4 replies
  • SEO
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Hi Guys

I have been learning SEO online and im having trouble working out how good my competition is. Is there any courses or part of a course that deals with this subject in great detail ?

I see there is alot of different views on this subject so i dont really know who to trust on this one. For example some people say it doesnt matter how many competing pages there is in big g wheather it be normal search or in "" it only matters whats on the first page which seems to be good advice.

But how long would it take to get to page one against 1,000,000 different sites ? Does it all boil down to how many links you have ? wheather they have edu, .gov links ? Wheather they have there pages all clued up for seo like title tags, alt tags etc

If they dont have the keyword in the title tag, h1 tags etc etc but have 100,000 back links, for me to then beat them i would have the keyword in all the right places and simpley bulid at least 100,000 backlinks and id beat them ?

Any advice would be great my heads all over the place at the minute.

Thanks

Chris
#competition
  • Profile picture of the author Josip Barbaric
    Hi Chris,

    Here is my take on what you should focus on when determining competition strength:

    - analyze only the first 10 pages(page 1 of results)
    - check the amount of backlinks for each page
    - check anchor text of backlinks

    Without making it into a big science, this is what it boils down to. Naturally, factors like domain age and on-page optimization also come into play, but this is the most straightforward way of determining the strength of your competition.

    I recommend using something like SEO For Firefox or a similar tool to speed up the analysis time.

    Cheers,

    Josip
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  • Profile picture of the author bezzerbrown
    Hi Chris,
    bezzer brown here , here is a good tip say your in the dog niche pick a keyword like new dog training for example, look it up in the keyword tool and see what searches its getting and if its good go but the domain name and make sure its a .ORG it ranks better i think,with in 12 days you should be in the first 2 page off goolge, then build back links and hyper that keyword so google see all them keywords pointing back to your site with that mean keyword in it, it works every time trust me
    hope this helped if you need help just ask bezzer brown
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Your competition is not the 1,000,000+ sites
      that just happen to have something related to what
      you do. That's a common misconception. Your
      biggest competition is yourself. Get over the fact
      that it is a competition. It's not. It's about creating
      a good website, decent content, high PR backlinks,
      and do it for a good website visitor experience.

      You also err thinking that backlinks are why they are #1.

      You are trying to follow some laundry list of magical
      spells. Forget it. The magic spells are overrated.

      Your whole post is full of "what ifs" as if those things
      are going to make or break a site into the top. They're not.

      If you don't want to work hard creating an above average site,
      forget the whole concept. You are thinking of how to outsmart
      search engines. Quick lead to failure.

      If you don't know how to create an above average site, hire
      someone to do it. It sounds as if you don't know the first thing
      about SEO or even where to start. Search this forum for SEO
      for hire. No shame in doing the above.

      If you concentrate on some magical list, you will be back here
      screaming your head off as to why google hates you as it
      didn't work.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Hi Chris,

        When I see questions like yours I'm reminded of a popular quote:

        "Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important."

        Seth Godin


        The competing number of pages is just a rough guess based on a relatively small sample set. It is not very accurate and almost meaningless when analyzing competition. You see a lot of people using it because it is easy to discover, not because it is meaningful.

        In actuality, Google will return a maximum of 1000 results so you are never competing with any more than that number. And ranking at position #426 is essentially the same as not ranking at all.

        You will never see any significant SE traffic until you reach the 1st or 2nd SERP. So the only meaningful competition will be in the top 20 results and that is where you should focus your competitive analysis.

        When you look at the top 10 or 20 results you will notice they are not necessarily ranked by the number backlinks, PR or TLDs. Google would have a pretty lousy user experience it they did it that way.

        So how do they rank SERP? Well, it is by relevancy score. You need to learn what signals are used by the SE and optimize your content and your backlinks accordingly. Notice that I said "optimize your backlinks" in the previous sentence. That is because building backlinks is actually promotional activity and not necessarily SEO. Your backlinks need to be optimized just as your on-page content. So you OPTIMIZE your on-site content AND your off-site content and you promote your website with off-site content as well as on-site content (by creating useful relevant content).

        You build backlinks by creating, or inspiring, off-site content that links back to your targeted page. Thus "Content is King", and remember backlinks are just part of your off-site content.
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