Determining Competition

[n14charlie]

Hey I'm new here!

I have a question about determining whether I should go for specific keywords:

For a specific keyword I tried in google's keyword tool and I got "low competition" but when I analysed in Traffictravis I got "Extremely difficult"..
how do they determine it? and how do you think should I?

any help will be appreciated

[GetKane]

You might want to check out SerpIQ.com

It's a pretty good and easy to use service, I think they have a free plan too.

[n14charlie]

Thanks for the tip!

It's kinda weird serpIQ says that my keyword gets 2900 global exact and google keyword tool says 14800

*confused*

[Gary Becks]

Don't pay attention to what any of the tools that you have mentioned say. When it comes to determining competition and keyword analysis this is one part of seo that you MUST do yourself.

Look at the competitors on page one, most importantly the top 5. Look at the number of links they have, the age of the domains, the pr of the domains, their on page SEO (keyword in title, h1, etc).

There's of course more that you could look at to measure it but that should be a good start.

[outwest]

Google kw tool cannot give you the competition
the most they can give you is the number of times that kw appears on competing sites or competing pages
which is IMO and most other webmasters not what you can usefully use to guage true competition

You need
Site Age, PR, backlinks, onpage SEO etc competition of the top 10 sites that come up on google on a search of the kw without quotes

This can be gotten by a number of tools
Traffic Travis (although when I tried it wont give backlinks)
Market Samurai

SEOquake (but wont analyze backlinks or give onpage SEO factors)
go search
youtube vids for analyzing top 10 competition on Google
see what comes up

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by n14charlie

For a specific keyword I tried in google's keyword tool and I got "low competition" but when I analysed in Traffictravis I got "Extremely difficult"..
how do they determine it? and how do you think should I?

The competition in the Google Keyword Tool has nothing to do with the search results. It is showing you the level of competition among AdWords buyers who are bidding on that term.

[UMS]

Originally Posted by n14charlie

Hey I'm new here!

I have a question about determining whether I should go for specific keywords:

For a specific keyword I tried in google's keyword tool and I got "low competition" but when I analysed in Traffictravis I got "Extremely difficult"..
how do they determine it? and how do you think should I?

any help will be appreciated

Sounds like you have committed mistakes #1 and #2 detailed in:
What Are The Biggest Keyword Research Mistakes?

[n14charlie]

Thanks for all the tips

I didnt make mistake #1 because I searched "exact" the funny thing
I got 3 totally different numbers in google keyword tool,Traffictravis and serpIQ

should I rely on google keyword tool?

- EDIT: another question I have is,
if my pharse has allintitle About 596,000 results should I stay away
or it doesnt mean anything? (I can still get good sepr if my SEO is good compared to others)

[IamTJM]

I typically use Traffic Travis and analyze the Top 10 for my keyword and look for number of backlinks, PR, On page SEO, and whether there are any sites such as YouTube or squidoo (which are a good sign).

[Quenta]

Never heard of SerpIQ before, might check it our for competition analysis too. We'll, Google Keyword Tool is only just for Adwords buyers competition..so not really worth for some serious competition analysis.

[n14charlie]

ye I just realized what that competition bar means - does this mean that if a word has low competition there adsense pays less for clicks on ads?

[dchuk]

Originally Posted by n14charlie

Thanks for the tip!

It's kinda weird serpIQ says that my keyword gets 2900 global exact and google keyword tool says 14800

*confused*

Hi, I'm the founder of serpIQ. I know this is an old thread but I figured I'll jump and clarify here. We use SEMRush for our search volume and cpc data because google locked down their api for hundreds of customers back in september of last year. SEMRush actually does get their data from Google (they have an enterprise relationship with them) but the data is 1) batch imported monthly and 2) only accounts for searches typed into google.com (not mobile searches, searches from toolbars, searches from browsers, etc).

That's actually a positive though, because you never want to target a keyword and then find out the traffic was actually lower than you expected.

Hopefully that helps a bit.

[pwtmike]

Originally Posted by n14charlie

Hey I'm new here!

I have a question about determining whether I should go for specific keywords:

For a specific keyword I tried in google's keyword tool and I got "low competition" but when I analysed in Traffictravis I got "Extremely difficult"..
how do they determine it? and how do you think should I?

any help will be appreciated

try this - go to google and type:

intitle:"your keyword"

Here you can get a rough idea of how much work you need to do. If this is low in the hundreds, consider the competition low, if it is high in the thousands, then medium, if even higher, then it is difficult competition. This tells you competition volume.

Now you need to run an analysis on the top ten pages for a regular search, without quotes. Take a look at this using market samuari seo competiton. This will give you an idea of the top ten pages that rank for your keyword, and this will give you an idea of the strength of the top ten sites, their backlinks, their on page factors, their ages.

Do this for a few of your keywords. Both the competition strength and competition volume will give you an idea of how overall competition there is for your niche.

[kaedus]

Originally Posted by pwtmike

try this - go to google and type:

intitle:"your keyword"

Here you can get a rough idea of how much work you need to do. If this is low in the hundreds, consider the competition low, if it is high in the thousands, then medium, if even higher, then it is difficult competition. This tells you competition volume.

In my opinion this is a horrible waste of time. Why would this tell you your competition volume? Just because someone has the keyword in title doesn't mean they are actively optimizing for those terms. It could be coincidence. It could also be a very common keyword.

Sorry, but you're wrong, plain and simple.