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The Best Keyword Ever.....Now Do I Have A Chance???

by TashylaB
21 replies
Today I was doing some keyword research for one of my niches. I came across a short tail keyword (2 words), that gets 315,000 searches per month, on google alone, with only 7,500 competing websites.

Boy was I in pure bliss!

Then I did a little more research to find out that the top 10 sites for this keyword have tons of backlinks (3,500-750,000 links) even though neither one of them are optimized for this keyword. So should I give it a shot to use this keyword as my main keyword for my site with some major seo? Or do I not have a chance at getting a top 10 ranking at all?

If I do have a chance, can someone please give me a little more advice on what to do? I plan on writing articles and doing some social bookmarking, but any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Tashyla Butler
#chance #evernow #keyword
  • Profile picture of the author molebrain
    There is always a chance...when you make use of StumbleUpon, Digg, Pingoat, Twitter
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  • Profile picture of the author spressnell
    Very interesting. I'm still learning how all of that works together. It's kind of like a huge jigsaw puzzle.

    Shirley
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
      What kind of sites where they on the first page, forget about backlinks for a minute.....

      Lets say that the keyword that you found was "soft drinks", right?

      Now if the first page was loaded with sites like:

      Pepsi
      Coca-Cola Global: Soft Drinks & Beverage Products
      Dr Pepper
      etc...

      You could be in for a good fight

      But, if the results on the first page are made up with a couple article directories or even some squidoo or regular blogs, it is just a matter of getting more and better backlinks with some decent content.
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      • Profile picture of the author TashylaB
        Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall View Post

        What kind of sites where they on the first page, forget about backlinks for a minute.....

        Lets say that the keyword that you found was "soft drinks", right?

        Now if the first page was loaded with sites like:

        Pepsi
        Coca-Cola Global: Soft Drinks & Beverage Products
        Dr Pepper
        etc...

        You could be in for a good fight

        But, if the results on the first page are made up with a couple article directories or even some squidoo or regular blogs, it is just a matter of getting more and better backlinks with some decent content.
        The #1 website is sort of a major website. Not the most popular in its niche but it has over 7 million links. However the other websites have horrible content and layouts and no seo whatsoever. They are not popular websites but they have around 3,500-100,000 backlinks.
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        • Profile picture of the author Simon_Sezs
          Originally Posted by TashylaB View Post

          The #1 website is sort of a major website. Not the most popular in its niche but it has over 7 million links. However the other websites have horrible content and layouts and no seo whatsoever. They are not popular websites but they have around 3,500-100,000 backlinks.
          Just curious, is it wikipedia? If so, you will have a tough time knocking them off the #1 slot. It is doable but it will require you to basically dismantle their linking structure manually.
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  • Profile picture of the author blase40
    The stats mentioned certainly sound in your favor.... however, it really depends on the sources you are using for your stats.

    I have found some extremely inflated numbers with the Google keyword selector tool lately compared with other tools... so keep in mind that a lot of resources are far from 100% accurate.

    If it were me, I would probably optimize for some of the more popular longer tail versions of the phrase. If the 2 word phrase is getting that much traffic, there must be some pretty juicy 3 word ones you could really take advantage of with that little competition.

    If I stumbled on this little nugget myself, I would "SE Nuke" the hell out of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author James Schramko
    Go for it. I would take it on for sure. Don't worry about the number of backlinks. They may not be related.

    Punch your keyword into google keyword tool and write down the related keywords.
    Put a page on your site with each of them and link back to the page you want to rank for with good anchor text.

    Punch in the URL of the top site into the URL google keyword tool and make a note of the categories Google sorts them into.

    Make a page or a Tag for each of those as well.

    The work and the data has already been done for you.

    Add content , get some links from offsite and away you go.

    Regards

    James
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    This is where you get real information (backed up by proven results)
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Million
    Run a quick PPC for that keyword and see how many impressions you get over 24 hours... it may cost you $10-$20, but it's well worth it before you invest weeks to months in link building.

    I had this happen to me with a keyword phrase related to PayPal. Sure, I got ranked number 3 within 2 months......but the traffic was about 10/day for that keyword....not 1300/day lol.

    Live and learn!
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  • Profile picture of the author ptone
    Its way too early for you to be worried about how many backlinks your competitors have.

    You seem to think that you could better optimize your site for the 2-word keyphrase than those on the first page. If so, you could likely get on the first page with proper on-page seo and no backlinks.

    Google is going to go with which sites are most relevant for the search term, then arrange those based on backlinks (PR). If Google thinks your site is more relevant, you will beat them no matter the number of backlinks.

    So, get your on-page seo in order, then worry about backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author cloudchaser22
    TashylaB,

    You said that the #1 website is sort of a major website. Not the most popular in its niche but it has over 7 million links.

    How do you find out how many backlinks there is to a website?
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    I'm a starter, but I am willing to try everything I can to be a successful internet marketer and chase my dreams. If you can answer any of my questions, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

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  • Profile picture of the author cloudchaser22
    Thanks for this, ptone.

    Why won't Google give the actual number though?
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    I'm a starter, but I am willing to try everything I can to be a successful internet marketer and chase my dreams. If you can answer any of my questions, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

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  • Profile picture of the author TheMagicShow
    Originally Posted by TashylaB View Post

    Today I was doing some keyword research for one of my niches. I came across a short tail keyword (2 words), that gets 315,000 searches per month, on google alone, with only 7,500 competing websites.

    Boy was I in pure bliss!

    Then I did a little more research to find out that the top 10 sites for this keyword have tons of backlinks (3,500-750,000 links) even though neither one of them are optimized for this keyword. So should I give it a shot to use this keyword as my main keyword for my site with some major seo? Or do I not have a chance at getting a top 10 ranking at all?

    If I do have a chance, can someone please give me a little more advice on what to do? I plan on writing articles and doing some social bookmarking, but any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

    Tashyla Butler
    You can give it a try but short tail keywords may gain you lots of traffic but the conversions probably will not be that high.
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    " You can either give a man a fish and feed him for a day OR teach him how to catch a fish and it will feed him for a lifetime"

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  • Profile picture of the author ptone
    Why won't Google give the actual number though?
    It is theorized that it is because doing so may reveal their PageRank algorithm. Google is the only search engine that uses PageRank, therefore other search engines don't need to hide real backlink numbers.
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  • Profile picture of the author cloudchaser22
    Hi ptone,

    In the Google box I put:

    link:Google

    I got: Results 1 - 10 of about 186,000,000

    Does this mean that Google has 186,000,000 backlinks?
    Signature

    I'm a starter, but I am willing to try everything I can to be a successful internet marketer and chase my dreams. If you can answer any of my questions, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

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    • Profile picture of the author Alican Yenidogan
      Nope, it means that it used to have 186,000,000 backlinks on the last update. You can never know the real backlink count of a website that Google has. They don't announce the actual numbers to users because they use it for their algorithm.

      They update it like once a month for every website so it is not real time values.
      Originally Posted by cloudchaser22 View Post

      Hi ptone,

      In the Google box I put:

      link:Google

      I got: Results 1 - 10 of about 186,000,000

      Does this mean that Google has 186,000,000 backlinks?
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      • Profile picture of the author PatriciaJ
        Yes you have got a chance. I found a 3 word keyphrase with similar search results and competition you state and put a blog up using the keyphrase in the domain and site title. Filled it with content and sent one article out to directories and social bookmarked the blog. Within a short time it was second in google for that phrase and still is 6 months later. The number one is owned by a well known TV personality from that niche.

        It's a very specific phrase and the most natural to use for that niche. I haven't done anything else with it since and the blog hasn't got that many backlinks yet it gets traffic and is a constant earner. I guess that my SEO was better than the competition and maybe if I put more work into it I could get the number one spot.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    I don't trust the Google keyword tool anymore. Just last night I was doing keyword gathering and saw a PILE of interesting keywords that had apparently zero adwords competition (you guys know the histogram they show for PPC competition, I'm sure).

    Anyway, I type the phrase into google and the page is littered with sponsored links on the right. Zero competition, right. Sure. So if you can't trust the PPC comp, why trust the search volume data?

    I like what Scott said - setup a campaign. Bid HIGH and bid "accelerated" to make sure you show up for every request. SET IT TO EXACT MATCH. Then count how many impressions (not clicks) you get over a set number of days. Divide impressions by days to figure out daily search volume.

    Now - can you succeed? For your keyword you need to forget about links that the competition has (as in forget total number). Instead focus on the quality of their links.

    - are the links using anchor text that matches the keyword? If they don't and you do, you'll win
    - are the links to the DOMAIN or the PAGE? This matters. If the links are to a general domain rather than your specific page that you are competing with, you will have an easier time to win
    - are the competition amazon, wikipedia, or other giants (about.com)? If so, you'll have a very HARD time to knock them off.

    Hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author molebrain
    I am #1 in Google for the phrase sexiest man in Pittsburgh. Yes, I am #1, but believe it or not, the term is not searched that much.
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    I bet you can't be as sexy looking as me: :)
    http://www.tonyrocks.com/index.php/c...-chiseled-jaw/

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  • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
    Originally Posted by TashylaB View Post

    Today I was doing some keyword research for one of my niches. I came across a short tail keyword (2 words), that gets 315,000 searches per month, on google alone, with only 7,500 competing websites.

    Boy was I in pure bliss!

    Then I did a little more research to find out that the top 10 sites for this keyword have tons of backlinks (3,500-750,000 links) even though neither one of them are optimized for this keyword. So should I give it a shot to use this keyword as my main keyword for my site with some major seo? Or do I not have a chance at getting a top 10 ranking at all?

    If I do have a chance, can someone please give me a little more advice on what to do? I plan on writing articles and doing some social bookmarking, but any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

    Tashyla Butler
    Tashyla,

    You don't need thousands of backlinks to compete. Seriously. I have an article that I am competing very well with a super highly competitive keyword with 11 MILLION results in Google. And I don't even have ONE thousand backlinks. I got my spot on Google with less than a hundred.

    You just have to have the right kind of backlinks. You need High Quality, High Page Rank backlinks. Good luck and let us know how it goes.
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    • Profile picture of the author tiger325
      I say go for it
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