Round 2 in understanding SEO (Quotations, Market Samurai, Etc)

[Dove L]

Hi all I’m a big newb when it comes to SEO, but I figured since I was layed off in the resent past I would give it a shot. This forum has been a HUGE help in helping me understand SEO and adsense.

Anyways I gave it my best and completely failed the first time using SEO and adsense (6 months ago). So after a month break and more research under my belt I’m giving it another go and figured I would ask this real newb question to ya all, I’ll never learn if I don’t find the right answers. :P

Lets say I use the word “cedar shoe trees.” Market Samurai states that it have an average of 266 searches among other information that I like, along with information that I don’t. The overall competition is 47 percent. But it’s CPC is only $1.43.

My first question is what justifies a good micro niche keyword to you? Broad but, maybe seeing what others look for might help me broaden my gaze in all of this.

But here's my biggest question, when I go to see the keywords result competition on google do I use quotations when typing the keyword or not, and why? If the majority of the populace is simply going to type, cedar shoe trees with no quotations, am I not getting the full picture of the real competition in this niche? It’s something I’ve been wondering for awhile, thanks for the help! Also any other tips on what to look for would be helpful as well, thanks!

[roxstar]

Hey Dove L,

When you type in the search with "quotations" it's because you want to see how many people are competing with you. When you type in the unquoted search, it has those words anywhere in the text.

With the you're trying to find the amount of people who have the words in the same order as you, basically.

To me, a good micro niche is something with less than 10,000 "quoted" search results. Maybe less than 12,000. However, I also know how to compete relatively easily with less than 50-100,000 pages.

It also needs to be a niche people are passionate about. Guitarists, quitting smoking, etc. I don't really recomend you get into those niches because they're a little crowded, but it's still probably worth getting into.

I have written something that could help you out, but yeah, just feel fee to ask anymore questions.

Kris Roxas

[jasonmorgan]

But here's my biggest question, when I go to see the keywords result competition on google do I use quotations when typing the keyword or not, and why? If the majority of the populace is simply going to type, cedar shoe trees with no quotations, am I not getting the full picture of the real competition in this niche? It’s something I’ve been wondering for awhile, thanks for the help! Also any other tips on what to look for would be helpful as well, thanks!

I wouldn't bother with quotes. Yes, it is going to show you a more refined search based on more specific criteria (I'm not exactly sure what that criteria is) but it's still not a very clear or accurate measure of the competition for a keyword.

The truth of the matter is no matter how large the results number is, google only returns 1,000 results for any search.

To get a better picture of how many pages google really finds relevant for a keyword and a better measure of how many pages you are really competing with...

• switch your google search results to show 100 per page
• click on page 10 (this will be results 901 - 1000)
• take note of the actual page number you end up on and the number of results

using the example 'backlinks' , at first one might think your competition is 10,700,000 or 10,800,000 if you used quotes. However the real results and true competition is really 878 pages. The other 10,699,122 are pages that google does not feel are relevant for your search... they are not competition.

Now, this isn't a good method to measure the top 10 competition of a keyword but it gives you a clearer idea of how much overall competition you have.

In the case of 'backlinks', you're only 868 pages away from being on the first page... not as intimidating as 10,700,000 is.

You still need to research the top 10 to determine how competitive a niche or keyword is but that is a different story.