HOW TO EVALUATE YOUR COMPETITION ON PAGE 1. HOW I DO IT

[Adam Roy]

For me, the main reason why I wasn't succeeding with my online websites, was the poor judgement of my competition.

Please rate this thread if you found this helpful.

All it is, is understanding whether or not you have and are willing to do what it takes to outrank that page.

1. Can I optimize my web site ON PAGE better than they did?
2. Can I build enough backlinks to compete with theirs without spending an arm and a leg?
3. How much content do they really have about this subject?
4. How much authority **pagerank** do these websites have over mine?
5. What about authority in this particular subject? There have been times when I've outranked wiki's, ehow and such with pretty simple websites. They may have a high PR, but is their authority in this particular subject?

There's of coarse much more that goes into this, but understanding what it takes to make that spot takes time. Trial and error.

Read on.

Try to pinpoint why your competitors are ranking above you. And also try and pinpoint why you ranked higher than the sites below you.

Competition research truly is something that requires experience no matter how well it's explained. Something that works for me, may not work for someone else. It depends on your skill set, your experience.

If you can't effectively evaluate your competition, front page google rankings will be from sheer luck. We can compete with sites who "got lucky"

If you can evaluate your competition according to your website building skills effectively, you're on a path to a 6 figures a year income.

Why? Because once you understand competition research, the sky is the limit and this becomes an infinitely scalable process.

So many people these days are putting so much emphasis on the number of competing pages on google.

Type your keyword into google in quotes "your keyword", if you have less than 50000, or 10000 competitors it's a good sign right? WRONG!

The number of competing pages is simply a tiny little nudge saying, "hey, there's not as many competing pages as some other popular terms".

The truth is, that even if there's only 7,000 competing websites, page one may still be EXTREMELY competitive. However a term with 100,000 competing pages can be pie to rank for.

It's not about the NUMBER of competitors, it's about the STRENGTH of the competitors.

Type your keyword WITHOUT quotes to search for your competition, because it's without quotes that you want to rank, you don't want people typing the keyword phrase in "" to find your website.


So taking the competing number of pages out of the equation, here's how I decide whether or not to fight for a great spot on page 1 SERPS.

Again these are some of the things that I look for, what seems to work for me. In the end it's all about what you're up against, what your skillset is, and how much work you're willing to put in.

This is my criteria for a semi small niche site. 5 or 6 pages, 5-10 posts size website.

• Competitors on page 1 have page ranks between 0-4, a good mix is best.
• Competitors on page 1 have less than 100 backlinks to the particular page which is ranking in the SERPS, not total number of backlinks to the site.
• Competitors on page 1 have the keyword phrase missing in at least 3 of these 4 places, title tag - description tag - keyword tag - alt tag
• Competitors on page 1 have domain ages of less than 4 years--I try not to put too much emphasis on this one.
• Some competitors on page 1 are articles and/or web 2.0 sites
• No competitor on page 1 has an exact domain match for your keyword.
• ***The competitors' descriptions in the search results aren't relevant or look unintentional"**** This in particular along with some of the above, and excluding super authorities such as wikipedia and similar is a great indicator TO ME in most cases that there's slim competition for this term. To be quite honest, sometimes I dig around through keywords until I find one with a bunch of crappy descriptions in the search results.
  

Another quick tip is that if most of the websites on page one are not top level domains, it's a good indicator that they may have a low number of backlinks. Not always, but a lot of times this is true.

These are the things I look for in my competition research, and it has proven to work well for me. Good on page SEO, and a handful of backlinks, you can most likely rank for terms meeting the above criteria.

The number of competitors is way overrated. It's not about how many of them there are, the only thing that matters is what's on page one.

You may very well find keywords that can be ranked for EASY with 100,000 results, and you may find keywords with 5,000 competitors extremely difficult and time consuming to rank for. It goes both ways so try not to put too much emphasis on this little number.

Hope this helps some of you struggling with competition research.


Happy rankings,

Friend.

[prtt75]

Thank you for the great information but i still would want to see how long it would take me to bring my site on Page 1 for my target keywords before spending time optimizing it, thus, i try to look for the number of competing pages first by typing the kw with quotes or using intitle search.

[techwarrior]

Originally Posted by friend

So many people these days are putting so much emphasis on the number of competing pages on google.

Type your keyword into google in quotes "your keyword", if you have less than 50000, or 10000 competitors it's a good sign right? WRONG!

The number of competing pages is simply a tiny little nudge saying, "hey, there's not as many competing pages as some other popular terms".

The truth is, that even if there's only 7,000 competing websites, page one may still be EXTREMELY competitive. However a term with 100,000 competing pages can be pie to rank for.

It's not about the NUMBER of competitors, it's about the STRENGTH of the competitors.

Type your keyword WITHOUT quotes to search for your competition, because it's without quotes that you want to rank, you don't want people typing the keyword phrase in "" to find your website.


So taking the competing number of pages out of the equation, here's how I decide whether or not to fight for a great spot on page 1 SERPS.

• Competitors on page 1 have page ranks between 0-4, a good mix is best.
• Competitors on page 1 have less than 100 backlinks to the particular page which is ranking in the SERPS, not total number of backlinks to the site.
• Competitors on page 1 have the keyword phrase missing in at least 3 of these 4 places, title tag - description tag - keyword tag - alt tag
• Competitors on page 1 have domain ages of less than 4 years
• Some competitors on page 1 are articles and/or web 2.0 sites
• No competitor on page 1 has an exact domain match for your keyword.

These are the things I look for in my competition research, and it has proven to work well for me. Good on page SEO, and backlinks, you can most likely rank for terms meeting the above criteria.

The number of competitors has been doing nothing but screwing me up, it's not about how many of them there are, but WHO they are.

Hope this helps some of you struggling with competition research.

Again, this method of evaluating competition is not set in stone, but it certainly works for me.

Happy rankings,

Friend.

Very comprehensive guide, indeed!

In summary, your guide tells us to "work smarter, not harder!"

Thanks for this info...

[Adam Roy]

No problem. Everytime something new works for me...I post it to the warrior forum...The super special stuff I put in the war room.

[Ghalt]

Shh!

Stop giving away my secrets!

You're right on the money. I've had much better success since I started evaluating page 1 competition on those factors than worrying about the number of pages.

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by Ghalt

Shh!

Stop giving away my secrets!

You're right on the money. I've had much better success since I started evaluating page 1 competition on those factors than worrying about the number of pages.

Haha sorry man Gotta spread the wealth.

[ecoverbee20]

I agree its all about the top 10. Its taken me 2 /12 months to get to top 3 with 489,000 competition with backlinks.

When people say dont use keywords under 30,000 I never listen, its all about how much time and effort you put into getting there.

thanks
andy

[terryd]

I agree as well, the number of competitors doesn't mean much to me anymore, as you said it's the competition on the first page that determines whether or not I will go for it.

The best thing about it is that if you have Market Samurai you can tell all this at the push of a button!

[Adam Roy]

Market samurai is certainly great to use. However, adding SEOquake and some backlink plugin to your browser works just as well.

[cashcow]

This is such great advice - I use a similar method myself, but I must say I like your criteria a lot .... I actually hadn't broken mine down into those areas (I just kind of looked for more green and yellow than pink in MS!).

The thing is that by discarding keywords based on allintitle or "results in quotes" you could really miss out on a Gem of a keyword.

Lee

[Adam Roy]

It's almost unbelievable how much emphasis people put on that number. The number of competing pages.

It's all about the competition of the page 1 ranked websites, nothing more nothing less really.

It's almost like the number of competing pages is what determines whether or not some people EVEN CHECK OUT the competition on page one.

So many beginners will look to these big internet marketers and see this "how many competitors" number, and start missing out on the huge ocean of keywords that you actually can rank for, regardless of that little number.

I almost think this is a tactic of the big shots to keep the newbies from outranking where their websites really are

But I don't know, that's just me.

[thobbs31]

It has basically been said in several posts in this thread. Whether there are 100 or 1 million results, you are only competing with 10. Those 10 are the only ones that matter. Focus your efforts there, and you'll be surprised how quickly you move up.

That said, it gets tougher the closer you get to that top 10. That doesn't mean throw in the towel, that means refocus your efforts and keep moving. The work you have done has shown results. Keep doing it. Keep digging. Keep moving.

-Tom

[AlphaWarrior]

Originally Posted by friend

• Competitors on page 1 have page ranks between 0-4, a good mix is best.
• Competitors on page 1 have less than 100 backlinks to the particular page which is ranking in the SERPS, not total number of backlinks to the site.
• Competitors on page 1 have the keyword phrase missing in at least 3 of these 4 places, title tag - description tag - keyword tag - alt tag
• Competitors on page 1 have domain ages of less than 4 years
• Some competitors on page 1 are articles and/or web 2.0 sites
• No competitor on page 1 has an exact domain match for your keyword.

Thanks for the GREAT info.

I do have a question. Is there a number that you use as a guide to determine if the competition is easy or tough? In other words, if 3 of the first 10 are articles or web 2.0 sites, do you look at it as being easy or tough? If 5 of the first 10 have the keyword phrase in the title tag, description tag, and keyword tag, do you look at as being easy or tough?

[Adam Roy]

Everything I've mentioned should be taken into account.

I personally believe that outranking articles and web 2.0 is easy. Why? Because it's easy to check and simply outdo the on page seo, and all you have to do is have more backlinks.

Believe it or not, sometimes if an article is on page 1 for your term, you can write an article super optimized the best you can for the same term. Then simply get more backlinks than the existing article.

With some time you should see results.

[timpears]

Originally Posted by prtt75

Thank you for the great information but i still would want to see how long it would take me to bring my site on Page 1 for my target keywords before spending time optimizing it, thus, i try to look for the number of competing pages first by typing the kw with quotes or using intitle search.

It doesn't matter if there are a thousand, or ten million sites that come up for that key word. The only ones that you have to beat out are the ones on page one. They already did a better job than all of the others, so if you can do a better job then them, you win. It is as simple as that.

[NiyazK]

Excellent Post.. Also you should see that the top 10 result doesnt have any Top Level domain. If it does have then it shouldnt have high backlinks and pagerank and be well established. You may see TLD's In the top 10 but some have very few or no backlinks at all...

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by NiyazK

Excellent Post.. Also you should see that the top 10 result doesnt have any Top Level domain. If it does have then it shouldnt have high backlinks and pagerank and be well established. You may see TLD's In the top 10 but some have very few or no backlinks at all...

This is true, I have updated the thread to clarify. I must have left that out. Thanks.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by friend

It's almost unbelievable how much emphasis people put on that number. The number of competing pages.

It's all about the competition of the page 1 ranked websites, nothing more nothing less really.

It's almost like the number of competing pages is what determines whether or not some people EVEN CHECK OUT the competition on page one.

The sad news is that I have been stating that for the better part of a year and every week there are two or three posts back with that criteria for competing pages. Fantastic post.

Never wrote it myself but I too look at the presence of an article directory page showing up in the first page as a big sign of hope. The only exception is when the article has managed to get a number of its own backlinks.

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Never wrote it myself but I too look at the presence of an article directory page showing up in the first page as a big sign of hope. The only exception is when the article has managed to get a number of its own backlinks.

All you need in this case Mike, is MORE backlinks to YOUR article...if you write one.

[JohnMcCabe]

Nice breakdown, well laid out.

I do think there's the danger of introducing another absolute to replace the old "number og pages in quotes", though.

There are people in the world who do actually look on page 2 and even page 3 when they don't find what they want on page 1. It depends on the term, though.

If you're trying to rank for "buy cheap brain surgery", page one is where you want to be, for sure.

If you're targeting something a step or two back in the buying process, and there's enough search volume, the top of page 2 could be almost as good as the bottom of page 1.

I know that if I was selling a guide to, say, affiliate marketing, I would not carp about being somewhere on page 2 or 3 for "make money online"...

[bfas]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Nice breakdown, well laid out.

I do think there's the danger of introducing another absolute to replace the old "number og pages in quotes", though.

There are people in the world who do actually look on page 2 and even page 3 when they don't find what they want on page 1. It depends on the term, though.

If you're trying to rank for "buy cheap brain surgery", page one is where you want to be, for sure.

If you're targeting something a step or two back in the buying process, and there's enough search volume, the top of page 2 could be almost as good as the bottom of page 1.

I know that if I was selling a guide to, say, affiliate marketing, I would not carp about being somewhere on page 2 or 3 for "make money online"...

I disagree.

98% of the clickthroughs happen on the first page. Of that, appx. 50% click on the first listing, another 25% on the 2nd or 3rd, and the balance divided among the remaining 7, in descending order.

Very few click through to Page 2 - it isn't the same as the bottom of Page 1.

If you are going after a market based on keyword phrases, you want to be on Page 1, and once there you want to reach the top half of the page.

The rest is crumbs.

bfas

[oneims]

Nice tips. I just have one question. What are the top level domains? Can you please explain it more or give some examples.

Thanks

[misterkailo]

You can beat domains that have exact keyword domains so I wouldn't say don't compete in the keyword just because somebody else is doing the same thing..

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by oneims

Nice tips. I just have one question. What are the top level domains? Can you please explain it more or give some examples.

Thanks

A top level domain is pretty much the home page.

www.theirdomain.com

This is a non top level domain

www.theirdomain.com/something/somethingelse

[Michael Nguyen]

Great post!

I would have to disagree about domain age. I rank #1 on top of a brand website who's domain was registered 2000. My site was launched in April 2009.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by bfas

I disagree.

98% of the clickthroughs happen on the first page. Of that, appx. 50% click on the first listing, another 25% on the 2nd or 3rd, and the balance divided among the remaining 7, in descending order.

Very few click through to Page 2 - it isn't the same as the bottom of Page 1.

If you are going after a market based on keyword phrases, you want to be on Page 1, and once there you want to reach the top half of the page.

The rest is crumbs.

bfas

If that were as absolute as you make it sound, Google and friends could save themselves a lot of overhead by only returning one page of results, maybe even limit it to five with a big note "we have a lot of other pages, but you wouldn't have clicked on them anyway."

If your entire market is bounded by one phrase, you may be right. I wouldn't know, because none of the markets I go after can be defined by a single keyword.

I'm not going to get into any kind of organ-measuring contest with you here. Your mind is obviously made up and you're dead certain you know the way, the truth and the light, so I won't bother arguing with you...

[Writingman1421]

How big a role do DOMAIN backlinks play in your decision? I know the goal is to look at page backlinks, but I'd have to assume that overall domain backlinks play some sort of a roll

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by Writingman1421

How big a role do DOMAIN backlinks play in your decision? I know the goal is to look at page backlinks, but I'd have to assume that overall domain backlinks play some sort of a roll

How many times have you outranked an article?

Article directories have tens of thousands of backlinks if not more.

I've outranked plenty. So no I don't think it plays a huge role.

[Writingman1421]

I never actually thought of it that way, im not sure why to be honest, but you're absolutely right. I have out performed plenty of article directories, very true.

My next question is, does the amount of pages indexed play any role? Will a website with more pages do better than a website with fewer pages, generally speaking that is? I know its possible and has been done before, but whats the rule of thumb when looking at those stats -- in say, market samurai. I just downloaded the trial and it has impressive information to say the least, but i feel a bit overwhelmed with the possibilities of evaluating the top 10 results.

[Adam Roy]

In market samurai, you can pretty much check all of the above criteria.

Your question regarding the number of pages-How many pages do article directories have?

There is no SET IN STONE way to outrank any website really.

What you have to do is be MORE RELEVANT, and have more QUALITY BACKLINKS saying your MORE RELEVANT to that keyword.

It really is something that takes getting used to. Once you understand what the search engines look for when determining your rankings, simply do those things better than who's on the first page.

It really is something you have to learn. Try it, fail at it, and learn from your mistake.

Go find a keyword to the best of your ability, using all the knowledge you currently have with keyword research and competition research. You probably know more than you give yourself credit for.

Here's the worst case scenario if you don't succeed with your first website.

You'll see where your positioning was, so you'll know how much effort it took to get where you did.

You'll be able to see who's ranking BELOW you in the SERPS and understand WHY you're higher than them a little better.

You'll start to realize things you can improve on next time.

Just go for it man, don't get nervous about keyword research. It's only $10 for a domain name, and if it doesn't work out after a month or two, move on.

There's an infinite number of ways people can look for things on the internet. You'll surely come across a few great ones.

[getboris]

I always wondered on that "traditional" allintitle competition analysis. Just like you say friend, there could be only 20 sites so strong competing amongst 500 sites for that keyword that it simply doesn't make sense to put time and effort to get to the page #1 SERPs.

And by the way, the latest... Google restricted the number of allintitle searches. It simply has become not only misleading SEO research approach but also quite annoying tool that kicks you out. I have ran allintitle searches at the beginning and then used SEO Quake to check the competition but now I don't bother with the first step. Waste of time.

In SEO it is not the number it is the quality of the competition that counts. That simple.

Thank you for your thread.

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by jairam

I tried this method and all of those key phrases has a zero people who search it at all. Anyways, numbers of people go to zero. Where you get traffic from? something comes wrong

What are you talking about?

[Adam Roy]

You need to use the keyword tool first, and find keywords which get traffic.

AND THEN, evaluate the competitors on page one.

Start with finding trafficked keywords first. Evaluate page 1 for those keywords after that.

[KateD]

Hey Guys....

Totally agree about the need to focus on Page 1 competition. Whenever I start to see competition with less than 5 backlinks to them, my mouth starts to water.

And yes, there are a lot of listings with 0 Page Backlinks (think Ezinearticles).

Even if a keyword phrase has hundreds of thousands of competitors, if those first ten are weak, you still have a good shot at outranking almost all of them, especially by using a few SEO tricks and quality backlinking.

KateD

[cpa-money]

i go always to see how much back links the competitors have.

[t3ch]

well, there will be a rare situation if you can find a keyword, high competitor sites let say 10 mill, will have a weak strength. In my experience a nice spot (weak competition) is under a 1.5 mill competitors. That's mean that total of competitors is still important to determine the competitor strength of a keyword.

Age of site? I disagree...

Backlinks under 100? I disagre. This should not put as the guideline to determine competition strengh, if you think with this cateria, you can up a site and get on ttop 10 of google serps without doing anything, then your wrong. The total competitor backlinks is depends on you, if you have time and money to build many backlinks then 100 backlinks is nothing to you.

[evertd]

The number of competing page is also misleading because that isn't the number of pages that rank for that keyword. Ok, this is my opinion, but try this experiment.

Type your keyword into google, then at the bottom op the page click on the 10 to go to page 10 of results. In the URL you'll see &start=90, now change that to &start=990. In almost all cases, you'll just to like page 60 or so. That shows me that there are only about 600 pages that actually rank for the keyword.

Does this actually mean anything? I don't know, but it is kinda interesting to note. I've seen keywords that have 12millon "competing pages", but if you go to the last page of serps, there are only about 500 that rank.

[ltgreenenergy]

That is great it is really good that you must check first a niche before you enter the fight for it because there are thing that you can always beat and if there is a chance to beat these authority sites, you'll need first to spend lots of money and efforts.

[Adam Roy]

For me, the main reason why I wasn't succeeding with my online websites, was the poor judgement of my competition.

All it is, is understanding whether or not you have what it takes to outrank that page.

Can I optimize my web site ON PAGE better than they did?

Can I build enough backlinks to compete with theirs without spending an arm and a leg?

How much content do they really have about this subject?

How much authority **pagerank** do these websites have over mine?

What about authority in this particular subject? There have been times when I've outranked wiki's, ehow and such. They may have a high PR, but is their authority in this particular subject?

Competition research truly is something that requires experience no matter how well it's explained.

If you can't effectively evaluate your competition, front page google rankings will be from sheer luck.

If you can evaluate your competition according to your website building skills effectively, you're on a path to a 6 figures a year income.

Why? Because once you understand competition research, the sky is the limit and this becomes an infinitely scalable process.

[Adam Roy]

Thank you, thank you very much.

[Groovystar]

This was very helpful. It gave me some direction in all the problems I've been having.

[cyberskyfox]

Thanks friend for this great info...

[Biggy Fat]

Man, this is the mist useful thread I've read so far here at Warrior. Thanks for the info, friend. Hey, that works on two different levels!

[Adam Roy]

Wow I would have never thought this thread would be so useful to so many.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and hopefully this thread will continue to help others down the road.

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Man, this is the most useful thread I've read so far here at Warrior. Thanks for the info, friend. Hey, that works on two different levels!

Thanks Biggy glad I could help.

[Romona]

Question: What if all your #1,2, 3 are large businesses like, Amazon...how do you get to #1. That is where I find my site at for some my major kw phrases..#4

Thank you.

[SyndicateMarketing]

This is some good info, I look for both - 1. what you said and 2. I still look at "" competing page numbers

[Adam Roy]

Originally Posted by Romona

Question: What if all your #1,2, 3 are large businesses like, Amazon...how do you get to #1. That is where I find my site at for some my major kw phrases..#4

Thank you.

Similar to outranking articles and forums with higher page ranks and more backlinks can be done. Alot of times when a site like that ranks for a term, it really is that one page with that little bit of information that ranks.

Because often times the authority of these sites is not in the particular subject/terms you're trying to rank for, over time with more relevant content, and backlinks you can out rank Amazon. But like I said it depends on the term you're going for which will determine how much work it will take to climb in rankings.

[sixstring]

@Friend - Thanks for the great thread my man...One of the more useful ones I have read here on the WF in a while.

There is one thing I have learned since I started the IM gig about a year ago is that you have to have Patience and keep plugging away in order to see results.

However, it would be good to get some feedback on when you should just give up on a keyword(website) and move on to better things.

Here is a current scenario I am working on:

• Registered a domain name with my exact keyword phrase, but had to add 3 additional letters to it
• There is only one TLD in the 10 top
• 1 article(buzzle) and a couple of youtube videos
• Only one of these sites has over 100 backlinks
• Per Market Samurai, only 2 are 100% SEO'd (kw in Title,URL,Desc & Head)
• None in top 10 have any .edu or .gov backlinks
• There are 5 domains that have a domain age above 8
• Top 10 include sites with a PR mix of 0-4

The site is a bit over 1 month old and I am buried in the high 200's when it comes to keyword ranking, but I know that SEO on average takes around 3 months to fully take hold, so I know I need to at least work my butt off on it for 2 or 3 more months.

So did I do a good job of analyzing on this keyword? It seems that over time you can lose focus and forget the exact reasons you picked your keyword and then start to doubt yourself that you can actually rank it. At least I tend to do this.

Cheers,

Six

[adam westrop]

I cant believe people still look at the number of competitiors etc....That is funny, I have never done that.

You have also missed out some major important ranking factors in your post, but overall you are there... Especially if you are focusing niche... You need to learn a lot more to join the big leagues though.