You can throw your SEO software at the garbage...

[GeorgR.]

If a dork like me can rank a site for an extremely competitive keyword in the weight loss niche to top of page #2 - everyone can do it.

This with a site which i had stagnant for 6+ months and did not do anything with it whatsoever. I posted about this a few weeks ago. This was when i discovered i ranked on page #5 for a keyword i would have never even dreamed of ranking, unexpectedly!

What i am saying:

People (including me) are using MS and other software and spend hours and hours looking for keywords like "less than X competing sites"..to find that "perfect" keyword to determine whether they might be able to rank.

I say, IGNORE those numbers because they don't mean ANYTHING, ignore your competitor's "strength" and simply go for it.

The key:

Quality content (unique, well researched, hand written of course).
Good site structure. (Get related keywords with wonderwheel!)
A handful of links from sites in the same niche.

There is really not more to it.

Since i discovered i was on page #5 for that keyword...in the last 3 weeks or so i did some more links, more articles etc...and i am now at top of page #2. And you bet i wont stop there

I also already got someone emailing me interested to buy the site...but of course i wouldn't sell at this point...and once i got PR and i am on page #1 i would probably charge a fortune (if i ever would sell, that is)...

[Michael55555]

nice... what is wonderwheel? is it free? i always hope trying to create great content will eventually pay off.. thanks for posting this!

[raviv]

GeorgR,
You do not even have to worry about PageRank unless you are going to sell it in future and the buyer insists on a high PR. All that matters is conversion and sales and hence the bottomline, the $

Thanks for debunking the myth around competition numbers and the various theories floating around here.

Best
Raviv

[trustumar]

content is king

[Brian Douglas]

Hi, sounds interesting,how many links is a handful?

[thebitbotdotcom]

Originally Posted by trustumar

content is king

Let me expand...

Unique content plus back-links pointing to unique content is king...

[craigcdz]

wonderwheel.... i heard it from you now. hows this software? is it better than others?

[SEO ibiza]

Originally Posted by craigcdz

wonderwheel.... i heard it from you now. hows this software? is it better than others?

it's amazing, does absolutely everything for you, you just subscribe and wait for your bank account to fill up

more here

YouTube - Introduction to Wonder Wheel

[GeorgR.]

You can use Wonder Wheel right from Google, you dont need software.
What it does, it shows highly related keywords to your keyword.

You then make a site covering those keywords too (in addition to your main keyword), categories,articles etc.

The result is that you will automatically build an authority site that way, covering everything what Google sees as RELEVANT to a subject.

And sooner or later you WILL rank for the keyword(s).

As far as i remember, i only had about 10 or so links for that site. This for a keyword which has 60.000 DAILY searches and i dont know how many MILLIONS of competing pages. THOSE NUMBERS ARE UTTERLY IRRELEVANT. <---- All it does when you use MS or similar software is to scare you off from a keyword or niche because it makes you believe its hopeless to rank!!

Use Wordpress, good content, good site structure. Take time and write (or let write) GOOD content. Submit steadily. GET HIGH QUALITY LINKS from subject related web pages. ---> PROFIT!

Instead of blasting garbage links, put articles on blog networks. That's what i did.

[4morereferrals]

Well - when the QDF bounce to page #2 - which is still nowhere ... wears off and you drop back down to page 5 ...

You'll be back to the linkbuilding... methinks.

Lots of sites with uber - great content / pages and solid seo on wordpress and even PR - dont rank for squat.

Lots of sites with ZERO content and links rank for stuff they shouldnt ... literally ZERO content other than a emd and blog title - no posts not even a category or a blogroll of text ... ranked page 4 .... with links of course.

Will be interesting to follow .... good luck man.

[GeorgR.]

I know that the weight loss niche is TOUGH, make no mistake. But with my other sites/niches i never had a situation where i "bounced back" significantly after i gained a position. (Less the incidence where one site once got a penalty, but it came back after 3 months).

[mattlaclear]

Hmmmm....

We have probably grabbed more page one rankings than any other Warrior in 2010 and let me tell you...sometimes it takes a boat load of backlinks to get a site ranked to page one even when the sites contain great original content.

Grabbing a first page ranking for a single keyword is one thing...but we grabbed well over 1000 of them last year.

We did this by using Traffic Travis's "seo competition" feature to gauge the strength of the top 20 ranking sites.

If I were to follow your advice and throw away our tools away we'd be out of business in a New York Minute.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I say, IGNORE those numbers because they don't mean ANYTHING, ignore your competitor's "strength" and simply go for it.

The key:

Quality content (unique, well researched, hand written of course).
Good site structure. (Get related keywords with wonderwheel!)
A handful of links from sites in the same niche.

There is really not more to it.

You're singing a tune I've sung for a long time.
All that I would add, is a handful of links from as high PR, and as
authoritative as possible.

Paul

[briantalk]

Good to read about your success, keep it up!

[Wiggy0618]

Quick comment about competition - I do think too many people focus on the wrong aspect when doing their research. It's not about the overall number of competing pages / results in google. That number (for the most part) is meaningless, IMO.

Rather, concentrate on the sites that are on the first page already. The question isn't whether you KW has 10,000 results in google, 100,000, or 10 million. What *does* matter is whether you can beat any of the first 10.

Look at it like this - when an elite distance runner is preparing for the Boston Marathon, does he care that tens of thousands of people will run it, or does he concentrate on how fast the top 15-20 guys are?

[denzeltan998]

i think it is all a matter of purpose....some people go for volume .... say 100 niche sites and they all have to attain page 1 with minimal fuss

[yukon]

Originally Posted by craigcdz

wonderwheel.... i heard it from you now. hows this software? is it better than others?

Selling seo services & doesn't know what Google Wonderwheel is?

[Alex Barboza]

Originally Posted by yukon

Selling seo services & doesn't know what Google Wonderwheel is?

Nice catch. Sometimes I just get surprised

[jdeer]

Look at it like this - when an elite distance runner is preparing for the Boston Marathon, does he care that tens of thousands of people will run it, or does he concentrate on how fast the top 15-20 guys are?

He thinks about the tens of thousands of people right?

Good analogy!

[dp40oz]

I really wish it was always as easy as you say.

[polrbearz]

I REALLY appreciate this thread. I am new but full of ideas---and a potentially prolific content creator, I believe. What I need to do (as per much good advice I've heard) is to simplify and/or delegate everything not related to my strengths. You all have helped me enormously on this thread by helping to demystify SEO. I am in information overload so this is one less thing I have to over-complicate.

[Bryan V]

Originally Posted by jdeer

He thinks about the tens of thousands of people right?

Good analogy!

I hope you're kidding.

[Boris_yo]

Guys but what if it is not about competition at all? We don't know how Google's search engine works. What if there is something other than measuring competition? What if we waste time on analyzing our competition?

[webber1]

You should never even look at your competition and think you cant do it. If your committed and determined you can do it if you do it. The main thing is that you know what your doing. If you dont be prepared to work hard and learn alot at the same time

[polrbearz]

Hey guys:

We have been picking up this old discussion under a new guise "Authority sites vs. microniche sites" on another thread. The consensus seems to be:

1) Definitely put your best efforts into a long-term commitment to making an "authority" site where don't worry too much about finer keyword combos.

2) To the extent that you have more time and resources, establish a network of "feeder" micro sites---these can even be static--that are optimized for keywords. You can outsource some or all of this.

This formula is most true if you have real passion and knowledge about a niche. If that doesn't exist, then step #2 can be your entire approach. Perhaps eventually leading to an authority site if you become really engaged with the niche.

Anybody listening ? George ? Do you still hold to your original thesis ?

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by polrbearz

Hey guys:

We have been picking up this old discussion under a new guise "Authority sites vs. microniche sites" on another thread. The consensus seems to be:

1) Definitely put your best efforts into a long-term commitment to making an "authority" site where don't worry too much about finer keyword combos.

2) To the extent that you have more time and resources, establish a network of "feeder" micro sites---these can even be static--that are optimized for keywords. You can outsource some or all of this.

This formula is most true if you have real passion and knowledge about a niche. If that doesn't exist, then step #2 can be your entire approach. Perhaps eventually leading to an authority site if you become really engaged with the niche.

Anybody listening ? George ? Do you still hold to your original thesis ?

Absolutely. The basic SEO is really minimal. And by the way the weight loss site is climbing and climbing.

Here is another tip:

Use SEO and Keyword research not only primarily for checking "whether you can rank".

Of course, the search volume for a keyword also indicates a DEMAND for a certain topic. If you see a highly searched keyword in whatever niche, you know many people search for this. And then simply give it to them. This can be as easy as writing an article.
This way you make sure you satisfy all those thousands of hungry searchers on the net. Yes, its obvious, but just saying...and your site becomes more and more relevant at the same time.

As you can see in my blog entry Why Keyword Research is Nonsense i dont give a **** about "competing sites" anymore, its all nonsense. With what you said above you can rank in any niche if your site is halfway of quality and value. its not some secret rocket science.

[KatyaSenina]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

A handful of links from sites in the same niche.

This part I don't get. Ok I know you don't need hundreds of backlinks to outrank your competitors, quality is what counts...but what is quality backlinks?

In that case, may I ask you where you've gotten your backlinks?
Was it article directories, forum profiles, guestposting, blog comments, web 2.0 sites?? What off-page SEO really gave you that boost in rankings? That's of course if you don't mind sharing. Or just PM me... I can keep a secret.

[GeorgR.]

I didnt do anything with the site for about 7 months. I try to remember i had some articles on networks like Seolinkvine and articleranks. And i submitted a few articles to ezine articles (if i can remember).
The rest is a mix of all of those, blog comments, article marketing, just RECENTLY i added a squido lens..but nothing "extreme". I did not use SEO software or anything "advanced", and i just recently started with more extensive article marketing (with AMR)...to boost the site even more up.
I think PRIMARY its to provide "ok to good" content and a good site structure with related keywords..and slowly trying to make an authority site for a subject. Then the off-site SEO becomes easy and doesnt need to be crazy (aka xrumer etc..)..the rest is TIME and waiting

Edit: "Quality Backlink" would be a backlink on the home page of a site in the same niche one-way linking to you. Hard to get

[KatyaSenina]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I didnt do anything with the site for about 7 months. I try to remember i had some articles on networks like Seolinkvine and articleranks. And i submitted a few articles to ezine articles (if i can remember).
The rest is a mix of all of those, blog comments, article marketing, just RECENTLY i added a squido lens..but nothing "extreme". I did not use SEO software or anything "advanced", and i just recently started with more extensive article marketing (with AMR)...to boost the site even more up.
I think PRIMARY its to provide "ok to good" content and a good site structure with related keywords..and slowly trying to make an authority site for a subject. Then the off-site SEO becomes easy and doesnt need to be crazy (aka xrumer etc..)..the rest is TIME and waiting

Edit: "Quality Backlink" would be a backlink on the home page of a site in the same niche one-way linking to you. Hard to get

Ok thanks so it's a little of everything. How is AMR working for you by the way? Have you seen an increase in rankings yet and does it really submit to all article directories at your disposal? Heard lots of articles get deleted and not indexed... this kind of stops me from buying it.

Also are you a paid member of ArticleRanks or free? Heard it's great for quality backlinks... Still have to try it myself though.

[GeorgR.]

I am using AMR in my link building, together with other stuff. But i cant attribute a ranking *exactly* to AMR since i only see the whole picture, the sum of all of it .)

As of right now, the database of AMR has 3900, many of them PR0 (which i usually ignore)..and about 1000 PR1 and up. If i do a full blast i get about 1300ish successful submissions.

To be honest, i know that MANY SEOs have an exact and sophisticated plan - but then they also contradict themselves by saying it is best to do all in a random fashion.

What i do....i blast parts contaning links to my money page, then articles to my squidoo lens, and other articles link to other articles, like to EZA or Articlesbase....and those again link to my main site

This more in a random fashion.

As for articleranks, i am a "pay as you go" customer but have to admit i didnt use articleranks in the last week(s). The reason is that i am with another network right now which i can use "for free" so to speak because i put a bunch of high PR blogs into it for credit. I would VERY much like to use articleranks again (it has very good reviews!!) but the problem is my paypal doesnt allow subscriptions, otherwise it would be a no-brainer. (Otherwise the articleranks price if you are NOT with their monthly subscription is silly, $4 per submission. A little too high in my opinion. But $39/month for unlimited is very good)

Short: You can NOT go wrong with both, AMR and articleranks. They are both GOOD.

[enwereuzo]

Hi George,
You said somthing of having Good site structure for your perhaps authority site. Now what is the best way of having a good authorithy site structure?

Enwereuzo

[PabloVTB]

For how long have you been in Page 2?
Have you considered using Scrapebox? It's amazing to find related keywods (Google Sugest scraper + Wonder Wheel)

Regards

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

.

I say, IGNORE those numbers because they don't mean ANYTHING, ignore your competitor's "strength" and simply go for it.

Another stunningly bad piece of advice. Think about it people. If your friend goes down to Florida, has no plan to get a job, doesn't find out where the jobs are, hands out his nice resumes to a few friends and some guys at Burger King, spends the rest of the time on the beach and lands a Job as a clerk at Disney......

Is this now the way to get a Job paying good money?

You can get a page 2 position in ANY niche given the right keywords. Page 2 still gives you little to no traffic and does NOTHING, NADA, NYET to indicate you will ever crack the top five position where the traffic really is at.

Great content is well - Great and it should be part of your plan to get ranked but to claim that you should just forget about having any other plan that sizes up the competition and analyzes how easy or hard it would be to rank for a term is just total and ABSOLUTE nonsense. No you don't have to buy software to do it. Install SEOQuake. Use Link diagnosis to check backlinks. BOTH FREE. But RUN AWAY FAST from anyone that tells you to ignore the strength of the first page for your keywords.

You don't build a house, Look for a job, start an offline business even (we hope) marry someone without knowing what the alternatives are, whats involved where the difficulties are going to be. Don't buy into the nonsense that IM is different and you should just ignore the realities of real life


especially not because of a page 2 rank that gets no traffic to speak of. Its fools gold.

[theseoguys]

People use software to rank? :0

I don't look at competition when trying to rank. The bottom line is the number is the same in ANY niche, and that number is 10. I am up against the 10 sites on page one, period. Whether it be 10 links, or 10,000 I need, that just determines the amount of work I have to do.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

People use software to rank? :0

I don't look at competition when trying to rank. The bottom line is the number is the same in ANY niche, and that number is 10. I am up against the 10 sites on page one, period.

Thats perfectly right. Only real competition is page 1 but if you are looking at the top ten then you ARE looking at the competition. My point is telling noobs to not look at competition at all is not a good thing.

[abadrj1]

Thanks for a great post. What you are doing seems really good for compliance with Google's new algorithm change. Quality content on sites that are not thin seems to be the way to go.

I also think this type of site will outlast any future changes in the Google algorithm, because the point of theses changes is to insure that the searcher gets useful results, which is what a site with quality content is all about.

[TZ]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Another stunningly bad piece of advice. Think about it people. If your friend goes down to Florida, has no plan to get a job, doesn't find out where the jobs are, hands out his nice resumes to a few friends and some guys at Burger King, spends the rest of the time on the beach and lands a Job as a clerk at Disney......

Is this now the way to get a Job paying good money?

You can get a page 2 position in ANY niche given the right keywords. Page 2 still gives you little to no traffic and does NOTHING, NADA, NYET to indicate you will ever crack the top five position where the traffic really is at.

Great content is well - Great and it should be part of your plan to get ranked but to claim that you should just forget about having any other plan that sizes up the competition and analyzes how easy or hard it would be to rank for a term is just total and ABSOLUTE nonsense. No you don't have to buy software to do it. Install SEOQuake. Use Link diagnosis to check backlinks. BOTH FREE. But RUN AWAY FAST from anyone that tells you to ignore the strength of the first page for your keywords.

You don't build a house, Look for a job, start an offline business even (we hope) marry someone without knowing what the alternatives are, whats involved where the difficulties are going to be. Don't buy into the nonsense that IM is different and you should just ignore the realities of real life


especially not because of a page 2 rank that gets no traffic to speak of. Its fools gold.

Mike. Are we ever going agree on something?

I believe we can compete in any market we choose. ANYTHING, no matter how competitive. What you can earn is a different story of course, but any market can create another trickle.

I have to disagree with the PAGE 2 meme as well. We get traffic from thousands of keywords where they found us on the top or bottom of page two.

I know that the ultimate gig is to be in the #1 position for the keyword BUY WIDGET and the keyword has 1 million searches a day, but that's not realistic for 99.99999 percent of newbies.

[theseoguys]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Thats perfectly right. Only real competition is page 1 but if you are looking at the top ten then you ARE looking at the competition. My point is telling noobs to not look at competition at all is not a good thing.

My comments were moreso for those that say "I am number 1 against 26 million sites!" or "How I out rank "400,000 in this competitive niche"

It is always, you vs 9 others. 26 million or 26,000, irrelevant.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Another stunningly bad piece of advice. Think about it people. If your friend goes down to Florida, has no plan to get a job, doesn't find out where the jobs are, hands out his nice resumes to a few friends and some guys at Burger King, spends the rest of the time on the beach and lands a Job as a clerk at Disney......

Is this now the way to get a Job paying good money?

You can get a page 2 position in ANY niche given the right keywords. Page 2 still gives you little to no traffic and does NOTHING, NADA, NYET to indicate you will ever crack the top five position where the traffic really is at.

Great content is well - Great and it should be part of your plan to get ranked but to claim that you should just forget about having any other plan that sizes up the competition and analyzes how easy or hard it would be to rank for a term is just total and ABSOLUTE nonsense. No you don't have to buy software to do it. Install SEOQuake. Use Link diagnosis to check backlinks. BOTH FREE. But RUN AWAY FAST from anyone that tells you to ignore the strength of the first page for your keywords.

You don't build a house, Look for a job, start an offline business even (we hope) marry someone without knowing what the alternatives are, whats involved where the difficulties are going to be. Don't buy into the nonsense that IM is different and you should just ignore the realities of real life


especially not because of a page 2 rank that gets no traffic to speak of. Its fools gold.

OMG Anthony,

do you know how MANY keyword tools i already used and how many years i was saying how important keyword research is?

Do you think i would have even ATTEMPTED shooting for "lose weight" if i knew beforehand that it has 7 MILLION competing pages? Lol.

Thanks for saying "another bad piece of advice"...thats probably the reason i am ranking all over page #1 in Google UK now (and 15ish and climbing in USA)...for keywords i would have never DREAMED of to even remotely rank.
I dont give a darn anymore about "competing" pages or "pages with phrase in title" since i KNOW you can rank anything.

Add: I am not saying that "page #2" is the ultimate, its not. That's why i am continuing link building...and the site/keywords are continually climbing ever since i discovered i rank that well.

Even page #2 for a very good, highly searched keyword already gives as much traffic as whatever micro-niche on page #1.

Once you see you hit page #2, say position #15, you realize that position 1, 2 or 3 might indeed be possible and you realize the nonsense of all those "competing pages" numbers. It only holds you back. I have enough "micro niche" sites in very tiny niches where i did it the classic way, checking how many competing pages are there and excluded ANYTHING over, say, 60.000 competing pages. I am ranking #1 with them, but those are micro niches with very moderate search volume.

[TZ]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

My comments were those that say "I am number 1 against 26 million sites!" or "How I out rank "400,000 in this competitive niche"

It is always, you vs 9 others. 26 million or 26,000, irrelevant.

You mean "Number 1 against 26 million PAGES!" I hope?

[theseoguys]

Originally Posted by TZ

You mean "Number 1 against 26 million PAGES!" I hope?

Correct, my bad. The general public though, doesn't know the difference and still think they are sites.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

People use software to rank? :0

I don't look at competition when trying to rank. The bottom line is the number is the same in ANY niche, and that number is 10. I am up against the 10 sites on page one, period. Whether it be 10 links, or 10,000 I need, that just determines the amount of work I have to do.

Absolutely!!

But even that is often not important, there can be that ONE weak crappy "adsense" site anywhere on page #1 - if your site is better with quality content you have a chance to outrank the crappy site(s).

The worst is really not to do attempt it in the first place, then you wont go anywhere. Or simply dabble in "micro niches" because you are scared of big keywords or niches. No reason, really.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

Correct, my bad. The general public though, doesn't know the difference and still think they are sites.

semantics..irrelevant

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

OMG Anthony,

do you know how MANY keyword tools i already used and how many years i was saying how important keyword research is?

Do you think i would have even ATTEMPTED shooting for "lose weight" if i knew beforehand that it has 7 MILLION competing pages? Lol.

Competing pages yada yada yada is nonsense but theres a world of difference between saying you do not go by that and telling noobs that they should just ignore strength of competition and go forward. Not all software utilizes competing page numbers to determine strength. Thats utter nonsense. Your OP is terribly misleading to newbies and several people who know their stuff who rank all kinds of sites have weighed in to tell you so.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TZ

Mike. Are we ever going agree on something?

Your rep isn't particularly good here so thats really not one of my goals TZ

I really don't care what you agree about. I wouldn't tell anyone that they can't rank for any term but I would not tell them to ignore the strength of the competition on page one. They ought to know what it is and take it into account so as to have a better chance at countering the competition.

So as usual you miss the point. Professional SEOs don't ignore strength of competition. they know what it is and they use it to their advantage.

Originally Posted by TZ

I have to disagree with the PAGE 2 meme as well. We get traffic from thousands of keywords where they found us on the top or bottom of page two.

.

See thats why your rep around here isn't good. The fact that the top three and the first page get almost all the traffic in a search result is well established. Only a small percentage of people got to page two. You think you can flub any fact by alleging a personal unsubstantiated success.

Sorry but if you guys keep putting up unsubstantiated nonsense you are going to get called on it.

[TZ]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Your rep isn't particularly good here so thats really not one of my goals TZ

I really don't care what you agree about. I wouldn't tell anyone that they can't rank for any term but I would not tell them to ignore the strength of the competition on page one. They ought to know what it is and take it into account so as to have a better chance at countering the competition.

So as usual you miss the point. Professional SEOs don't ignore strength of competition. they know what it is and they use it to their advantage.

Here we go again. You have deemed my "rep" now from that lofty place in your mind. You are the pro, and most of us are poor noobs. Arrogance anyone.

But regarding your content. Yes. We always want to "take a peek" at what the prime competition is. I think George cleared that up bud.

[The Blueprinter]

It doesn't have to be harder. But I have used and am also using some SEO softwares and it can help you a lot.

[GeorgR.]

Not all software utilizes competing page numbers to determine strength.

Many do, and MANY do it actually the wrong way, simply looking at COMPETING PAGES and make some idiotic assumption based on it.

Heck, if you really want to you can use your SEO software, but then look rather at the "phrases in title" number....and VERY IMPORTANT you need to analyze the top 10, their page rank, age, backlinks, this is the most important thing.

Unless you use Market Samurai and do this manually, all other software DOES NOT DO THIS..you should know what a nonsense this is! Heck you can have some ridiculous low number of alleged "competing pages" but still very strong sites to compete on page #1. I don't need to tell you that! (Of course, the same is also valid the other way around).

It seems you "enjoy" arguing against what is being said just for the sake of it...i just PROVED with one site that any such numbers mean squat...55.000 competing pages, 5 million competing pages...i don't care.
If your site meets certain quality criteria you would be fool to look at the numbers and NOT attempt to go for the keyword(s) simply because you see a very high number of competing pages.
This is not some theoretical brabble i pulled out of my *** but it's right there in front of my eyes when i see my rankings for my weight loss site. So why are you always arguing against what i am saying?

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

People use software to rank? :0

I don't look at competition when trying to rank. The bottom line is the number is the same in ANY niche, and that number is 10. I am up against the 10 sites on page one, period. Whether it be 10 links, or 10,000 I need, that just determines the amount of work I have to do.

With geo-location and personalized search, there are multiple "top 10" possible SERPs.

A search for something like "restaurant coupons" or "car insurance" could have 100s or even 1000s of "top 10s", one each for a variety of locations, depending on the user's IP.

Then each location has the possibility of having personalized results, giving the opportunity for even more "top 10s".

I prefer using the 3 "inz" queries to determine the niche-wide competition.

These are sites that have the keywords in all three of the following places:
in body text
in anchor text
in page title

This is fast and easy to do and gives insight as to how many pages for that keyword has done some basic SEO. I use my Inz Tuel so it only takes a couple of seconds. And it gives a good indication of the strength of the competiion across the entire niche.

This is only one of many legit strategies, but it's how I do competition research first. Then I take the best of those results, then check the top 10 for links, etc.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Many do, and MANY do it actually the wrong way, simply looking at COMPETING PAGES and make some idiotic assumption based on it.

Wake up George!

This is the third time I am telling you what the problem is. Let me try again. When a newbie reads -

People (including me) are using MS and other software and spend hours and hours looking for keywords like "less than X competing sites"..to find that "perfect" keyword to determine whether they might be able to rank.

I say, IGNORE those numbers because they don't mean ANYTHING, ignore your competitor's "strength" and simply go for it.

They are not going to know that you mean just COMPETING pages numbers only. They are going to read ignore the stregth of all the competition. The guys that have objected in this thread DO NOT BELIEVE in page counts - They object because (as I now understand) its poorly worded. You should not ignore "your competitors" strength if they are ranking on the front page. MS CAN help you there.

incidentally I already cited free software that gets the job done so it was very obvious what I was talking about