Low, Middle, High Competition?

[RizenKJ]

How would you classify keywords that have low, middle, or high competitions? It also seemed slightly ambiguous for me.

[iAmNameLess]

If you're referring to the google adwords keyword tool, that doesn't necessarily mean competition as a whole, just advertisement competition.

[jacobjoseph]

If people are spending money on ads then thats usually ideal. Middle competition is the sweet spot and low is okay if you have something mind.

For SEO I would avoid high competition keywords as chances are if people are paying good money per click they'll be paying good money to build links to their site too.

[onlineballa]

For a quick check just search your keyword in google like this:

allintitle:"mykeywordiwanttorankfor"

This will give you a basic idea to how many competing sites there are out there. If your new to SEO try going for a keyword with less than 1000 results when searching like this. That is my advice anyways. If you can find one with less than 100 then even better!

[RizenKJ]

Are there appropriate terms to classify high volume keywords and low volume? And if so, what is considered low volume, middle, and high - That's probably my real question lol.

[onlineballa]

Volume meaning traffic?

Your question doesn't make sense really... why do you care if a keyword is high or low? If it has traffic it is worth going after!

[HaydenR]

Look at the ten sites on page one, they will determine whether the keyword has low, mid or high competition. The ability to tell comes with experience but there are a few guidelines.. Check out how the on page SEO is for each site e.g. keyword in header, domain, description etc.

Next determining factor is how many backlinks the site has and what kind of backlinks. Use tools like Market Samurai or the SEOmoz toolbar to help.

The more on page optimization the sites have on page one and the more backlinks there are to each site determines level of competition. The more the optimization and the more the backlinks the higher the competition.

This is an extremely generalized way of looking at it but it's a start.

[waterprism]

Originally Posted by RizenKJ

Are there appropriate terms to classify high volume keywords and low volume?

Yeah, there are. High volume keywords rock. Low volume keywords suck.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by RizenKJ

How would you classify keywords that have low, middle, or high competitions? It also seemed slightly ambiguous for me.

It's all hogwash. Those "competition" numbers dont mean a thing. If anything, what counts is how "strong" the first 10 on Google are if you are shooting for page 1. And even then it can be deceiving, what i observe is not always consistent.

(Eg. really crappy "weak" sites holding top position in Google... With enough work, consistence, QUALITY CONTENT and some time and patience you can rank almost anything.)

[RizenKJ]

Ah, alright, I know about how competitive the top 10 are based on the off page and on page SEO factors, but for some reason, I got the notion people were judging competitiveness through other factors I wasn't aware of.

Learned something, thanks guys.

[jsfunstuff]

use micro nice finder for low. high, medium keywords

[wsotoolz]

In GAKT you want high competition for the keywords you go after. This way you know there are advertisers for those keywords. The flip side to it is you want to find them with not a lot of competition in terms of ranking. So lots of advertisers and easy to rank for is money in your pocket. I agree with the person above that said allintitle below 1,000 would be a good starting point for beginners. Don't only rely on this number though... also check out the top 10 in terms of PR, backlinks etc...

[jonnyhardbaked]

You can use keyword analysis tools to know the details of that particular keyword. To be specific, Google Adwords is one.