How do I evaluate the strength of competition?

[SrslySirius]

I've been fiddling around with Traffic Travis a lot lately, especially the SEO Analysis tool. Sometimes the results really make me scratch my head. I only ask for 10 results, and sometimes the top 10 will all be 5+ year old sites with 4+ PR, and most of them have at least 100 backlinks. But TT will say that the niche is "relatively easy".

If you're not familiar with the metrics Traffic Travis uses to evaluate the strength of competition, they are the following:

* Age
* PR
* Backlinks to page
* Backlinks to whole domain
* Backlinks from .gov or .edu pages
* If domain is listed in DMOZ (I have never heard of this)
* If domain is listed in Yahoo directory
* If title of page contains the keyword
* If meta description contains the keyword
* If H1 tag on the page contains the keyword
* Number of backlinks from the country you search for (USA in my case)

Firstly, I have no idea how much weight is being given to each of these factors. Secondly, regardless of whether or not TT is weighing them properly, I don't know myself which ones are the most important. I have assumed that PR and backlinks are the most important, followed by SEO stuff like having keywords in the header/title/meta/etc.

All I want is to be able to eyeball these stats and know what kind of chance I have of bumping a particular page from the top 10. PR in particular intimidates me. Is a high PR insurmountable? Can you bump a page with high PR and backlinks if their title/header/meta/etc. are not relevant to target keywords?

Any assistance you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated. I really want to understand this better before I go buying domains and try to pick some fights.

[Craig B]

I also use TT for evaluating strength of competition. I noticed after using TT how inaccurate the ratings can be so I never pay attention to what TT rates the strength of competition. I've ranked on the first page without much backlinking on some of the keywords TT ranks with medium difficulty.

The two main things to be concerned about are backlinks to the page and backlinks to the entire site. Don't get me wrong the other factors do play a role, but those are the two main factors. If you see sites on the first page with less than 100 backlinks and less than 1 year for the age, then you should have little difficulty in making the first page (more often than not).

[Sokar]

I use the tool from this site to judge the strength of my competitors, it worked pretty well for me so far. My sites are all ranking on first page using this keyword research tool.

[Ehsan_am]

You should really just instale SEO quake or the SEO addon to firefox and analysethe first page yourself. Most of the tools don't give you accurate results.

[SrslySirius]

Originally Posted by Craig B

I also use TT for evaluating strength of competition. I noticed after using TT how inaccurate the ratings can be so I never pay attention to what TT rates the strength of competition. I've ranked on the first page without much backlinking on some of the keywords TT ranks with medium difficulty.

The two main things to be concerned about are backlinks to the page and backlinks to the entire site. Don't get me wrong the other factors do play a role, but those are the two main factors. If you see sites on the first page with less than 100 backlinks and less than 1 year for the age, then you should have little difficulty in making the first page (more often than not).

Really? So then I guess things like YouTube videos and Amazon product pages are impossible to overcome, since they have have hundreds of millions of backlinks to their domains?

The main ones that intimidate me are age and PR, because I know these are areas that I can not compete in. I can always find ways to get backlinks, and I can optimize my site for the keywords I want. But I don't have a time machine, and I have no idea how to improve PR (so I must assume that I'll be stuck on 0 or 1 for a good while). When I see old sites with decent PRs, it makes me wonder what chance I really have at overtaking them.

Originally Posted by Ehsan_am

You should really just instale SEO quake or the SEO addon to firefox and analysethe first page yourself. Most of the tools don't give you accurate results.

I have looked at the SEOquake addon, and all it seems to provide is stats. I'm not having any trouble finding those. My problem is interpreting them. I want to know which stats truly carry the most weight. Especially in terms of keyword relevancy vs. backlinks/PR.

[Brad Callen]

Originally Posted by SrslySirius

Really? So then I guess things like YouTube videos and Amazon product pages are impossible to overcome, since they have have hundreds of millions of backlinks to their domains?

They also have A LOT of pages period. The PR gets weak by the time it gets to most new pages. But even then, you can get advantages by going with the exact match domain, take more care in your anchor text, back links, and content.

[Jesus Carrera]

I use Market Samurai but it gives roughly the same parameters as TT. For me the most important are the PR and the backlinks to page. Things like directory listings or on page optimization are useful to know how serious the competition is.

[Bill_Z]

I pay attention to the number of backlinks to the page that is ranked, then I evaluate those links individually to see how strong they are. A page can only have 20 backlinks but if they are all PR4 links or higher, it's going to be quite difficult to top them. Other important factors include PR of the site and page, domain backlinks, and domain age. Also, if the site is actually optimized for that keyword is important (onsite). The TT strength evaluation is worthless IMO.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by Brad Callen

They also have A LOT of pages period. The PR gets weak by the time it gets to most new pages. But even then, you can get advantages by going with the exact match domain, take more care in your anchor text, back links, and content.

Exactly. You have a good chance of overcoming those factors by following these steps.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by SrslySirius

The main ones that intimidate me are age and PR, because I know these are areas that I can not compete in. I can always find ways to get backlinks, and I can optimize my site for the keywords I want. But I don't have a time machine, and I have no idea how to improve PR (so I must assume that I'll be stuck on 0 or 1 for a good while). When I see old sites with decent PRs, it makes me wonder what chance I really have at overtaking them.

Hi SrslySirius,

Fortunately, Google does not rank pages based on PR, nor age of domain. This is a point that many folks have trouble understanding. Google is trying to return the best search results possible, so from the user's point of view, relevance is always the most important factor.

Google treats relevance as the primary factor and other things like age and PR are used to weight the value of backlinks. Backlinks play an important role, but it's never been just about the number of backlinks. It's how backlinks influence relevancy that is important.

When analyzing your competition you need to focus on signals of relevancy and the strength of those signals. A page could be 10 years old with hundreds of thousands of backlinks and a PR10 and yet not be serious competition. That's because none of those factors specifically pertain to relevancy. If the page is barely relevant to your target keyword, and the backlinks have little or no relevancy, then that page will be very easy to outrank.

What makes a page hard to outrank are aged signals of relevancy. The PR of the page you are trying to outrank is not a reliable indicator of strength. You need to isolate the backlinks that are highly relevant and determine the strength of those inbound links by looking at the PR and age of those inbound links. Look only at the relevant backlinks, ignore all others as they have no influence on ranking for your targeted keyword.

And finally, remember that search engines rank individual pages, not websites. Focus on the ranking factors for the individual page not the website. They rank based on relevancy, so isolate and look strictly at the strength of the signals that are relevant and you will be able to judge the true strength of competition.

The problem with most SEO tools is they do not isolate the pertinent signals. Instead they lump the irrelevant in with the relevant signals which seriously limits their usefulness.

[Sokar]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi SrslySirius,

Fortunately, Google does not rank pages based on PR, nor age of domain. This is a point that many folks have trouble understanding. Google is trying to return the best search results possible, so from the user's point of view, relevance is always the most important factor.

Yes i don't think google rank pages based on PR, but what about domain age? I think there is a certain percentage although perhaps not more than relevance. But i believe that an old domain with relevance beats new site with relevance. Makes sense?

[shangrilrao]

I SCORE Chicago website as a whole has closer links with education and government than their competitors for that phrase.

[Sokar]

Originally Posted by shangrilrao

I SCORE Chicago website as a whole has closer links with education and government than their competitors for that phrase.

What are you talking about dude?

[mscofield]

You can use some of the SEO tools to check the competition.

[SrslySirius]

Originally Posted by Sokar

What are you talking about dude?

It looks like he's just posting nonsense to promote the links in his sig. Common SEO tactic, no?

[seoalex]

Well competitor analysis is one of the most important thing need to remember while optimizing your site,may be you got some hints to get up while analyzing. In this world of fast Internet, there is nothing to be hidden. Thanks for sharing your information. I will go for it. Cheers

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi SrslySirius,

Fortunately, Google does not rank pages based on PR, nor age of domain.

This is not entirely wrong and its not entirely right. No one would deny that relevancy isn't key to Google's algorithm but saying that age and domain are not part of the basis of ranking is not quite true. It IS a factor and no SEO expert I know denies this.

If you really are COMPETING with another site (that is they are not there just because the term is weak but actually are going for that term) then the mantra of relevancy doesn't help as much as some may think. the page is going to be about the term and the backlinks are going to match as well. All things equal an older aged domain with aged backlinks is going to out rank an equally relevant page so i would advise the OP not to entirely overlook those factors. Generally in real SEO you are going to encounter scenarios where that weight will be a deciding factor but its up to you to counter that.

If the page is barely relevant to your target keyword, and the backlinks have little or no relevancy, then that page will be very easy to outrank.

problem is although thats right its not real world and doesn't address real competition situations. Most of the time you are going after a keyword with substantial traffic you are NOT competing against pages that barely have relevance but pages that are. You encounter these pages BECAUSE they show up in the serps so they do have some relevancy. In those cases of course PR is a factor because the PR from those links quite frequently come with relevancy in how people link back to the page with appropriate anchor text. PR is an extremely good way of getting an idea of the overall strength of the backlinks coming into the site. In fact thats really all PR measures.

Where the Op is making a mistake is in thinking that he cannot compete with a page that has PR. HE CAN. Getting backlinks will give him a build up of PR even as he gets anchor text juice and that PR shows on google's side immediately after the backlinks is registered even if it doesn't show up on public tools.

SO of course when you do competitive research you look at PR. PR tells you the strength of the links coming into their site. Is it the only thing you look for ? No but if you are going through hundreds of keywords phrases (you should be) and you encounter keywords in title and on page and a high PR you can waste a lot of time trying to find the exclusion to the rule that the odds are the site is targeted and optimized for that term. There are some other factors to look for too but I wouldn't exclude the PR or belittle it because its a VERY good early indicator along with the on page factors that should be considered.

It really isn't too often you see a PR 7 ranking for a term with keyword in title and on page that you are just going to beat in a few weeks. Your time is better spent if you are new going after easier terms that are likely to be less competitive. Like I said you should be looking at hundreds of keyword terms and mos people can't go looking at every backlink anchor text profile for the relatively rare occurence that is easy to rank over. PR 4 and below are not anything to run from though.

[mnlewis]

I also use TT to evaluate the competition. I look at the BL and whether or not they are optimized (title, Desc, H1 tag etc). I pay little attention to YouTube, Amazon and what not because I have seen where I have ranked higher than those sites.

I also use Rapid Site Check to check up on my competitors BL's. My theory is this you should link wherever your competitor is linking to.