How to find good keywords with low competition for SEO?

[taskemann]

Hi! How do I do keyword research for SEO?

I can only use Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find the search volume, but the competition results are irrelevant if I want to use the keywords as meta keywords on my website, right?

So how do I research the competition for keywords for SEO?

Any who knows?


Thanks,

Jimmy

[outwest]

U mean how to search the Onpage SEO ? competition of lets say top 10 sites on google for that kw?

not sure exactly what you are asking

[JoshuaG]

Choose a keyword, plug it in google, and check the following stats with a plug-in like SEO quake...

1 - Inbound links
2 - Page rank
3 - Domain age

The more of any of these factors a site has, generally the more difficult it will be to compete with.

[taskemann]

Originally Posted by outwest

U mean how to search the Onpage SEO ? competition of lets say top 10 sites on google for that kw?

not sure exactly what you are asking

If you read what I wrote in the first post, you should understand.

I want to do keyword research for meta keywords. So I'm wondering how I can determine if a keyword have low competition in the Google search engine.

[taskemann]

Originally Posted by JoshuaG

Choose a keyword, plug it in google, and check the following stats with a plug-in like SEO quake...

1 - Inbound links
2 - Page rank
3 - Domain age

The more of any of these factors a site has, generally the more difficult it will be to compete with.

Isn't it a easier method to do the research? For example with an online keyword tool that's more like Google AdWords Keyword Tool, but instead for researching AdWords keywords, one can research meta keywords?

But thank you for the suggestion above!

[outwest]

I dont understand the focus On "meta keywords" where did you get that term?

good kws are low competition kws period, this "meta" thing is meaningless

[taskemann]

Originally Posted by outwest

I dont understand the focus On "meta keywords" where did you get that term?

good kws are low competition kws period, this "meta" thing is meaningless

And I don't understand your slang.

What I mean with "Meta keywords" are keywords added to a website's source code. Like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, etc." />

[outwest]

Originally Posted by taskemann

And I don't understand your slang.

What I mean with "Meta keywords" are keywords added to a website's source code. Like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, etc." />

And you think that will make you rank higher? typing the kw in that
parameter? I think the SEs are way past that

[awj888]

yes, outwest is correct in that. its been long since putting keywords in your meta tags has actually effecting rankings. Its usefull to complete the on-page seo checklist but wont help with your ranking. If you want to be ranking for good KW then you need to build valuable links to your site.

If you want to find easy words to rank for - you can start in googleKWTool find the phrase matches that have an amount of traffic which is significant enough (1000+ usually closer to 2000+ at least!) and then do a google saerch wit hthe quotes "key word here" and search - you can see the number of results. if its only a few 100,000 then that will be very easy to rank for, if its over 1,000,000 then will take a little bit more time, and if its 1,000,000,000 then you probably would rather find another keyword!

[UMS]

Jimmy, I think you are misunderstanding a few fundamental aspects of keyword research.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool has two main purposes:

1. Determining good keywords for your Adwords campaign.
2. Finding keywords with good search volume to target organic traffic.

As you rightly pointed out, GAKT does not tell you how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. To work out the competition strength, you need to:

1. Use a manual/semi-manual process to check the top 10 results for the keyword and look at factors such as backlinks, on-page SEO elements etc.

2. Use a tool that gives you that information.

On the tool front, there's plenty to choose from. If you want to go down the cheap (ie: free) option, then the free version of Traffic Travis is good for this purpose.


Now in regards to "meta keywords", keep in mind that Google ignores them and other search engines may (or may not) use them. Either way, meta keywords are way, way, way down the list of on-page SEO, that it's not really worth spending time on them.

The easiest and quickest way is to just use your primary keywords for the meta keywords. No point in doing more keyword research just for meta keywords.

[taskemann]

Originally Posted by awj888

yes, outwest is correct in that. its been long since putting keywords in your meta tags has actually effecting rankings. Its usefull to complete the on-page seo checklist but wont help with your ranking. If you want to be ranking for good KW then you need to build valuable links to your site.

If you want to find easy words to rank for - you can start in googleKWTool find the phrase matches that have an amount of traffic which is significant enough (1000+ usually closer to 2000+ at least!) and then do a google saerch wit hthe quotes "key word here" and search - you can see the number of results. if its only a few 100,000 then that will be very easy to rank for, if its over 1,000,000 then will take a little bit more time, and if its 1,000,000,000 then you probably would rather find another keyword!

Thank you for your easy solution!

I stick with this one I think!

[outwest]

Domain Age...irrelevant
PR, ....if Backlinks to the page are very low.....this can easily be outranked if even PR5

I just saw a Domain age 13....site easily outranked by a new site....with way better backlinks (which were not impressive , the DA 13 site was just 10 backlinks or so)

I would say out of all of them Backlinks to page is the most important

Onssite SEO (kw in url, title, etc etc)
I would say kW in title, most important

however backlinks is WAY more important than ONpage SEO from the rankings I see

also you have to analyze the backlinks and see

1, how many of the backlinks have the kw in the anchor text
2. what percentage of the backlinks are EMD anchor text
if its 100 percent google will punish you for that

3. Also PR of backlinks is very important, but that will mostly be reflected in PR showing for the site (or page), but not always

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by awj888

and then do a google saerch wit hthe quotes "key word here" and search - you can see the number of results. if its only a few 100,000 then that will be very easy to rank for, if its over 1,000,000 then will take a little bit more time, and if its 1,000,000,000 then you probably would rather find another keyword!

If anyone ever gives you this advice, do not listen to anything else they have to say. This is an awful way to pick keywords. The number of results is completely and totally irrelevant to how hard it is to rank on the first page.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

If anyone ever gives you this advice, do not listen to anything else they have to say. This is an awful way to pick keywords. The number of results is completely and totally irrelevant to how hard it is to rank on the first page.

Agreed 100% that advice is totally useless
I dont care if google spits out 100 million results, I pay no attention to that number its irrelevant

However
I can understand people doing that
there is a lot of misinformation out there and this advice is on many websites
but it needs to be pointed out that it is not accurate or useful , as you just did

In my initial learning period of SEO, I was told to do the exact same thing
and IMO it really restricts you and you end up passing by a lot of great kws because their numbers show up as too high on Google with entering the kw in ""

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

Why are you paying so much attention to the backlinks? You can just look at the PR of the page that is showing up in the search result, I'm not talking about the PR of the main domain. If the page PR (wow 2 of the same words in one sentence), is high then obv it has valuable backlinks so a bit overkill to also look at the backlinks if you ask me.

The PR of the page does not show the quality of the backlinks in regards to that specific keyword. That is why you need to check out the PR of the backlinks in conjunction with the anchor text they are using.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

I think people are overrating anchor texts hugely.

Care to elaborate?

So you think if I just get a ton of links using "click here" as my anchor text I could rank for "homebrewing beer"?

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

As long as your page is optimized for homebrewing beer, absolutely. I ranked a free blog with only quality blogcomments, everytime I entered my real name instead of some anchor and its doing pretty damn well (compared to how little time I've put into it). I havent added any content or done any linkbuilding for at least the last 6 months and it still climbed 2 spots at page 1. Its now at #5.

I would bet that the competition is extremely light in that case.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

Well it isnt the hardest obv but I did pass 2 sites with PR3 and the keyword in there title (the keyword is 2 words) and both had 1 of these words in there url as well.

That doesn't prove anything about anchor text though. What did their backlinks look like? Did they have links with anchor text targeting the same keyword?

You don't even need to do any experimenting to test this. Just look in the SERPs. Find a website ranked for a competitive keyword with no links using the anchor text of the keyword. No partial anchor text either.

[blobgnarly]

hey guys.

it's my first day here (hi) and i'm really glad there's a shiny new thread that's addressing this confusion around what people think they mean by "low competition" or "strength of competition".

here's outwest post (edited) from a month ago... (thx outwest, really sorted me out)

Originally Posted by outwest

All of this allinurl stuff is totally Bogus
means nothing

all the matters is the top 10 competition on a google search with no quotations

I dont care if that number is 100 million
thats not relevant
all that matters is Google top 10 competition,
1, what are their backlinks to their page like?
2. what is their PR?
3, what is their onpage SEO like? (kw in title, url, header, and desc)
4. What is the PR of their backlinks like"? What is the PR and number of backlinks on their pages with anchor text that matches my kws? ( I think this is HUGELY important)

course this is a bit more advanced for the newbies but this is What the more experienced webmasters look at

to sum it up, it seems to me and my newbiosity that *this* is what I want in a SERP checker.

For the love of St. Eigenvector, what tool(s) use *this* type of deep SERP research into the backlink pyramid to figure out strength of competition?

Can scrapebox be taught to do this iterative, deep SERP competition research (ie, for each backlink, check PR of that page and anchor text of link)

That's the tool I'm looking for, even if some folks think it's overkill.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

Just did, checkout vliegtickets.nl ,they use vliegtickets and vliegreizen as anchor, but thats just common sense cause they are selling planetickets, and its there brandname so why would they chose another txt.

Sorry, I don't speak... is that German? I'm not sure. Kind of hard for me to elaborate on that one. But that wouldn't be an example of a website ranking without using the keyword as anchor text. If they are ranking for "vliegtickets", and they are using "vliegtickets" as the anchor text in a lot of their backlinks... then how does that prove that anchor text doesn't work?

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

99% of the sites that rank high for competitive keywords are selling something so not more then logical to use that as there anchor, but that doesnt mean it helps.

Really? Cause it would sure seem to point to it working.

[Alex Barboza]

Number of results for keyword is irrelevant. Strength of competition is where you should focus. Traffic Travis free version lets you see number of backlinks and on-site SEO of the 10 or 20 first spots in Google for a specific keyword and a specific country.

The way Traffic Travis rank the difficulty of a keyword is not exact but it lets you have a very good idea of how hard would be to get a first page ranking for a keyword phrase.

I use it, and I like it.

[UMS]

Originally Posted by taskemann

Thank you for your easy solution!

I stick with this one I think!

Easy but flawed.

If you stick with using that method, you will learn the hard way that it is not a reliable way of gauging competition strength.

[transcribing]

hey,
The best technique to find good and original keywords is to think yourself which keyword you would enter if you are in need for a particular service.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by wegenbelasting

Why are you paying so much attention to the backlinks? You can just look at the PR of the page that is showing up in the search result, I'm not talking about the PR of the main domain. If the page PR (wow 2 of the same words in one sentence), is high then obv it has valuable backlinks so a bit overkill to also look at the backlinks if you ask me.

Also you say the backlinks to the page or the PR is way more important then onpage seo, well then why do we outrank PR5 domains (with real bad onpage seo and no keyword in url/title) easily with an EMD?

A page with hardly any backlinks will never have a PR5, plain impossible.

Baloney
One of my main competitiors has tons of kws where he shows PR 5
and he has less than 50 backlinks
How this shows as that high PR I dont know but it does

[outwest]

I dont know how my main competitor has PR 5 showing on his inner pages
with only less than 25 backlinks many times

but he does
His domain age is 13 yrs also, I think his main domain must be PR6

but newbies regularly outrank his PR5 inner pages, and his 13 yr old domain age with new pages that have higher PR backlinks and more of them

[UMS]

Yaros, if you are going to copy/paste articles from other sources, the least you should do is add an attribution.

[wegenbelasting]

Originally Posted by outwest

Baloney
One of my main competitiors has tons of kws where he shows PR 5
and he has less than 50 backlinks
How this shows as that high PR I dont know but it does

I guess he has a lot of internal links from other pages directing there, they also carry weight, though you won't see them in Yahoo Explorer. Could be wrong though.

You know what I saw yesterday when I used traffic travis? A site that only showed 90 backlinks in Yahoo Site Explorer, but traffic travis showed 15.000 links, yes no kidding. Probably all bad links cause yahoo didn't show them, but still he ranked pretty well for his kw.

Anyway, Pr5 and 13yr old domain is some serious ****, especially when he gets outranked by new sites, maybe I should indeed reconsider my kw research.

[aspectiit]

Don't use the general keyword like "software development" and be specific in locations like "this in this place" so its search volume is heavy and competition is low.I will give you the best results.

[xxxJamesxxx]

I actually made a video which shows you how to find keywords using the free version of Traffic Travis.

I made it for beginners in mind so I think it'll help you out a lot.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Hope it helps

James Scholes

[taskemann]

Ok, so i should base my decision on Google's 10 first results and their page rank and inbound links?

And how lower the pagerank are, and how lower the amount of inbound links are, the easier it will be to rank for? Right?

I hope I have undertand this correctly.

[Alex Barboza]

I don't know if page rank is really that critical these days. I would look at number of backlinks for the page (not website) and on page SEO. If you want to look further, do a search for the anchor text being used to link to the pages. A web page can have thousands of backlinks but if they are not using as the anchor text the keyword phrase you want to rank for, then it could be easy to outrank them.

Originally Posted by taskemann

Ok, so i should base my decision on Google's 10 first results and their page rank and inbound links?

And how lower the pagerank are, and how lower the amount of inbound links are, the easier it will be to rank for? Right?

I hope I have undertand this correctly.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by Alex Barboza

I don't know if page rank is really that critical these days. I would look at number of backlinks for the page (not website) and on page SEO. If you want to look further, do a search for the anchor text being used to link to the pages. A web page can have thousands of backlinks but if they are not using as the anchor text the keyword phrase you want to rank for, then it could be easy to outrank them.

agreed you have to check the number of backllinks with your kw in the anchor text ., also the PR of THOSE backlinks

[transcriptionservices]

hey,
Google Adwords keyword tool is a good software to find good keywords.

[dagaul101]

One of the best ways of finding keywords with low competition, is to simply use the Google Keyword External Tool (and it's free)

[outwest]

some people say Ok if the PR is above 4 go to the next kw
I disagree , depends on the number of backlinks, and the PR of his backlinks that have YOUR KW as the anchor text

Lets look at analyzing Anchor Text as a competition Factor
Example your kw is Purple Tigers

You see the number 1 site has 1000 backlinks
Only 20 of those have anchor text of Purple Tigers (or variations of that)

I would go for that in a heartbeat. since he is not really targeting Purple Tigers

Make Sense?

[linkservice]

I use a program keyword blueprint, I found a keyword that gets 1.2 mill hits a day WW and is very easy to target.

[taskemann]

Thanks everyone for the help! I have got a much better understanding of this now!


Thanks a lot,

Jimmy

[EvanHinrichsen]

I think Page Ranking went out the door with meta keywords. I've seen lower page ranking websites beat high page ranking websites. Mainly due to keyword density.

[Alex Barboza]

Originally Posted by linkservice

I use a program keyword blueprint, I found a keyword that gets 1.2 mill hits a day WW and is very easy to target.

I use Keyword Blueprint too but it's not working properly these days

[ryuchi]

Traffic Travis and Google Keyword Tool works well together. These are some of good combination in link building.

[awj888]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

If anyone ever gives you this advice, do not listen to anything else they have to say. This is an awful way to pick keywords. The number of results is completely and totally irrelevant to how hard it is to rank on the first page.

<just a note on that - by itself ofcourse i agree that its not telling you much, however as part of ranking strategy its effective - yes you need to see which url;s are ranking top 10 the backlinks they have etc. doing allintitle:"keyword" search is also useful just to see some pages that are actualy OPTIMIZED for that keyword.

[CoryW]

I really am liking the Niche Finder tool sold here on WF. It helps automate and bunch of stuff...however, you still can apply your knowledge and do further research to the Nth degree. It just helps as a starting place.