Keyword strategy - Competition/Search Volume?

[jimmy506]

How do I know when I have found a good keyword phrase to get on page 1?

*Type "keyword in quotes" into google- Do I look for under 20,000 competition?

* Keyword tool - What's a good amount of traffic to look for?

[chargers]

Search keywords which have huge search volume but less competition. Use Google search keyword tool and it might help you

[thecableguy]

Traffic Travis is another good tool to research the competing sites that's very similar to MarketSamurai, from what I understand TT's free version will analyze the top 10 or 20 (I forget which)

Alan

[markshields]

Originally Posted by chargers

Search keywords which have huge search volume but less competition. Use Google search keyword tool and it might help you

I completely agree with this one you want keywords that are targetted to your niche with as high search volume as possible and as low competition as possible

[MemberWing]

No. Low competition is there for a reason. And most likely reason is that there are no money for these keywords to be made.

1. Use google keyword tool.
2. Add average cost per click column
3. sort by PPC cost descending
4. See which keywords gets highest volume
5. These would be worthwhile to rank for. Someone already made research and willing to pay money for keywords. Use that information to find moneymaking keywords. They would be harder to rank for though.

Gleb

[jimmy506]

Thanks everyone for the help!

[ramone_johnny]

Originally Posted by MemberWing

No. Low competition is there for a reason. And most likely reason is that there are no money for these keywords to be made.

1. Use google keyword tool.
2. Add average cost per click column
3. sort by PPC cost descending
4. See which keywords gets highest volume
5. These would be worthwhile to rank for. Someone already made research and willing to pay money for keywords. Use that information to find moneymaking keywords. They would be harder to rank for though.

Gleb

Interesting strategy. Thanks.

[carlo_sim]

1. lookup for high searched keywords
2. Look at the number of backlinks of the sites on the first page of google with your keyword. The lower the better. Go to yahoo site explorer and enter the sites of your competition there.
3. Look at the intitle:"your keyword"
4. Look at the inanchor:"your keyword"
5. Look at the inurl:"your keyword"
6. if you see that not many are optimised for your keyword then there is a good chance that you can rank with it.

[jimmy506]

Thanks again everyone!

It's difficult because I'm trying to find the right strategy as to not waste too much time on keyword research.

I would like to be able to establish a Max threshold when looking at competing pages. ie. Google "my search phrase"

-Some people say they don't touch anything with more than 20,000 results
-Some people say they don't touch anything with more than 15,000 results
-Some people say they don't touch anything with more than 10,000 results

What's best if you are looking at a small niche and starting with a new website?

How many backlinks in the top slot before you say "I can't compete"

[bhopkins]

Jimmy you can compete with any number, it just depends on whether you want to do the work to rank for them. I normally don't try to compete with anything above 100K, but that is just me and it depends on the traffic.

I would say that anything under 30k competitors can be gotten with some decent backlink building, but this is not something that is always true. For example of the entire front page is full of authority sites, then its doubtful that you will be able to knock one of them out.

With that being said, the number of competitors in any niche really does not mean everything. What really matters is who is on the front page as that is where you have to be anyway. If you find weak pages on the front page, then you can usually take them out. What you want to see is pages with new domains, not many backlinks, poor onpage SEO, etc.. Once you identify these factors then its easier to determine whether you can actually take one of their spots by building your pages better.


hth
Bruce

[jimmy506]

Originally Posted by bhopkins

With that being said, the number of competitors in any niche really does not mean everything. What really matters is who is on the front page as that is where you have to be anyway. If you find weak pages on the front page, then you can usually take them out. What you want to see is pages with new domains, not many backlinks, poor onpage SEO, etc.. Once you identify these factors then its easier to determine whether you can actually take one of their spots by building your pages better.

That was really helpful Bruce!

Thanks for taking the time to explain....

Hmm.. so much to learn...