Market Samurai competition - how tough is this?

[Marakatapolis]

This is a screenshot from Market Samurai's competition analyzer. The search term gets just under 2k exact searches a month. How competitive do think think this is? I see plenty of green, but also a good bit of red. MS says it has 3.1 million SEOC. The bottom two rows are YouTube videos.

What do you think? How tough would it be to take that on?

[Biggy Fat]

Just the 3.1 million SEOC is tough. But half of the sites are well optimized for the keyword and there are also a tihsload of backlinks to a few of the sites.

I've been trying to decipher MS's SEO competition myself but the responses I've gotten are just plain lackluster. "More green the better" or "Watch the training videos" are some of the examples.

Proves that no one genuinely wants to help you, but I hope my reply has helped in anyway.

[Marakatapolis]

Yeah, I've watched all the training videos too, and I understand what each stat is, but I have yet to see anyone explain how to decipher and "put the big picture" together for it.

I'm sure I'll be able to decipher how tough a keyword will be to rank for once I gain more experience, it's just not much help in the mean time since I really only know "green = good, red = bad".

[thebarksmeow]

I could help, but I can't see the picture.

[Bajsich]

I would most certainly move to another keyword. There are tons of keywords out there with 5k+ exact global count with lots of PR0 and 0 backlinks to them. Just keep searching.

[big_t]

IMO, for a keyword that gets under 2,000 searches a month, the competition is too much. If it was me, I would move on. I don't think it's worth it.

As a side note, I wouldn't depend on the MS staff to tell me how to read the SEO competition chart. I just look at the most important things like: PR, Backlinks, if the KW is in the title/URL/description/heading and I also look to see how many TLDs (top level domains) there are in the top 10. The less the better.

[wDigital]

I would have to agree with what big_t said there. I would personally look out for at least 3 PR0s, a low level of backlinking in the top 3 spots and far less optimized Title, Desc, Head, URL.

This is assuming that you want to rank easy for this keyword (don't we all!), and for 2k a month I would have to assume you do.

[homebizoutlook]

I'm not a real student of this, but I do use Market Samurai extensively. I have a 20-15-30-10 rule that I go by for my targeted keywords for a NEW niche blog:

- 20 searches per day
- 15 or more PBR
- 30000 max SEOC
- 10000 max SEOTC

Using these measurements when I initially build a NEW blog, I get pretty quick rankings because these combinations are low competition.

When looking at the SEO Competition rankings, it's pretty simple with me - more green, less red and yellow.

[DCallantine]

On first look it would be a tough keyword to rank for. It would be a shame to put in that kind of work and find that the traffic is minimal. But on a good point there are no .edu or .gov backlinks. There is a lot of dmoz and yahoo in there. Could be a tough one, maybe a squidoo lens with alot of backlinks would be worth a try just for fun and learning.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[DPM70]

I was gonna say look at the zero aged domains that have full on-site optimisation but obviously have built a lot of on-page links (and links to domain). Also a couple have yahoo listings (which afaik are paid?). Hard to read these matrices.
I would certainly investigate the backlinks by hitting the down-arrow and looking at PR of links and anchor text.

It depends how much you want to work. It's tempting to say move on - tough looking matrix, but how much do you want it? And over timescales of year/years rather than weeks/months???

Does the "dash" really mean zero domain age?????? I still don't know?????

When I see a -0 ANYWHERE... it makes me wonder......lol

[dswift33]

That looks like a tougher keyphrase to go after. A lot of SEO optimized sites and tons of backlinks to the domain...

[kkchoon]

I don't think this keyword is hard to rank. But again, you should look at the exact search / day, I won't go for any keyword below:

1. 10 / day - If I'm doing article marketing with ezinearticles
2. 100 / day - If I'm building my own site, or web 2.0 properties...

Figures are relative to competition, but I like higher search keyword with low competition!

Kok Choon

[Marakatapolis]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I appreciate your insight.

[Marakatapolis]

Here is a great post on the Noble Samurai blog, thought it was relevant to this topic:

Noble Samurai Survival of SEO’s Fittest ? How to Outrun Lions

[poker princess]

Can you please reload the picture again, cannot view the pic properly.

[Fraggler]

Difficulty is all relative. That keyword is quite doable but it will take some time.

When you see some pages with a high number of backlinks surrounded be pages with low links, do a backlink analysis to find out what is going on. The pages still have a relatively low PR for the quanity of links so they are either all from the same domain or just poor quality.

Turn off the stuff that isn't an issue. IC, CA, BLEG, YAH. If the words look tough and you are unsure you can use these as a deciding factor. Otherwise they just cloud your judgement.

I am going to be adding some screenshots like this for words that I do rank in the top 10 for so this might help you get an idea of what does and doesn't work. I have one up now but it was a pretty easy word to rank for.

[Marakatapolis]

Sweet, thank you Fraggler