clients...which is minimal really. So day in and day out...I can focus on this. And have been.

This forum has been absolutely invaluable to me in the input I have received.

Carlos

[carlos123]

That's weird. I just noticed something.

Inside Firefox I have it set to show 100 search results per page. Inside Chromium (which Google Chrome is based on) I have it set to show 10 search results per page.

When I just now searched for a keyword phrase in Firefox in quotes it returned a count of 372,000 pages for this phrase. Whereas in Chromium the number returned by Google was 422,000.

What gives? Why such a big difference?

Anybody else ever see this?

Carlos

[carlos123]

I must be doing something wrong again....whereas before I couldn't pick more than a few keyword phrases per day that seemed any good the first four that I have looked at tonight show some promise using Exact matching in the Google Keyword Tool and using quotes when searching for page count on Google.

Here are the stats for the first four I just looked at...the Page's are the PR as shown through the Firefox SEO plugin.

I only looked at the PR of top level pages...not the PR of inner pages that show up indented under the top level ones.

The ? is of a page that the Google SEO thingy couldn't determine.

LSV      MSV   Competition   ECPC  Page1  Page2  Page3
						
1,300    9,900     16,700    $12.61    3     ?      4
   590      390    111,000     $3.84    3     2     0
1,000    1,000    372,000     $8.37    3     0     2
3,600    2,900     39,400      $8.67    4     2     0

This is almost like picking apples out of barrel. Too easy now. These are all within striking distance of my being able to beat them based on the preliminary numbers above I think.

Am I doing something wrong?

Carlos

[carlos123]

Oops. I think I goofed in my thread responses somewhere. I responded to Mark on another thread thinking I was posting here to respond to his post here (which was on another thread) and now my response has disappeared. Oh well...sorry Mark wherever you are.

Carlos

[James Pateman]

Hi Carlos,

I agree with previous comments that researcher must strike a balance between the number of ‘competing pages’ and the difficulty of ranking for that keyword phrase. I see this balance will be different for each individual depending on their skill and confidence in being able to rank well.


Regards,

James Pateman

[carlos123]

I am now all confused again as to whether to use quotes or not.

Here's my dilemna.

I have a keyword phrase. The numbers are really sweet. I mean the LSV, MSV, ECPC and even the PR of the top 4 sites that show up for both searching with quotes and without quotes are all good.

But here's my problem.

The phrase is something like "fourth wheel barrow".

If I search without quotes a great big, fat Adsense site shows up. I mean fat in that it has links to sub-pages about fourth wheel barrows in just about every State. All with Adsense of course.

The home page of this site is a joke and really doesn't give a visitor much value by itself and even the State site pages are a joke in that they repeat a bunch of stuff. Someone obviously put it up just for the Adsense.

I could probably outrank it but why bother. There's other keyword phrases to pick.

But...if I search for the phrase with quotes...like an Adsense person might...the great big Adsense site is nowhere to be seen.

Now it would be ridiculous it seems to me to determine my competition based on the sites that show up with quotes. Because doing so would give me a faulty impression of the real competition that will appear to a normal searcher who searches without quotes.

If I rely on the search with quotes, see that the competition is real weak and that there is no Adsense site, get a domain, and start promoting it I will end up with egg on my face as a result of this large Adsense competitor popping up for regular searchers that I would not even be aware of (if I was only looking at sites that showed up in the SERP's based on a quoted keyword phrase).

So I think I will go back to doing a final evaluation of the sites that appear without quotes. To do otherwise seems foolish to me unless anyone can once again have the patience to explain to me why using quotes is better to determining the true measure of my competition.

Carlos

[carlos123]

I did some more digging around and ironically found the exact opposite problem than what I just described above.

I did a search on a keword phrase with no quotes and no real competitor shows up so it looks good. But with quotes some very good competitors show up at least as far as their site content is concerned. They even have Adsense.

But these competitors are buried deep and don't even appear if I search without quotes. Just like a regular searcher would.

For various reasons...some of which are quite obvious these competitors are buried.

So what is smarter? For me to size up the competition that shows up with quotes or without?

I think the answer is pretty obvious. I should be sizing up the competion that shows up without quotes! That is my true competition. NOT the site pages that show up with quotes!

I could be wrong given that I am still a relative newbie at this but I just don't see the logic at this point of sizing up the competition that shows up when I search for a given keyword phrase in Google using quotes around the phrase.

That makes absolutely no sense to me.

To use quotes is like me saying that I only want to look at competitors who sell "sailboats" while completely ignoring those who sell dinghies, skiffs, and catamarans. Google doesn't ignore these other competitors. They show up for regular users who search for sailboats without quotes.

If Google doesn't ignore them neither should I.

Carlos

[blogsy]

Carlos123 ... What dburk says is right IMO, as part of your initial research use quotes. We all know people don't search with quotes but that has nothing to do with what you are trying to achieve when assessing competition and your potential to be on page 1 (which is the only page worth being on) Most of the top keyword tools search with quotes for a very good reason, it's the best way to start your competition analysis. But it's only the start and a small part of several things that needs to be assessed before you can decide if that keyword is worth using and putting the effort into, and even then you will only know for sure when it's up on a page combined with all the other good advice dburk gave you, not forgetting a heap of relevant backlinks to the page as a major part of your seo.

I think you need to bang up a site and walk the adsense road before you start calculating what you will be earning, CPC and CTR are often not what people think they will be and as a result the returns are lower than anticipated.

For most to make adsense work they need a lot of websites, need the right niches, keywords and some serious web site promotion, think in terms of a 9 to 5 job, that's the effort required if your looking for a decent income.

[dburk]

Hi Carlos,

Here's an analogy:

The difference between a Master Mechanic and a mechanical moron is in their tools. Not just how good their tools are, because even a mechanical moron could purchase a superior set of tools, but in knowing which tool to use in a given situation and how to use it properly.

Even the Master must begin in ignorance and gradually learn all the basics, how and when to use them and when not to use them.

The point is don't use a tool or technique for anything unless it the best tool you have in your toolbox for the task at hand. The use of quotes is just one of many tools in an SEO's toolbox and it is useful for certain tasks but not so useful for others.

Looking at the number of competing pages for a keyword using quotes can be useful to narrow a large list of keywords to those that may be easier to get ranked. No where in this thread has anyone suggested that you should analyse the actual listings on this SERP, just the number of pages. You can't rely totally on the numbers you get from using quotes, you must dig deeper, it just a technique for shortening a long list to shorter list worth focusing on for more in depth research.

And another thing, you keep mentioning the PR of the top ranked pages on the SERP. That's a rookie mistake, Google doesn't rank pages based on PR, they rank them based on relevance. When you analyse your competition you need to focus on what influences their relevance and whether you can outrank them with a reasonable amount of your limited resources. Keyword research is a cost vs. benefit analysis.

[4morereferrals]

I hope this advice was NOT paid for.

Basically it involves entering the keyword phrase into Google (without quotes I believe) and then adding the pagerank that appears for the top 10 result pages.

Then dividing that by 10 the result of which he calls the TBPR (Google Toolbar Page Rank). If the TBPR is above 3 he drops the keyword phrase from consideration. If it is 3 or below he keeps it for further analysis.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

I hope this advice was NOT paid for.

No it wasn't. I got it for free from what seems to be an excellent primer on Adsense success.

Bear in mind that I am still a relative newbie at this so for sure take what I found with a grain of salt. Perhaps a great big grain of salt as I am still learning to recognize what is useful and what is not.

However...it does seem to me that adding up the page rank of the top 10 sites and dividing by ten is very useful as a technique to help one get an overall feel for how competitive a given keyword will be to rank for.

That makes logical and total sense to me. Not as in a key to competitive analysis mind you for after all there are many other factors to consider but as one piece of the puzzle that is very helpful.

John (XFactor) on this forum, a well respected and successful Adsense fellow says among the nuggets of wisdom he has given away that he does not go after sites that are PR4 or above (if I remember correctly). Whatever you may think of the add up the PR of the top ten and divide by ten method the fact is that PR is used as indicator of how hard it will be too rank by even one of the top Adsense marketers on this forum.

Please note I said indicator not a definitive and authoritatively foolproof key.

So if a successful Adsense marketer here uses PR as an indicator of whether a page is worth trying to beat in the ranking does it not make logical sense to believe that if we add the PR of the top ten sites and divide by ten we will end up with a figure that can be used as a guide for how hard it will be to rank, not against one page, but against a tightly focused niche?

That makes total sense to me. I mean logically.

Based on the sound wisdom being shared by a very successful Adsense marketer here (and others) about the role of PR in evaluating competitiveness.

Surely no one would advise a newbie to go after a page with a PR of 6 or higher. Would they?

Would you all not rather advise a newbie to stick to trying to beat PR 0 pages if it were possible for that newbie to find high paying CPC keyword phrases with lots of traffic related to the topic of those pages?

PR has value for competitive analysis. I think that is very clear and I honestly don't think anyone would doubt that.

The add the PR of top ten sites and divide by ten method is simply an extension of what is obviously true about PR and it's use in competitive analysis applied to one page vs another.

Incidentally while I acknowledge my newbieness in all this I also price logical and rationale argument for or against a method or technique. To ask me whether I paid to know about a method does nothing to undermine or otherwise help me see the fault in using a method.

Not matter who says otherwise.

Tell me why such a method is not useful logically and why it should not be used anymore or less than any other method and you might convince me otherwise. Asking me if I paid to know about a method says absolutely nothing about whether the method itself is any good or not.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by dburk

Even the Master must begin in ignorance and gradually learn all the basics, how and when to use them and when not to use them.

Quite true Don but every newbie aiming to be a Master must be shown logically why using a wrench is a better alternative to using one's hands to loosen a bolt. I emphasize the logic of using one tool over another.

If a Master tells me to use my hands for such a thing when I have seen the logic of using a wrench...what am I supposed to do? Just use my hands and fingers to try and loosen a bolt because a Master has told me to do so?

Same thing holds true here. I consider you to be a Master of Adsense Don. At least I have seen no reason to consider you not to be one. In truth I do not know you very well but you've been around here for a while and I take what you say seriously.

But logically I do not see the value of using quotes when searching for top ten results to do competitive analysis on vs using no quotes and doing competitive analysis on the pages that appear that way.

So what am I supposed to do Don? Take what you say only because you are a presumed Master and throw my logic out the window? Or stick to what seems logically better for valid and worthwhile reasons?

If all we ever did was take what others more knowledgeable than us tell us is best without questioning the logic of what we are being told...I think mankind as a whole would probably still be in the middle ages somewhere.

I have been on other forums where Masters of the field have likewise told me things that I did not accept simply because they were Masters. If those things did not seem logically valid to me. It is an unfortunate reaction of many Masters to take it personally when a little grasshopper questions the logic of some of their wisdom (I am just making a general statement and not directing at you personally). I never intend such questioning personally but I will side with what seems rational and logical to me any day over what a Master tells me (with the sole exception being the words of my one true Master who shall remained unnamed for purposes of this thread since it is not a religious thread).

The point is don't use a tool or technique for anything unless it the best tool you have in your toolbox for the task at hand. The use of quotes is just one of many tools in an SEO's toolbox and it is useful for certain tasks but not so useful for others.

Agreed.

Looking at the number of competing pages for a keyword using quotes can be useful to narrow a large list of keywords to those that may be easier to get ranked.

Agreed. It can be useful for sure Don. Just not as useful for determining how competitive a given niche will be than not using quotes and doing one's competitive analysis on those pages that show up instead.

No where in this thread has anyone suggested that you should analyse the actual listings on this SERP, just the number of pages. You can't rely totally on the numbers you get from using quotes, you must dig deeper, it just a technique for shortening a long list to shorter list worth focusing on for more in depth research.

Quite frankly I am getting away from the numbers that show up with or without quotes entirely Don. Instead I am leaning very strongly in the direction of simply doing some preliminary analysis of just the site pages that show up in the top ten when searching without quotes. Focusing my competitive analysis on those exclusively.

Come to think of it...I think I am beginning to understand what you are saying about using quotes...

Are you saying something like this?

Searching for the number of pages that show up for a given phrase with quotes allows us to get a better feel for the competiveness of a niche by looking at the top ten pages that appear in the resulting SERP. Presumably because those pages that show up for such an exact searching of a given keyword phrase will be more highly optimized for that phrase and thus more likely to be a competitor to us than pages that show up when doing a search without quotes.

Is that the gist of what you are saying Don?

The problem I see with that if it is...that Google doesn't quite look at it that way. While a given site page that shows up when using quotes may indeed be a reflection of how competitive they would be if they were running against us directly...head to head...the fact is that many times the pages that show up on a quote search are no where to be found when searching without quotes.

In essence we are gauging the competitiveness of a niche based on a search method (i.e. using quotes) that shows us pages that do not compete with us in real life searching.

If a site is highly optimized for a given keyword phrase BUT does not show up on a page one SERP based on a real world search methodology which uses no quotes (as most people search)...who cares?

That site page is worthless as a gauge or guide to how competitive a niche will be for us to rank in precisely because...well...because it doesn't rank.

Conversely those site pages that show up when searching without quotes are an excellent gauge of true competitiveness given that these are the actual pages that will appear for a regular user searching on the given keyword phrase.

And another thing, you keep mentioning the PR of the top ranked pages on the SERP. That's a rookie mistake, Google doesn't rank pages based on PR, they rank them based on relevance.

I agree completely Don. I know that PR is not the way Google ranks pages in the SERP's. Admittedly SERP ranking and PageRank was a bit confusing at first but I have known that the two are not directly related to each other for some time. If it were we would never encounter situations where low PR pages outrank higher PR pages.

PR is simply an indication of how important a page seems to be to others who have linked to it (if my understanding of page rank is correct).

It's obviously not indicative of where a site page will rank by itself for there are a multitude of pages that show up in SERP's but only 10 PR values (which would only be good for ranking the first ten pages).

When you analyse your competition you need to focus on what influences their relevance and whether you can outrank them with a reasonable amount of your limited resources. Keyword research is a cost vs. benefit analysis.

Agreed.

Carlos

[dburk]

Are you saying something like this?

Quote:
Searching for the number of pages that show up for a given phrase with quotes allows us to get a better feel for the competiveness of a niche by looking at the top ten pages that appear in the resulting SERP. Presumably because those pages that show up for such an exact searching of a given keyword phrase will be more highly optimized for that phrase and thus more likely to be a competitor to us than pages that show up when doing a search without quotes.


Is that the gist of what you are saying Don?

Sort of...

The problem I see with that if it is...that Google doesn't quite look at it that way. While a given site page that shows up when using quotes may indeed be a reflection of how competitive they would be if they were running against us directly...head to head...the fact is that many times the pages that show up on a quote search are no where to be found when searching without quotes.

In essence we are gauging the competitiveness of a niche based on a search method (i.e. using quotes) that shows us pages that do not compete with us in real life searching.

If a site is highly optimized for a given keyword phrase BUT does not show up on a page one SERP based on a real world search methodology which uses no quotes (as most people search)...who cares?

That site page is worthless as a gauge or guide to how competitive a niche will be for us to rank in precisely because...well...because it doesn't rank.

Conversely those site pages that show up when searching without quotes are an excellent gauge of true competitiveness given that these are the actual pages that will appear for a regular user searching on the given keyword phrase.

You have extrapolated what I have said into a different context. Using quotes to get an estimate of the total number of pages is not the same as using that exact query to determine the top competitors for a term. Those are two entirely different things. You seem to be inferring something I did not say.

You are intermixing terminology, a search term isn't a niche, while a niche could be a search term. A niche will generally have many different terms, or keywords. Try to keep the concept of a keyword distinct from a niche.

Using Quotes is useful for getting a rough idea of how many pages are potentially targeting a term so that you can narrow the scope of your research, nothing more. I wouldn't suggest that you analyse those specific pages as your competition, even though they may be.

Naturally, your true competition is the top 10 results on the SERP for your search term (without quotes), but that is meaningless if you haven't yet selected your term or even narrowed it down to a short list. Since there may be so many possible keywords to research, you often will find a need to shorten your list and using quotes is just one method to do that.

There are a number of tools that use that technique to score the competitiveness of a keyword and I would never rely on that as a definitive, or even close to definitive, tactic.

Personally I use a much more restrictive set of operators and I combine them in various ways to get a little more clarity before I invest time in content creation and marketing efforts.

Regarding PR, again I would recommend that you totally ignore it for the purpose of keyword research or competitive analysis, it's just not relevant. Just because it's easy to measure doesn't make it important. There are situations where PR will be important, but that applies to the promotion of your webpages, not keyword research or competitive analysis.