Is it worth getting a keyword rich domain that has over 142 MILLION competitors (8 mill in quotes)?

It does help but there is no getting around the hard work involved to rank well.

Depends on the keyword, Chris.

Some biggies are easy to rank for. I'm currently ranked number one for a keyword with 11 million in quotes and all I did was spend a few hundred on articles and a few hundred on backlinks.

It was simply a case of no "big affiliates" or "big sites" ranking high for that keyword. EX: Wikipedia etc

My honest advice is to go pick up Market Samurai or Keyword Elite 2.0. (I like KWE 2.0 better.)

And run the search engine dominator part of it to see what the competition is like. (It'll give you a number between 1-100 and show you the top sites and what they have that makes them rank so high. Ex: Backlinks, keyword density.)

After seeing what number your given and seeing how many backlinks the sites in the top 10 have etc you'll be better able to make a decision on whether to pursue the keyword or not.

IMO Google is starting to judge websites, unless your an authority site, more and more on the domain name. So this might be a chance, if your willing to work for it, to do really well.

Good luck!

Zach

Competitor count, as measured solely by volume, has very little relevance when it comes to ranking. How many searches does an EXACT match for your keywords get per month?

Want to spend your time getting a real handle on your competition? Here's a hint, there aren't 142 million of them. Enter your search in Google WITHOUT quotes. Press enter. See those first 10 results on the page? In a nutshell, THAT'S your competition.

Analyze each and every one of those 10 pages. Can you beat them with your own SEO efforts? If believe you can -- and if the search volume warrants it -- then go for it.

When it comes to # of search results, 142 thousand or a 142 million doesn't mean much at all when it comes to determining whether or not a keyword phrase is PROFITABLE and if you can RANK for it.

Search Google keyword tools how much advertisers are paying for these keywords.
This will show you any potential commercial value of domain.

"free air" or "free ferrari" has lots of pages listed but does it make sense to struggle for these visitors?

Gleb

Depends on what you can do. If the domain name is a good one I don't care if there is a billion competitors. That is a huge advantage. And them more competitive the niche the more opportunity for you as long as you can rank.

When I come across a great name I grab it. There is always a market for prime virtual real estate.

Interesting observation guys....many thanks for the tips. Feel free to chime in with anymore insights or observations.

Chris Negro

The quality of competition is definitely a big factor, combined with how much time is feasible for you to put into climbing up the ranking. For example, my partner and I started a site in a niche with crazy high competition, but we were confident we could provide better content.

It took some time, about 6 months, but with steady chipping away at the rankings with quality, optimized content, we climbed up to a top 3 spot for our target phrase. We even climbed about a site funded by a major TV station, with a sizeable staff of writers.

Now the site gets great targeted traffic and does some really solid revenue. But, it took some time to get it there, and a fair bit of time on quality content.

So I think the three questions are, can you do it, do you have time to do it, and will it pay off enough to be worth it.