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Doing competition research.

by Shift
12 replies
Hello.

I'm wanting to learn more about how and what one must do before entering a market i.e competition research.

(I already know how to find keywords in places like google keyword tool, wordtracker, youtube video tags, etc).

Do you type in the keyword in a search engine to see how many people have the keyword in their page title by typing the keyword in quotes "keyword goes here".
And if it's less than a certain # (what is a good # in your experience?) you think you could rank for it.

Do you see how many backlinks the top ten positions have for your keyword, and if it's also less than a certain # you think that's fine.

I asked this question in another forum and one other poster was kind enough to answer with some more ideas :

use the allintitle and allinachor search function in google

Even if a keyword has a million competing pages, if there are web 2.0 sites, or youtube videos or social networking sites ranking in the top 10, you can overtake those sites.
Now if you see well established authority sites(wikipedia, webmd, etc) for the keyword in the top 10 then you should look for something else.

Backlinks are important, as is domain age, PR ranking (for the page not the site), however you do also want to look at the quality of backlinks. If a site has 1,000 backlinks but they're all from blog spamming, or forum signature spamming, you can outrank them by having backlinks from authority sites and articles directories with higher pr and relevence.

-----

So what I understand is look at the quality of competing pages for the keyword one wants to rank for, by seeing their on page optimization, and quality of backlinks.

And what about content? If you see the top sites are big sites with lots of content does that mean one's own site should also have a lot of good content?

If any of you can think of something else, I'm sure it'll help others here as well. Thanks.
#competition #research
  • Profile picture of the author scfc16
    a great way to research is to go to sites in your niche that rank higher , and check out their backlinks you can so this by using the google backlink checker.

    Also use a free backlink checker to see how many links they have to take them to no1
    Signature
    Get 50x 500 word articles for just $480!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Shift
    Here's another question.
    I've just read something (which I already knew) in a free report by a warrior stating how it would be easy to rank for a certain keyword phrase (in the example there were under 100,000 competing pages) by creating new content.

    But how does one know how much content to create in order to rank high?
    I often see articles and videos ranked high but not everytime one writes an article or makes a video will it rank high.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nahar
      This probably won't answer any of your questions but might save a lot of your time:

      I wouldn't worry about the number of competition at all. Wether 10K people or 200M running - all you need to do is outrun the first runner (or at least get to the finish line in the first 10).

      These are the main services I use to check the strength of competition:
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  • Profile picture of the author Shift
    Google sponsored links and google adwords keyword tool will show how many ppc ads there are for your keyword, but if you don't want to run ppc for those keywords then how else can it be useful for doing competition research?

    Yahoo site explorer one uses for seeing the # of backlinks pointing to a domain or page.

    Please elaborate on how you use ebay and amazon to do competition research?
    (I know one can get keyword ideas from amazon).
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    The Google Adwords Tool mentioned above is a good start to get a general idea without paying for expensive software.

    The first thing to consider is the amount of traffic. Does no good to spend a lot of time trying to compete for 5 hits a day.

    Look for a keyword that gets at least 5000 hits a month. This way, you have a shot at getting some of the 70 - 100 that will end up clicking on the front two pages of Google.

    Then after you find a search term (keyword) that gets some traffic, look at those sites on the front page to see if you can compete with them.

    Are they big authority sites that will be very difficult or are they articles which you can knock down with an article yourself?

    That's where the competition is. The 10 spots on the front page.

    Don't worry about the others on the back pages. You want to be on the front page getting a piece of that traffic.

    Matt
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  • Profile picture of the author Shift
    Yes I had the free copy of Market Samurai when it first came out a while ago, but haven't used it in a while.

    What does it do in terms of competition research?
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  • Profile picture of the author Nelson Guedes
    Originally Posted by Shift View Post

    Hello.

    I'm wanting to learn more about how and what one must do before entering a market i.e competition research.

    (I already know how to find keywords in places like google keyword tool, wordtracker, youtube video tags, etc).

    Do you type in the keyword in a search engine to see how many people have the keyword in their page title by typing the keyword in quotes "keyword goes here".
    And if it's less than a certain # (what is a good # in your experience?) you think you could rank for it.

    Do you see how many backlinks the top ten positions have for your keyword, and if it's also less than a certain # you think that's fine.

    I asked this question in another forum and one other poster was kind enough to answer with some more ideas :

    use the allintitle and allinachor search function in google

    Even if a keyword has a million competing pages, if there are web 2.0 sites, or youtube videos or social networking sites ranking in the top 10, you can overtake those sites.
    Now if you see well established authority sites(wikipedia, webmd, etc) for the keyword in the top 10 then you should look for something else.

    Backlinks are important, as is domain age, PR ranking (for the page not the site), however you do also want to look at the quality of backlinks. If a site has 1,000 backlinks but they're all from blog spamming, or forum signature spamming, you can outrank them by having backlinks from authority sites and articles directories with higher pr and relevence.

    -----

    So what I understand is look at the quality of competing pages for the keyword one wants to rank for, by seeing their on page optimization, and quality of backlinks.

    And what about content? If you see the top sites are big sites with lots of content does that mean one's own site should also have a lot of good content?

    If any of you can think of something else, I'm sure it'll help others here as well. Thanks.
    Hello Shift,

    There are many ways to research your competition. I can only scratch the surface here...

    You can find similar websites to your competition by typing on google search:

    "related:_________"

    You can also find how many links are pointing to your competitors website. This research is very useful to determine how hard it will be to beat them in the ranks.

    "link:___________"

    You can also download google toolbar and enable page ranking. That way you can go to your competitor's website and check out their page rank, which will also help you determine how hard it will be to beat them.

    Remember that your goal is to be on top of the page. That is not just a matter of content. It's a matter of having a lot of sites linking to you, having authority sites linking to you and having content that is good enough and has your keywords and related keywords throughout the website. I personally always go for high quality content, not because I want to rank high, but because I want my audience to gain a lot from what I have to offer.

    Finally, there are a few tools that I use that could be helpful. One is a keyword tool that automatically shows you your competitors' keywords right from Google (that's the main feature). Another one is a more sophisticated and robust tool that helps you uncover hidden profitable niches.

    I actually just talked about this in my blog yesterday. I will give you the direct link to it here, or you can always find my blog at my signature.

    IM Unleashed — 5 Tips for Choosing a Niche IM Unleashed

    Entire books have been written about this, so I can't keep going on about this subject here. But I will talk a lot about this at my blog, so feel free to check it out once in a while or subscribe.

    Hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shift
    I checked out Market Samurai's competition research ability by reading this post Keyword Research Tool Exposed: Bury the Competition | SEO.com and basically it just shows `back-links in Yahoo Site Explorer, see if they are indexed in major directories, the domain age, page rank, keywords in title, keywords in URL, keywords in description, keywords in h1 tag'.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Richard,

    The main areas to help your site listing is the on site optimization which would be keywords in the title ( at the top of browser ), keywords in heading tags on page (H1 H2) regardless of what some here say about meta tags not necessary for Google use them any way for every other Search Engine.

    Your site content must contain the overall "keyword theme". In other words, you should not have a site with all of the tags using the keywords about dogs and your content is not about dogs.

    Off of the site SEO is back-links. The more back-links from higher ranking sites the better.

    I suggested looking for listings on the front page that are coming from article directories because these are some of the easiest listings to overthrow and take their place.

    Find some weak sites on the front page and compete with them. This is the easiest way to get on the front page.

    Matt
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    • Profile picture of the author steveblum
      Download Firefox if you don't have it on your computer yet, then head over to www.seoquake.com and download the plugin. This option can be toggled on/off and allows you to spy on your top competitor's keywords. Oh yeah, it's FREE.
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