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Keyword research or page rank?

by 23sdriver
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Good Morning Warriors!

I'm trying to find out what is more important, Page Rank or a high search volume low competition word.

Yesterday I spent a few hours doing keyword research. Each hour was more frustrating then the next. I was using Adam Short's "Money Word Matrix" to find profitable keywords. My issue was for every niche I tried, it seemed like I couldn't find any or very little good words. The niches I was searching in were things like "saltwater aquariums," "horse training," "flight simulators," and "koi fish."

After becoming thoroughly disgusted, I decided to find out what I was doing wrong. After all Adam can do this all day long and build good sites that rank highly in the SERPS.

I found 3 blog posts about finding "hot markets" that Adam wrote which describe a whole different way of finding a niche. (Niche Profit Classroom-Blog-Finding Hot Markets, Parts 1,2 and 3)

The last step in particular says to search google for the top 3 keywords and average out the Page Rank for each of the 3 results pages. If it is something like 2.5-3 then you can possibly beat out the current top ranking sites. Then you would use the "Money Word Matrix" to find the best words to target. Low competition/High searches.

So, is it just the niches I chose to search in, should I dig deeper into them?

Or just go after a word/phrase even if there are a gazillion results as long as the top 10 pages in the SERPS have a really low PR.
#keyword #page #rank #research
  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I don't know about that strategy being as strong as it once was because often now authority sites will tend to grab many of the first spots. So even for new keywords, if an authority site like amazon.com has content, you won't easily get higher without first establishing some authority yourself which can take months, not weeks.
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  • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
    I do look at the PR of the top few sites. If there are a couple of sites that have PR3 - 4, I don't let that intimidate me. But I will check the "keyword" competition, and the allintitle:"keyword" allinurl:"keyword" competition.

    I will sometimes also look at the back links that the pages on page 1 have, like how many, what kinds are they etc...

    More importantly, I look at what they are NOT doing. I analyze their onsite SEO.

    The flight simulator niche is pretty competitive by the way.
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  • Profile picture of the author 23sdriver
    dvduval, are you saying that there are more people doing affiliate marketing these days as opposed to a while ago? I considered that too.

    capitalachemy, are these tools or meta things "allintitle:"keyword" allinurl:"keyword" competition" And I hear ya on the flight simulator niche being competitive. But I looked at the top 10 results and found that they all were PR 1 sites. What does this mean?
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    • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
      Originally Posted by 23sdriver View Post

      dvduval, are you saying that there are more people doing affiliate marketing these days as opposed to a while ago? I considered that too.

      capitalachemy, are these tools or meta things "allintitle:"keyword" allinurl:"keyword" competition" And I hear ya on the flight simulator niche being competitive. But I looked at the top 10 results and found that they all were PR 1 sites. What does this mean?
      I'm not sure about the PR1, because I don't know what keywords you are looking at.

      I don't put too much emphasis on the PR to be quite honest, although it can be something to consider. I also don't worry a lot about ehow.com, youtube videos, amazon pages, or any other types of sites.

      What does scare me are large, authority websites about a particular subject matter. For instance, it can be difficult to try and outrank an article on webmd.com.

      Allintitle:"keyword" and allinurl:"keyword" are search operators that are used in Google search.

      With both instances, I try to go after keyword results that have less than << 1,000 webpages for both allintitle: & allinurl:.

      I also try to keep my overall keyword competition << 20,000, as in "keyword", and the number of pages that are indexed referencing that keyword.
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      • Profile picture of the author 23sdriver
        Thanks for the tip of allintitle and allinurl. It sure narrows things down! But I don't understand what it means. Could you explain it please?
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        • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
          Originally Posted by 23sdriver View Post

          Thanks for the tip of allintitle and allinurl. It sure narrows things down! But I don't understand what it means. Could you explain it please?
          There are quite possibly a hundred thousand factors that Google looks at when deciding how to rank a site. We don't know all of them, but we know some of the top-most important ones.

          2 of which are...

          A: Having your keyword in your title tag (preferably at the very beginning)

          B: Having your keyword in your domain name or url. You would use your most important keyword (the one you really want to focus on) for your domain name. You would use all sub-keywords related to your topic in your urls for your articles or other pages on your site.

          Regardless, it's very difficult to go after keywords that have too many web pages indexed in Google who are also using those same keywords in their title tag and url.

          So everyone has a "comfort" zone, and if something is really important to me I will go after something more competitive...

          But in general I like to stay below << 1,000 other webpages listed in the google index for both having the keyword in their title and url.

          The lower the better.

          So if allintitle:"your keyword" turns back 1,000 results or less = good

          If allinurl:"your keyword" turns back 1,000 results or less = good.

          Don't forget to put your keyword between the quotes too!

          The same goes for checking the overall indexed page competition.

          "keyword phrase" << 20,000...much easier.

          100,000 or less, not awful, but will require more work.
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          • Profile picture of the author memememe
            Originally Posted by capitalalchemy View Post

            There are quite possibly a hundred thousand factors that Google looks at when deciding how to rank a site. We don't know all of them, but we know some of the top-most important ones.

            2 of which are...

            A: Having your keyword in your title tag (preferably at the very beginning)

            B: Having your keyword in your domain name or url. You would use your most important keyword (the one you really want to focus on) for your domain name. You would use all sub-keywords related to your topic in your urls for your articles or other pages on your site.

            Regardless, it's very difficult to go after keywords that have too many web pages indexed in Google who are also using those same keywords in their title tag and url.

            So everyone has a "comfort" zone, and if something is really important to me I will go after something more competitive...

            But in general I like to stay below << 1,000 other webpages listed in the google index for both having the keyword in their title and url.

            The lower the better.

            So if allintitle:"your keyword" turns back 1,000 results or less = good

            If allinurl:"your keyword" turns back 1,000 results or less = good.

            Don't forget to put your keyword between the quotes too!

            The same goes for checking the overall indexed page competition.

            "keyword phrase" << 20,000...much easier.

            100,000 or less, not awful, but will require more work.
            Well said indeed thats just how i do it just do your research on your chosen keywords and make sure there is searches for your term
            and the keywords are for buyers not tyre kickers
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  • Profile picture of the author 23sdriver
    Ok, thanks. That clears that up!
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    Originally Posted by 23sdriver View Post

    I'm trying to find out what is more important, Page Rank or a high search volume low competition word.
    It's not an either/or situation. PR is one but a large number of factors that determines the strength of the competition.

    You need to take into consideration things like onpage SEO, domain age, number and quality of links etc.

    Yesterday I spent a few hours doing keyword research. Each hour was more frustrating then the next. I was using Adam Short's "Money Word Matrix" to find profitable keywords. My issue was for every niche I tried, it seemed like I couldn't find any or very little good words. The niches I was searching in were things like "saltwater aquariums," "horse training," "flight simulators," and "koi fish."
    I took a brief look at some of those areas you mentioned, and there's a few keywords worth going after.

    55 gallon fish tank gets 2900 exact GMS and has quite low competition.

    In fact, you could quite easily make a site based on all the common fish tank sizes as they are all low-medium competition.

    20 gallon aquarium 2400 GMS
    10 gallon fish tank 4400 GMS
    75 gallon aquarium 2900 GMS
    55 gallon aquarium 1900 GMS
    100 gallon fish tank 1000 GMS

    Combine all those keywords together and get it ranked, and you've got yourself some pretty good traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Adam's plan sounds like trash. The PR of the top 3 sites has little to nothing to do with the level of competition of a SERP. Just because a page has a high PR does not mean it is targeting that particular keyword.

    And the checking how many results are in the index thing is a bad idea too. Allintitle, allinurl, both are not effective ways to select keywords. Stay away from those foolish methods too.

    You need to analyze the top 3 sites in the SERP. You need to look at the onpage SEO factors and the quality of the backlinks coming into those three URLs. If you can beat them, you are good to go. It doesn't matter if there are a million listings or 1000, if you can beat the top 3, #4 through 1 million doesn't matter.
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  • Profile picture of the author dminorfmajor
    Finding keywords is always going to be hard. When I first joined this site in 2010, I thought for sure, "I've come into IM too late! Everything good is already taken!" That was false and I have bank statements to prove it.
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