How can I compete against 10 million other pages? Easy

[Mike Anthony]

Okay. this has come up a number of times and it is probably scaring people off. Its come up so often in the last week I thought it deserved its own thread to debunk. Hear me out- The search results you get when you search for a keyword in Google.

HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE TERM.

I know you have seen it in SEO and backlinking ads where people are trying to sell you on their sure fire backlinks or SEO skills.

"I ranked number three for a term with 8,000,000 other competing pages"

"In just a week I outranked 22 million other pages competing for the same term"

yada yada yada

Why is this misleading?

When you do a search on Google all it does is return the number of times it finds the word or phrase in the database of crawled sites. It does not tell you who is trying to compete for those terms. You could do a search for blue jeans and not only will the word count include people trying to sell blue jeans who want to rank for the term but it will also include people talking about what they have on who couldn't care less about ranking for blue jeans. They are not competing for the term at all. Some might be blogging how much they hate blue jeans.

This is important because a lot of people think its hopeless when they see a big result when they search for a term and get millions of results but the facts are - given enough backlinks and on site SEO they could easily achieve rankings over millions of other pages because very few of those pages (and some times none) are even trying to rank for the term.

Don't believe me? check some searches out

free garbage - Google Search

Do you really believe there are 22 million pages people are trying to rank highly for "Free garbage" ? or another

garbage bag with holes - Google Search

How many people are really trying to rank for garbage bags with holes?

I guarantee you it is not 17 million pages. I know some people hate thier husbands but do you really believe that they have 42 million pages that are trying to compete for "give him cancer"?

give him cancer - Google Search


When determining competitiveness look at the top ten or top 50 sites that come up. Look at their backlinks (if you dont know how you need to learn how) and the terms they are trying to rank for (both by their content and by the anchor text they use in their backlinks).

Thats the best way to determine the competitiveness of a keyword phrase in SERPs not the amount of pages merely containing the word. Don't be fooled by that the next time you see a claim like that. Analyze the term to see if it even gets many searchers each month.

[Rush]

You are 100% correct. It doesn't matter if Google finds 20 million results for a search term, if all the sites on page one have 0 backlinks you can easily become #1 for the term.

[bluelambda]

I agree with your post. However, I think the number of "competing pages" shouldn't be totally thrown out of the window.

It's good as a very rough gauge of the competition, as well as whether the term has some general interest.

Just to demonstrate my point, search for the term "garbage bag with holes" with the quotes (phrase match). You'll find that there are 37,400 results, and a quick glance at the results shows that garbage bags with holes are popular for halloween costumes.

Once we've evaluated that, looking at the backlinking etc of the top 10 results is the right way to go from an SEO perspective.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bluelambda

I agree with your post. However, I think the number of "competing pages" shouldn't be totally thrown out of the window.

It's good as a very rough gauge of the competition, as well as whether the term has some general interest.

Nope. Its absolutely worthless. You can find why the words might appear in the results with garbage bag with holes but it does not tell you how many people are trying to compete for the term. The fact that garbage bags with holes are used in halloweeen costumes doesn't tell you ANYTHING about anyone wanting to rank for the term. You haven't proven ANY point. Go ahead and use Google's keyword tool to see how many times the term is searched for. I dare you

Show me how seeing 17 million results for that tells you anything about how competitive the term is and who is trying to rank for it. It means nothing. Go back and look at the results and you will barely see a result on the page that even has all the words together or in a title. Here's more

cloud zebra breath - Google Search

Now tell me how how the 2.3 million in results shows how totally alone you would be competing for "cloud zebra breath"?

[Diver Doug]

This is great food for thought ! Even though I'm still quite the newbie, I'm starting to see the logic in your arguement, though I'm not ready to discount the competing webpage number yet.

Here's an idea, Mike. Why not take a keyword where there are large numbers of competing websites and make a website around it (ie "garbage bags with holes", maybe) and actually show people that it IS possible to compete with millions of supposed competing pages and still rank highly?

It's not a matter of calling your bluff or anything like that, but I think that it would give a LOT of hope to people who are just starting out and may have become a bit discouraged....


Diver Doug

[Diver Doug]

scratch my last point. As it stands, you (or this post) are already #2 or #3 for "Zebra cloud breath" on Google right now (out of nearly 2.4 million competing).

Therefore, you have jsut proven your point with a simple post. Now, if only there was an affiliate link to a product devoted to Zebra cloud breath... :-)

Diver Doug

[timpears]

Well Doug, WF hit number one for Zebra cloud breath already.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Diver Doug

scratch my last point. As it stands, you (or this post) are already #2 or #3 for "Zebra cloud breath" on Google right now (out of nearly 2.4 million competing).

Well do you want "garbage bag with holes" Cause this thread is already at around #15 out of 17 million

I am so tempted to throw some backlinks at this thread to get it ranked number one but my subscribers would kill me for exposing any of the backlinks I use.

Come on man someone start a wildly popular product called "Zebra cloud breath" from here looks like we are now number one out of 2 million plus.

[rimam1]

Thank you. I wrote a post like this here on Warrior Forum before. When people try to sell you a product and they highlight the number of competing pages, they're not really saying all that much.

Now, if they had a top 10 listing for a highly searched keyword AND showed the number of links pointing to those sites, I would be impressed.

[Diver Doug]

I guess his point is pretty clear now !

So....since this is now ranked #1 on Google :


Attn everyone !! Click HERE for the greatest ebook on "Zebra Cloud Breath"...it's only $97, but for today only !!! Act now before the price goes up to $499.00 (plus local sales taxes) !!


if only I had an affiliate link for that....

Diver Doug

[Mike Anthony]

On a side note and more serious this also illustrates something I have begun to see in a number of sites. Notice how fast this thread was indexed. Warrior forums doesn't just come up high on nonsense phrases. I have found results for competitive terms also. In many ways a number of community sites are beginning to have similar results as posting articles to article directories.

[Easy Cash]

Mike

Awesome post - thanks for the insight into the Google results !

[Linkbuilder123]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Okay. this has come up a number of times and it is probably scaring people off. Its come up so often in the last week I thought it deserved its own thread to debunk. Hear me out- The search results you get when you search for a keyword in Google.

HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE TERM.

I know you have seen it in SEO and backlinking ads where people are trying to sell you on their sure fire backlinks or SEO skills.

"I ranked number three for a term with 8,000,000 other competing pages"

"In just a week I outranked 22 million other pages competing for the same term"


yada yada yada

Why is this misleading?

When you do a search on Google all it does is return the number of times it finds the word or phrase in the database of crawled sites. It does not tell you who is trying to compete for those terms. You could do a search for blue jeans and not only will the word count include people trying to sell blue jeans who want to rank for the term but it will also include people talking about what they have on who couldn't care less about ranking for blue jeans. They are not competing for the term at all. Some might be blogging how much they hate blue jeans.

This is important because a lot of people think its hopeless when they see a big result when they search for a term and get millions of results but the facts are - given enough backlinks and on site SEO they could easily achieve rankings over millions of other pages because very few of those pages (and some times none) are even trying to rank for the term.

Don't believe me? check some searches out

free garbage - Google Search

Do you really believe there are 22 million pages people are trying to rank highly for "Free garbage" ? or another

garbage bag with holes - Google Search

How many people are really trying to rank for garbage bags with holes?

I guarantee you it is not 17 million pages. I know some people hate thier husbands but do you really believe that they have 42 million pages that are trying to compete for "give him cancer"?

give him cancer - Google Search


When determining competitiveness look at the top ten or top 50 sites that come up. Look at their backlinks (if you dont know how you need to learn how) and the terms they are trying to rank for (both by their content and by the anchor text they use in their backlinks).

Thats the best way to determine the competitiveness of a keyword phrase in SERPs not the amount of pages merely containing the word. Don't be fooled by that the next time you see a claim like that. Analyze the term to see if it even gets many searchers each month.

This is one of the best explanations of this subject i have ever heard....Thanks for that... I totally agree. I just got motivated.

[TheWinner]

Hey Mike

Great post mate. I used to put way too much emphasis of "keywords" in quotes also and without quotes... I'd see the apparent competition, and be reluctant to go with that keyword.

It's fine to gauge competition in quotes, but I analyse the top 10 results now, period.

Cheers

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TheWinner

Hey Mike

It's fine to gauge competition in quotes, but I analyse the top 10 results now, period.

Cheers

Yes. You have to realize there are many sites ranking high without much backlinks.

Analyze the sites and create similar or better content.
Add enough backlinks

and you can rank outrank them.

[jasonmorgan]

I agree with your post. However, I think the number of "competing pages" shouldn't be totally thrown out of the window.

It's good as a very rough gauge of the competition, as well as whether the term has some general interest.

Just to demonstrate my point, search for the term "garbage bag with holes" with the quotes (phrase match). You'll find that there are 37,400 results, and a quick glance at the results shows that garbage bags with holes are popular for halloween costumes.

Once we've evaluated that, looking at the backlinking etc of the top 10 results is the right way to go from an SEO perspective.

Nope. This is wrong.

Truth of the matter is google will only return 226 results for "garbage bag with holes". That is the extent of your competition for that phrase.

While google may claim to have 17,100,000 results and 37,000 results with quotes, those numbers are misleading and have nothing to do with the actual number of results that google will return.

Google will only return at max 1,000 results for any search unless you dig into the supplemental results. The competition for any keyword or phrase is at the most 1000 pages.

This...

Results 1 - 10 of about 17,100,000 for garbage bag with holes.

... is meaningless. With or without quotes.

When people make claims of being #1 out of 17,100,000 it's misleading and bogus. Your competition is never greater than 1,000 and typically it's less.

[Kay King]

Before worrying about the competition - first see if anyone is searching for the term!

Then use quotes in checking competition and you'll see HOW the term is used and it often has nothing to do with "keywords" - but with terminology of a phrase used commonly in the language.

"give him cancer" is a good example as the words are clearly used in context and as there are no searches it's not a phrase to monetize.

If you do analysis without common sense, you'll get nowhere. You can rank number one for thousands of terms - but if no one is searching for that term, what's the point? If no one is searching, there's no reason to analyse competition in the first place.

When you find something that sounds "ridiculous" it may be you are misinterpreting the results.

kay

[Pat Jackson]

I completely agree with everything Jason just said, however, I still do use the competition in quotes method occasionally.

If I'm trying to find 20-30 extremely weak keywords that get a few searches a day so I can write an article to submit to EA and not have to build any backlinks and still rank, I will use quotes as a measure.

It might not be the best approach but if you're looking for extremely weak keywords it's okay, plus I'm lazy.

If I'm looking for keywords that I seriously want to rank for, then I couldn't care less how many results are returned and never use the competition in quotes method. I simply focus on the top 5 ranking websites.

[bluelambda]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

Truth of the matter is google will only return 226 results for "garbage bag with holes". That is the extent of your competition for that phrase.

Jason, just wondering, how do you get the number 226?

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by bluelambda

I agree with your post. However, I think the number of "competing pages" shouldn't be totally thrown out of the window.

It's good as a very rough gauge of the competition, as well as whether the term has some general interest.

Just to demonstrate my point, search for the term "garbage bag with holes" with the quotes (phrase match). You'll find that there are 37,400 results, and a quick glance at the results shows that garbage bags with holes are popular for halloween costumes.

Once we've evaluated that, looking at the backlinking etc of the top 10 results is the right way to go from an SEO perspective.

Which is exactly why people err when they say they are competing with all pages found.
The number of pages google finds in existence has nothing to do with competing
sites. My sites may have the word dog and pet, but they sure are useless for
pet dog. I am not a competing site for pet dog, nor would google ever get to
my site that just happened to have those words. And to include it as "competing"
site just 'cause it's in the results is absurd. Most results after the first few pages
of results are worthless to the search topic. And google knows this.

Paul

[jasonmorgan]

Jason, just wondering, how do you get the number 226?

The quick way to do this is set your google settings to show 100 results per page. It's in the advanced settings.

Click on the last page (page 10) to see the end of the results list. This would be page 100 if you are using the default google 10 per page.

For "garbage bag with holes" google only returns 3 pages maxing out at (now) 227.

Results 201 - 227 of 227 for garbage bag with holes.

"SEO" returns 903, "backlinks" returns 863 and "porn" returns 935.

Once you are in the top 1000 you are officially in the game.

You can dig into the supplemental results that will let you bypass the default 1000 limit but there really isn't much point because those are pages that google doesn't value very much for that search and aren't true competition.

The supplemental results are typically where most people end up who are complaining that google has sandboxed or banned them. They aren't sandboxed or banned, they just aren't considered to be of enough value to show up in search results.

[bh_boite]

the true competition depends on strength of the competition not on numbers of pages in the serps

[Sarge]

Some useful information here. It just shows how easy it is to get hung up on something so simple.... I mean, it's common sense, right.
I know we've all been there before!

[Terry Kyle]

Good thread Mike - well done.

In fact, if you want to be #1 (why wouldn't you?), you only have ONE competitor in every niche on earth.

However, when sizing up your potential opponent/s, don't be fooled by a low backlink count in Yahoo Site Explorer. SEO Spyglass has revealed literally thousands of backlinks to sites that are showing a 0 backlink count in YSE.

Before committing to taking on that ONE competitor, use all of the tools at your disposal - SEO for Firefox, SEO Quake, Keyword Elite etc etc as they often give conflicting readings.

The cool thing about SEO Spyglass (and probably other tools too) is that it gives you a detailed anchor text background of a site's backlinks so that you can see what you're really up against.

Plus, if you are serious about snatching their #1 spot, you can start by getting backlinks from the best of the places where their links are coming from. Why? Because Google has already shown that it likes those links.

Good work Mike.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Plus, if you are serious about snatching their #1 spot, you can start by getting backlinks from the best of the places where their links are coming from. Why? Because Google has already shown that it likes those links.

Hey Terry. great point. A lot of people are content to get backlinks form packages but as you know every webmaster should be able to get down in the trenches and see what their competition is doing. Several great tools on the market and yes even some of the free ones give keyword data and a lot more.

[Kevin Lam]

Blah, I've talked about this before and despite how much people agree, there's still so many mislead individuals out there. There are folks in this forum right now selling SEO products that claim the same stuff.

Look! I rank #1 for "tickle my pickle" (not really guys)..... so what! I love it when people mention that they rank #1 or even #2 for a keyword that NO ONE searches for. Who gives a whoot if that keyword doesn't result in any monetary value? It's just a waste of time.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kevin Lam

Blah, I've talked about this before and despite how much people agree, there's still so many mislead individuals out there. There are folks in this forum right now selling SEO products that claim the same stuff.

Thats why I started the thread. I got sick of it. There was a guy here last week claiming he was no 3 out of 7.6 million. He refused to say of course what the term was and within a few days he had offer ad up selling his seo services/ technique. People get snookered by this every day.

[Kevin Lam]

Yeah, no kidding. Thanks for bringing it up though... but it will eventually die out and people will continue to be suckered in. It's just how it is unfortunately. Take it easy.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kevin Lam

Yeah, no kidding. Thanks for bringing it up though... but it will eventually die out and people will continue to be suckered in. It's just how it is unfortunately. Take it easy.

Unfortunately but hey the more educated people are on this forum the better it is. Eventually it may become the accepted knowledge. We can hope anyway.

[Mike Anthony]

Wrapping up a few things before I turn in for Christmas and thought I would update - Dropped in the serps for "garbage bags with holes" (might be an example of QDF - Quality deserves fresheness where a page ranks high when it has new content but drops afterwards) but we are still one out of 2.3 million for zebra cloud breath.

[Agz21]

I think even though the real number of the competitors is not as big as they appear to be, its still very hard to compete in a highly popular keywords. In the end, the top ten sites must be having a huge amount of backlinks anyway

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agz21

I think even though the real number of the competitors is not as big as they appear to be, its still very hard to compete in a highly popular keywords. In the end, the top ten sites must be having a huge amount of backlinks anyway

Really depends on what you mean by "highly popular" I can still find keywords with thousands of searches a month where you don't need a huge amount of backlinks (I've seen plenty of sites rank number one with a few hundred which is easy to achieve.)

[benkleiner]

You said: "When determining competitiveness look at the top ten or top 50 sites that come up. Look at their backlinks (if you dont know how you need to learn how) and the terms they are trying to rank for (both by their content and by the anchor text they use in their backlinks)."

Can you recommend us some kind of tutorial to see how to do that top 10's investigation properly, please?

Thank you

[archkre]

The one in the attachment is the SOC matrix of a KW that has 90 "exact" searches per day and 8500 old fashioned competitors between ""

How would you analize the following?

[benkleiner]

Can I have any help, please?
Thanks

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Most people don't know how to do keyword research. And for some its easy to make money telling people what to do... even if it's just crappy hype that also doesn't work.

If the geniuses selling back link packets knew how to make money doing keyword research they wouldn't bother selling packets. But for them it's more profitable to sell a packet than to do actual keyword research and sell products.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by benkleiner

Can you recommend us some kind of tutorial to see how to do that top 10's investigation properly, please?

Thank you

Not my favorite site but you can use backlinkwatch.com and run the sites through that checker

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

Most people don't know how to do keyword research. And for some its easy to make money telling people what to do... even if it's just crappy hype that also doesn't work.

Hate crappy hype myself but I'm still scratching my head on how keyword research makes you able to skip standard SEO. Thats the kinda crappy "hypey" thing I thought you were talking about

If the geniuses selling back link packets knew how to make money doing keyword research they wouldn't bother selling packets. But for them it's more profitable to sell a packet than to do actual keyword research and sell products.

Well I don't know about them but my application is coded in Flex and Flash and has video training so I'm out of that group - Real bonafide poduct - But I do feel you. I feel the same way when I see a sig to a website/blog talking about making money the "easy way". I mean if the guy really knew the easy way" to make money he wouldn't bother writing a blog post and linking to it from a forum now would he? He'd be too busy making bling wouldn't he?

[archkre]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Not my favorite site but you can use backlinkwatch.com and run the sites through that checker

I am afraid you didn't get my question, Mike.
I was asking for material/a place to learn to evaluate the sites which I am finding at backlinkwatch.com

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by archkre

I am afraid you didn't get my question, Mike.
I was asking for material/a place to learn to evaluate the sites which I am finding at backlinkwatch.com

I was answering benkleiner. I would have responded to your question but it seemed ambiguous. Don't know what you are referring to when you say "old fashioned competitors". Plus as I have explained in this thread the only way for you to really know who is competing for your phrase is to look at the serps, pick out the top ten or so and check what you are up against.

So I couldn't analyze it properly (when I do provide that service) based on just looking at your attachment.

[edgray]

Good explanation. I strongly recommend people install the SEOQuake Toolbar in Firefox to do a proper comeptition analysis.

You should not only look at their backlinks, but also the quality of their OnPage SEO.

[archkre]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I was answering benkleiner. I would have responded to your question but it seemed ambiguous. Don't know what you are referring to when you say "old fashioned competitors". Plus as I have explained in this thread the only way for you to really know who is competing for your phrase is to look at the serps, pick out the top ten or so and check what you are up against.

So I couldn't analyze it properly (when I do provide that service) based on just looking at your attachment.

What is wrong with the MSamurai SOC matrix?
Is it not enough to analize the 10 top positions?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by archkre

What is wrong with the MSamurai SOC matrix?
Is it not enough to analize the 10 top positions?

Nothing wrong with those tools however to me they are a place to start not to finish. They can help you analyze some of the easier factors (keywords in title, Size tags, URl etc and of course can give you some of the backlink information but I still go to the serp and see what a machine might not be seeing like LSI factors.

What I am saying is since we don't know all the factors that Google uses going to the actual results gives you insight and to me its my first and last stop regardless of what tools I might use in between.

[searchnology]

I agree with bluelamba in that you shouldn't completely throw out the number of competing sites. It is a relative barometer of sorts...NOT an exact measurement and it depends largely on the size of the market for the keyword. For the term " life insurance" the competing numbers are probably a lot closer to actual than say for the term "rubiks cubes". You never know for sure what the true number is since you can't see all of them anyway.

However, to play devil's advocate for a sec, by your own logic, you also can't prove who is "trying" to compete for a keyword(s)because sometimes it is incidental. I have seen this happen many times with newspaper or blog articles that show up on the first page of Google, ahead of blatantly SEO optimized sites but they weren't written for SEO ranking purposes.

But alas, as others have stated already...best to just analyze the top ranked sites and "clone" their efforts as their success is already self evident....forget about the competing numbers.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Nope. Its absolutely worthless. You can find why the words might appear in the results with garbage bag with holes but it does not tell you how many people are trying to compete for the term. The fact that garbage bags with holes are used in halloweeen costumes doesn't tell you ANYTHING about anyone wanting to rank for the term. You haven't proven ANY point. Go ahead and use Google's keyword tool to see how many times the term is searched for. I dare you

Show me how seeing 17 million results for that tells you anything about how competitive the term is and who is trying to rank for it. It means nothing. Go back and look at the results and you will barely see a result on the page that even has all the words together or in a title. Here's more

cloud zebra breath - Google Search

Now tell me how how the 2.3 million in results shows how totally alone you would be competing for "cloud zebra breath"?

[archkre]

Originally Posted by chukwuma

When determining competitiveness look at the top ten or top 50 sites that come up. Look at their backlinks (if you dont know how you need to learn how) and the terms they are trying to rank for (both by their content and by the anchor text they use in their backlinks).

Please, i need more explanation here

I insist: Do you know a tutorial to learn to perform a study of 10 top websites of a given KW "a la Mike Anthony"?

Thank you

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by searchnology

I agree with bluelamba in that you shouldn't completely throw out the number of competing sites. It is a relative barometer of sorts...

I stand by it. Its absolutely worthless. tell me one good thing it tells you about the competitiveness of a term? It tells you nothing. its just noise and as such it distracts people. I get that its a nice selling point to fool people who don't know about search engines. It sounds impressive but as clearly demonstrated in this thread it isn't. There are 97 million results for Life insurance. There are not 97 million ages competing for that term. As for intending - thats not my point. Sites rank because they meet conditions set in the algorithm. The results themselves are never incidental. Some sites based on the authority will rank for a word or phrase just by mentioning the phrase or having an article on the subject. They may be competing without trying too hard but they are there and thats all that matters so again it comes down to the top rankings for a term not the number of results.

[honestbizpro]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

On a side note and more serious this also illustrates something I have begun to see in a number of sites. Notice how fast this thread was indexed. Warrior forums doesn't just come up high on nonsense phrases. I have found results for competitive terms also. In many ways a number of community sites are beginning to have similar results as posting articles to article directories.

Thanks for a great observation and thread Mike. I have been doing some SEO outsourcing but it is clearly to my advantage to me and everyone else to know this stuff.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by archkre

I insist: Do you know a tutorial to learn to perform a study of 10 top websites of a given KW "a la Mike Anthony"?

I insist that you give me a twenty page double spaced paper on forum etiquette. If you do that I'll consider the request as having some merit in answering. Its main thesis would be why no one can INSIST on the free assistance of another human being.

Besides that there is no mystery "a la Mike Anthony" way of of analyzing competition. You learn about the principles that cause a site to rank and you look at the top serp results and apply that knowledge. Backlinks, on page SEO, Pagerank/authority etc. Its not rocket science. You can learn most of what you need in this forum but not with an attitude that you can demand other forum posters to help you. A little bit of graciousness and humility can go a long way in a forum like this.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by chukwuma

When determining competitiveness look at the top ten or top 50 sites that come up. Look at their backlinks (if you dont know how you need to learn how) and the terms they are trying to rank for (both by their content and by the anchor text they use in their backlinks).

Please, i need more explanation here

Hi Chukwuma,

Honest and gracious question. Okay - find the keywords you want to rank for then head over to Google and do the search and get the results.

Now fire up a separate browser window and use it to go to backlinkwatch.com

Now take the Url of the pages that ranked and paste them into backlinkwatch.com's search box. Click check backlinks

That will give you an idea of how many sites are linking to each page. thats half the battle. In fact a lot of the times you get a great sense of whether you are going to be able to take the top position right then and there. A few hundred or sometimes even less than a hundred and you have a good shot. If you see 50,000 then you might be better with another long tail keyword (plus you can look at the sites that link to the page. A lot of authority sites like CNN and wikipedia and links that you probably are not going to be able to get short term may make you reconsider also)

Now you can look at some other things in the search result page. First off you can see the words that Google has highlighted in the results. You want to see if the keywords appear in the Url, in the titles and then you want to look at the page that is ranking. In the old days you would want to see how often the search term appears on the page but now you need to check for related words not just the keywords itself

"Dog training" may have words related like "leash" "animal" "pet"

OF course using tools like Google's keyword tools will also give you a snapshot and if you want to pay then tools as have been mentioned can speed some of the process but you always need to look at the sites.

Sorry I can't be exhaustive, In many ways you have to always continue learning about all of SEO because you are applying all of the principles when you analyze competition.

[archkre]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I insist that you give me a twenty page double spaced paper on forum etiquette. If you do that I'll consider the request as having some merit in answering. Its main thesis would be why no one can INSIST on the free assistance of another human being.

Besides that there is no mystery "a la Mike Anthony" way of of analyzing competition. You learn about the principles that cause a site to rank and you look at the top serp results and apply that knowledge. Backlinks, on page SEO, Pagerank/authority etc. Its not rocket science. You can learn most of what you need in this forum but not with an attitude that you can demand other forum posters to help you. A little bit of graciousness and humility can go a long way in a forum like this.

It is simpler to say: I am sorry, I don't know any tutorial on that!
And then you can follow your "essay d'elite" with the more advantaged members of this forum.
Beginners like me seem no to fit in this thread.
Thanks anyways