How to *really* evaluate your google competition?

[TinPete]

Hi everyone,

I recently bought George Brown's "Google Sniper 2", but my first attempt didn't position me well in google and so I have no results to show for all my hard work!

I think the competition may have been stronger than I thought, even though there was not much of it.

Is there a way to figure out how "Strong" the competition really is for a given keyword? I mean, not like just how many websites you compete against.... George covered that pretty good. He also mentioned "authority sites", but I am hoping for something a little more precise.

I'm looking for something like: "On a scale from 1-100, the number 1, 2, and 3 slots average a 90, and your new sniper site is a 50" kind of deal.

My first failure was eye opening, and very disappointing, but it occurs to me that to do better next time, I need to understand the competition better.

I was thinking I can compete effectively against a million websites if the niche is saturated with folks that don't know how to optimize their sites, but I could go against a field of 20 websites who know what they are doing and be stuck in dead last place!

Can someone teach me how to fingure out where I stand (so I can measure how what I do improves it)?

Thanks!

- Pete

[Anup Mahajan]

You should evaluate the top 5 results before you finalize the keyword. A lot of people give undue importance to the number of results that you get by searching the keyword in quotes but if the top 10 or top 5 results belong to high PR sites then it would be wise to stay away from that keyword.

You can install SEO4Firefox add-on and analyze the competition of first page before you decide upon the keyword. Check for PR and page backlinks. If the top 5 results have average PR of 3 or less and the Pages have very few backlinks (< 300) then it could be a good keyword to target.

Regards,

[Grommeman]

I've been using seomoz, they have the best tools and all the tools you really need. The only downside is the price it is pretty expensive there.

[TinPete]

Thanks guys. I'll definitely be doing a lot more research before taking a plunge next time.

Grommeman, I'm not in a postion to take advantage of paid services yet... I guess I need to do things the old fashioned way!

[InTheMaking]

Originally Posted by TinPete

Thanks guys. I'll definitely be doing a lot more research before taking a plunge next time.

Grommeman, I'm not in a postion to take advantage of paid services yet... I guess I need to do things the old fashioned way!

TinPete get the free trial of MarketSamurai - you can see your competition, how many backlinks they have, the PR of the site, how their onsite seo is..

I think you get 15 days free, it's what I use to evaluate my competition doing the same thing you do.

[Devid Farah]

There are a few metrics for this Pete that is defined to onsite and offsite seo:

- Domain Age
- Google PR
- No. of pages Indexed
- Number of backlinks to page
- EDU and .GOV links (especially US GOV and EDU Links)
- On page seo factors (i.e. Meta Tags)
- Number of links going out from this page.
- Are they doing PPC Marketing
- Do They Use Adsense / CJ/ Other CPA marketing

Once I can beat them with all of these then I go all in.

[swym]

I have been using free version of Traffic Travis. There is a feature called SEO analysis which shows the few common metrics you will want to know and also give you a difficulty rating to give you an idea on how difficult it would be to rank for the keyword.

[adamv]

Originally Posted by anup.mahajan

You should evaluate the top 5 results before you finalize the keyword. A lot of people give undue importance to the number of results that you get by searching the keyword in quotes but if the top 10 or top 5 results belong to high PR sites then it would be wise to stay away from that keyword.

You can install SEO4Firefox add-on and analyze the competition of first page before you decide upon the keyword. Check for PR and page backlinks. If the top 5 results have average PR of 3 or less and the Pages have very few backlinks (< 300) then it could be a good keyword to target.

Regards,

Originally Posted by Devid Farah

There are a few metrics for this Pete that is defined to onsite and offsite seo:

- Domain Age
- Google PR
- No. of pages Indexed
- Number of backlinks to page
- EDU and .GOV links (especially US GOV and EDU Links)
- On page seo factors (i.e. Meta Tags)
- Number of links going out from this page.
- Are they doing PPC Marketing
- Do They Use Adsense / CJ/ Other CPA marketing

Once I can beat them with all of these then I go all in.

I would agree with looking at all of the above but some of the most important things to look for in addition to these are the number of sites on page one that have the keyword in the URL, the title, and the description. These are sites that are actually trying to rank for the keyword they are ranking for.

Your competition may not have all 3 (url, title, and description) but if page one in Google is full of pages that don't have the keyword in at least one of those 3 areas then the competition is pretty weak.

[BenoitT]

Don't waste too much time analyzing your competition. I would say just look if you don't have more than 4 authority site (PR4 or more) in Page 1 AND they are all targetting your exact keyword.

Take all the time you saved and write a better article

[TinPete]

Wow!

What an awesome bunch of advice!

My head is spinning, but I've got some good direction.

My thanks to you all!

Adamv, before I picked my keyword I noticed that none of the page one guys had much specifically for my word. I figured since I have the exact domain name, the exact title, and have it in the description that I should be able to do fairly well.

That's why I was so disappointed to be burried in the middle of page two after a month, and after submitting two spun articles to about 150 sites each.

It really took the wind out of my sails (and my sales, for that matter!)

I've decided to keep after this though, to see exactly what kind of effort and how long it takes to move up in the ranks.

I've never been able to deliberately move up in the ranks with off-page optimization before, (just cause I don't know what the heck I'm doing yet. The article stuff is the first and only thing I've tried so far) so this will be an exciting experiment for me.

Thanks again, everyone. Your experience and advice is very appreciated.

- Pete

[adamv]

Keep building backlinks and you should be fine. Two articles is a start but mass article submission won't give you the highest quality links. Diversify your link building. Do some blog commenting, make a few web 2.0 sites etc. and you will probably be at the top of page one soon.

[webdango]

Week 1
day 1:
new post
ping it
social bookmark it

day 2:
10-20 profiles with links
ping new profile pages as they get approved/appear

day 3:
submit blog post to 10 article directories (spin if you want, I don't)
social bookmarks to new article page

day 4:
create a new web 2.0 site
put post on it with keyword link link to your money site
ping, rss submit, social bookmark

day 5:
directory submissions, PR 2 or higher (just a few, like 5-10)

day 6:
rest

day 7:
rest

Week 2
day 1:
new post
social bookmark it
ping it

day 2:
10-20 profiles with links
ping new profile pages as they get approved/appear

day 3:
submit blog post to 10 article directories (spin if you want, I don't)
social bookmarks to new article page

day 4:
add new post to the web 2.0 site you created the week before
ping, rss submit, social bookmark
create a new web 2.0 site (different domain)
put new post on it with keyword link link to your money site
ping, rss submit, social bookmark; also

day 5:
directory submissions

day 6:
rest

day 7:
rest

repeat

once you start earning, outsource

[TryBPO]

Aside from using Market Samurai to get a look at the competition, we also "rate" the first page of the SERP, 1-5...1 being the hardest, 5 being the easiest.

You can definitely look at backlinks to sites, their authority, etc. but we try to be quicker than that since we have so many to go through. Things to look for:

- Lack of exact match words in the primary domain
- "general" sites that happen to have an article about the keyword (article directories, mass product sites, etc.)
- Lack of exact match in the title

We do a quick comparison, rank it, and then go back and look at the strength of our targets overall and rank them with that as one of the things to look at...

Hope that helps!

[AlexSafie]

But don't only focus on the competition. Ranking high for a keyword is a great thing but if it doesn’t make you money then that feeling of joy will quickly fade away.

To put money in your pocket a keyword should have commercial intent, a good search volume and weak competition. Always keep this in mind.

But just to do a quick check on your competition strength you can do the following:

• First see if the top 10 spots in Google are taken by internal pages or root domains (if there are mostly internal pages that is a good sign).
• Then you can use the free version of Traffic Travis to analyze how well the on page optimization is of the top 5 sites in Google for the keyword you want to target. T.T. gives you a score (A, B, C, etc) if the top 5 sites have a score of B or less, is a good sign.
• See if the PR of the top 5 sites is less than 3.
• And then use majesticseo (free, just have to register) to get the number of backlinks of the top 5. Here the lower the better.

These are just 4 things you can do to quickly determine the strength of your competition.

Do this along with the advice you have been given in this thread and it should work out fine.

And give it time. Top 10 rankings in a week is not always the case it usually takes from 1 to 6 months depending on how competitive the keyword is.

Hope this helps

[TinPete]

Thanks again, Folks!

This is great stuff. I'm going to have to start a folder to keep things straight.

Webdango, I especially appreciate your step by step plan. Being new to all of this, SEO is intimidating as heck to me. Quite honestly, I had no idea where to start.

Breaking it out like you did makes it much easier for me to get moving without getting overwhelmed!

TryBPO, thanks for the tips. I'll definitely keep them in mind as I go forward.

I sort of look at the keyword research as "an ounce of prevention" that is worth a pound of SEO. Now that I know how to do it a little better, I hope to have much better/faster results going forward.

But thats for next time.

I'm committed to the SEO effort now as a learning experience.

The game is afoot!

Thanks again everyone!



- Pete

[DudleyDog]

The OP is just another example of making the seller of the product rich and not the buyer - Good Luck GB!

And the responses to the OP are a very good example of how you can get all the required information you need free of charge on this forum.

Market Samurai has had some problems lately due to the changes in Googles algorithm. But it is still ok for kw research. They are constantly releasing 'bug fixes' to their paid version, I think the latest one is for competition?

For backlink analysis try Majestic SEO.

[webdango]

Originally Posted by TinPete

Webdango, I especially appreciate your step by step plan. Being new to all of this, SEO is intimidating as heck to me. Quite honestly, I had no idea where to start.

You're welcome and good luck!

BTW, I forget to add in that I also do 10 - 20 blog comments per week as well.

Repeat the stops I suggested until you reach the position you want for your keywords, then back off.

BTW I outsource almost all of this....