using quotes and low competition KW's

Hi,

The quotes you refer to actually mean that this is an exact term. IOW's the searcher has to be searching for that exact term to actually come across your site/article etc.

This is good because you are getting more targetted traffic as they are looking for your kw and hence product. Also, there is less competition for exact searches.

The figure you are talking about actually refers to the number of sites you will be competing against for this kw. You need to ensure that you have checked how often this is searched per month. The best way if you are starting off is to refer to Google's Adword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Enter the niche you are interested in and then enter the captcha. Once you get your list of kw's, look at the tab along the top on the right-hand side Global Monthly Search Volume press this once to get the kw's in numerical order. Look at the drop down box to the right of this and select exact...watch the values drop significantly!

Once you have the selected kw's, check each one in quotes in Google browser and it will give you your competing number of sites. The quotes are used for research purposes.

There is obviously more involved to get your site on page 1, backlinking being a major part. Just enter this into the search box for plenty of great information that will have you up and going in no time.

Good luck with your endeavors,

Michael

I think the only people who search with quotes are internet marketers doing keyword research. Searching with quotes simply gives you a rough idea of how many sites contain that exact phrase.

If you want to take it a step further, type this in Google:

site:ezinearticles.com intitle:"your keyword phrase"

That will tell you if there are in fact articles at EZA targeting that phrase in their title. Once you've established that there are, you can now do the normal search for your keyword phrase (without quotes) and see where the first EZA article is ranking. If there are EZA articles with that keyword in the title, but they're not within the first 30 or so results, it may indicate that it will be difficult to rank an article in the top 10 for that keyword without building backlinks to it.

That's a rough figure because there are lots of variables, like how well the other articles are optimized for that keyword (sometimes people use the keyword in the title but not even once in the body), the mystery of Google (it's not uncommon to find 20+ articles on a given keyword at EZA but only 1 will rank in the top 50), etc.

However, this will give you a better idea than a simple quotes search of how viable a top ranking for an article at EZA on your given keyword without any backlinks would be. It's not perfect of course, but nothing in this business is.

I get a pretty good top 10 hit rate by using this method to determine what keywords to write on.

Because with quotation marks means Google is returning pages with that phrase in exact word order. So only pages with dog obedience training will show up if you search for "dog obedience training." If you search for the phrase without quotation marks, you get a list of all pages Google has that contain that phrase in any word order. So, obedience dog training, training dog obedience, etc. In fact, the words in the phrase do not even have to appear next to each other when you search without quotation marks.

In other words, with quotation marks tells you (very roughly) how many competitors you have out there who have also optimized their pages for that exact phrase. Some say the higher that number, the less chance you have of getting a high ranking. I say only worry about how tough the Top 10 look to be to beat, but others will argue the point.

John