MNF SOC vs. Market Samurai SEO matrix...which one to believe?

[Diver Doug]

Hi all,

i've just purchased the latest version of MNF and so far I'm liking the ease of uncovering a new niche by the "green light" method (so to speak). i've been an avid user of Market Samurai for about a year now and appreciated the analysis power it had. I figured that if I had both, I could uncover a niche with MNF and then use the SEO matrix of MS to confirm. However, with this one niche, I'm getting quite conflicting results.

Here's a screengrab of the MNF results, with my keyword pointed out (exact, monthly)




Looks pretty good, as all the TLDs are available, and it has been given the "green light" in terms of the strength of competition (though I would question why it would be like that if the MOB is so high, such as the KW that is two below!)

However, when I plug my KW into the SEO matrix in MS, I get the following results :



From this shot, it looks like it would be near-on impossible to rank for, correct? (one note: the 5 PR0 sites listed are merely photos on the same domain as the PR2 site at position #5)

Therefore, which one is telling me the truth. MNF says that the SEO strength of comp is fairly easy, while MS is giving me the impression that the competition wouldn't be worth even trying.

Would anyone here like to offer anything to break the tie, so to speak?

thanks in advance!

Doug

[celopereira]

Hi Doug,

Unfortunatelly I've never used Marked Samurai so I can't add so much value on this discussion but I also have MNF and I have the same issue as you.

Some time ago I found out a KW with Globa Search Count 3600, Local 2900, SOC 18, MOB 137 and Exact Phrase Count 8340 so I thought it would be a great niche since the .com exact match domain was available.

I just forgot to check the google #1 page.

I bought the domain and set a new blog with new/fresh posts but I never ranked well for my keyword.

I decided to check the #1 google page then I could see that all competitors on first page had PR from 3 to 6. I checked #2 page and the same happened.

Therefor what I can tell you is don't trust 100% on SOC because it doesn't tell you all the truth.

I sent an email to MNF support to let them know about it. I think they should improve the SOC algorithm.

I hope it helps.

[hotboy18]

I have been using Market Samurai for over a year know and I considered their results to be accurate in most cases. If you see too much "highlighted red" for the sites' categories then I would stay away from these keywords because it will be much more difficult to out rank the competition.

[GemFranco]

There might be no accurate results for both software. As I have read from posts related to this issue before, there might be no software that provides accurate info. CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG

What I do is just use different software as my insights. Don't just depend on what the software tells you.

[JSProjects]

MS is generally pretty accurate.

That said, I tend to ignore the "overall" competition and look at the top 3 competition. I used to obsess over the number of competing pages, which is a big mistake.

The top 3 results tend to generate the most traffic. It drops off a LOT after that IMO.

[BigNorm]

Agreed, top three spots are the most crucial but ranking upto the 5th spot till give you pretty good traffic. Judging from that screen shot I would venture not to target the keyword. if your looking to hit the top spots. But it's still quite possible to rank on the first page of Google with the keyword as your competitors look quite easy.

[shaunling]

oh hey by the way, may i know if MS provide MOB like what MNF provides? the minimum backlinks to get to no #1 of google.