why to look at the number of competition?

[phans]

why would you pay any attention to the number of sites that are competing for a keyword?
look at the top 10 sites and if you think you can outrank them go for it!
imo it doesn't matter if there are 100 competing sites or 100 million... if you can outrank the sites from the first page you will outrank all the other sites anyways!

so why are people paying attention to the number of competing sites?

[kindsvater]

I agree with you 100%.

Whenever I see someone trot out the "competition" numbers based on how many pages in Google happen to mention a word, I instantly know they have no idea what they are talking about.

If there are 100,000,000 results, beating 99% of them doesn't do you a lick of good.

All that matters, if your goal is the 1st page of Google, is the competition to get on the 1st page.

.

[ezzypro]

FINALLY, someone that actually understands!

When I'm researching a keyword's competition, I never even look at how many sites come up in Google. All I do is check pr, number of backlinks, ect for the top 10 sites, and see whether or not I could outrank them.

[majortraders]

Originally Posted by phans

why would you pay any attention to the number of sites that are competing for a keyword?
look at the top 10 sites and if you think you can outrank them go for it!
imo it doesn't matter if there are 100 competing sites or 100 million... if you can outrank the sites from the first page you will outrank all the other sites anyways!

so why are people paying attention to the number of competing sites?

wouldn't you want to know what the #1 site is doing to get the top ranks? once you learn how to do that you can do the same. keep your enemies closer...

[outwest]

This is the newbie types that go to Google and type in allinurl and allintitle

But
I dont blame them because there are a lot of jerkoffs out there teaching that
And I used to go to google and type the word with quotes
and then hell

Even Market Samurai
One of the columns in the kw research module is SEOC
which is exactly that number that comes up in Google...........

which is totally useless
why they do that is a mystery, Because they do have a top 10 competition on Google module
the SEO competition top 10 for Google, and I do use Market Samurai for just that

But there are a LOT of people still out there saying, Oh go to google type in the kw in quotes
and then see what the competition says, if its more than 100k (or whatever number they deem worthy) then the competition is too hard for that kw
thats TOTAL BS

[D Baker]

I agree. I don't care how many sites are competing for a keyword. All the competition I look at is the top 10 results because I will need to outrank one or more of them in order to get into the first page of Google.

[Yogini]

Yes, I too agree studying the top 10 for age of domain, number of backlinks, pr, keyword in domain or url works best. I think there were so many people in past saying to put in quotes the keyword phrase and if there is under 25k or 50k competition go for it , that many people used that as their guide. It does seem that there are some keywords that with quotes and under 25k competition have a good chance for being ranked on page 1. But, this isn't always the case.

Debbie

[hashbury]

Originally Posted by Yogini

Yes, I too agree studying the top 10 for age of domain, number of backlinks, pr, keyword in domain or url works best. I think there were so many people in past saying to put in quotes the keyword phrase and if there is under 25k or 50k competition go for it , that many people used that as their guide. It does seem that there are some keywords that with quotes and under 25k competition have a good chance for being ranked on page 1. But, this isn't always the case.

Debbie

You are right on. I use the comp in quotes as a very basic estimate to determine if I should look into the keyword further. However I usually go for around 200k or lower.

I am not even a big fan of this method because I know for a fact that I am letting some good keywords slip away. However I proccess thousands of keywords everyday and need a way to cut out the majority of the ones that are not worth the time and effort on my part.

Once I narrow my keywords down I always look at the competing sites on the first page of google to see what I would be up against.

[NEseO]

Totally agree on that one, totally irrelevant to me!!

There are people out there teaching this as best practice when realistically just putting having a phrase on a site does not mean it is looking to rank for that phrase, just a twisted way to think.

As already said, just look at page 1 and they are the sites you are trying to beat (well just the top 3 really). Analyse the top few as that is where the money is and if you think you can do it then go for it, otherwise move on to another keyword.

[Bryan V]

It always surprises me when 'experienced' marketers mention they use "competing search results" as their main metric for competition. It's also surprising to see Warriors repost customer testimonials touting the service was so good it beat "11112918928319 pages". larf.

[Mauricio Lopez]

I think it's a bit more complex than just ranking for keywords... Anyone can create a website and stuff it with keywords - that doesnt mean your going to rank high in google.

Google looks at a lot of things and upon doing my own reseach - I have come to find out YES it is great start and important to look at your neighbors website.

However, once you have determined your competitors keywords you need to provide answers to problems. Google love good content and the faster and easier you can solve someone problems the higher up you'll go in the SERPS.

Another key element I've noticed Google looks at are:
Keyword rich URL's (Use your primary keyword in your URL's)
Keyword rich Titles (good descriptive title)
Keyword rich Content (don't over stuff)
Highlighted H-1 tags

Feel free to add to this post....

[HelenAbell]

I have to disagree with the view that it's completely useless.

In my opinion the information is useful to some degree, and I use competition information to work out quickly how much time and effort I'm going to need to put in to get on page 1, to help me pick the lown hanging fruit if there is some, and secondly to help identify queries that are not being well served from a content quality viewpoint.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bryan V

It always surprises me when 'experienced' marketers mention they use "competing search results" as their main metric for competition. It's also surprising to see Warriors repost customer testimonials touting the service was so good it beat "11112918928319 pages". larf.

SERIOUSLY

and yet from what I see maybe about 60-70% of this board believes in this totally bogus metric which seems obvious to me was simply invented so that sellers could claim to be ranking for greatly competitive terms which really were ridiculously weak.

[Matt Ward]

Originally Posted by HelenAbell

I have to disagree with the view that it's completely useless.

In my opinion the information is useful to some degree, and I use competition information to work out quickly how much time and effort I'm going to need to put in to get on page 1, to help me pick the lown hanging fruit if there is some, and secondly to help identify queries that are not being well served from a content quality viewpoint.

How does the number of competing pages help you with this at all?