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Analyzing Google 1st Page Competition

by MoneySavingLisa
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
So, I've been improving in learning about keyword research and SEO in general. But the biggest area I get stuck in and needs some improvement in is analyzing the first page of Google to see if I can beat a keyword.

I have an assortment of free tools (SEO spyglass, SEO Quake, etc) but I'm not exactly sure what is the best route to take when it comes to competition analysis for the first page of Google. I want to make sure I don't make a dumb mistake and then I'm not able to rank a keyword.

What 's the best way to go about this with free tools? And, is it just about the number of back links I'm trying to beat? I understand that quality back links count, but how do I then determine that a website in a #1 position receiving say 100 links is worth pursuing? Granted 100 isn't a lot but it's just an example.

Any advice would be appreciated.
#1st #analyzing #competition #google #page
  • Profile picture of the author mc9320
    I use the free version of Traffic Travis as it can list the top 10 or 20 sites for a particular keyword. It can tell you how good the SEO is for each site and the number of backlinks to the page, as well as the site.
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    • Profile picture of the author MoneySavingLisa
      Originally Posted by mc9320 View Post

      I use the free version of Traffic Travis as it can list the top 10 or 20 sites for a particular keyword. It can tell you how good the SEO is for each site and the number of backlinks to the page, as well as the site.
      I have that as well. Where would I do that in Traffic Travis?
      Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author SEOCreative
    Banned
    Grab market samurai
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    • Profile picture of the author MoneySavingLisa
      Originally Posted by SEOCreative View Post

      Grab market samurai
      I'm looking for free resources right now. I can't afford that, but I do have the free trial. The down side is since the update with Google a few weeks ago they are no longer as accurate.
      Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Don't wrap your brain up too tight with SEO. There are other ways to reach good seo traffic without doing "direct" SEO. Plus, there are a ton of other internet marketing strategies out there that you can use to market your business successfully. It's not hard.
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    ==>> Free book reveals make money with affiliate marketing
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  • Profile picture of the author marimuda
    Greetings,
    Nice to see that you are interested in getting traffic into your website.
    But when you say "can't afford" market samurai, Well let me get things straight.
    SEO is not a asset, it is 3rd party traffic which you can't control, which means that you shouldn't use it as your main traffic source. But it is good as extra traffic.
    It takes a lot of time and effort to get highly ranked on any relative decent keywords.
    Don't get to tight up with optimizing your content to get liked in the algorithms, because they change up to 400 times a year & if your content is bad, by tweaking to get liked by Google, could either get you penalized or affected when they change their algorithm. Which means all your hard work is done for almost nothing and you won't be in the first pages anymore. I really suggest you look at alternative traffic sources first, to build up your email list, which is a real asset you control (you own your email list, no one can take it from you).
    Otherwise, I recommend to mix up compete.com/ | alexa.com | Market Samurai .

    But remember evaluating the competition is much more than just checking their back-links.
    register to their email lists as well to figure out how frequently they email their list is one example of many needed to get a clear picture of the competition.

    Hope this helps you a little bit, could almost write a whole book on competition analyzing so better stopping myself before I start brain storming the whole night in this message
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
      Originally Posted by marimuda View Post

      Greetings,
      Nice to see that you are interested in getting traffic into your website.
      But when you say "can't afford" market samurai, Well let me get things straight.
      SEO is not a asset, it is 3rd party traffic which you can't control, which means that you shouldn't use it as your main traffic source. But it is good as extra traffic.
      It takes a lot of time and effort to get highly ranked on any relative decent keywords.
      Don't get to tight up with optimizing your content to get liked in the algorithms, because they change up to 400 times a year & if your content is bad, by tweaking to get liked by Google, could either get you penalized or affected when they change their algorithm. Which means all your hard work is done for almost nothing and you won't be in the first pages anymore. I really suggest you look at alternative traffic sources first, to build up your email list, which is a real asset you control (you own your email list, no one can take it from you).
      Otherwise, I recommend to mix up compete.com/ | alexa.com | Market Samurai .

      But remember evaluating the competition is much more than just checking their back-links.
      register to their email lists as well to figure out how frequently they email their list is one example of many needed to get a clear picture of the competition.

      Hope this helps you a little bit, could almost write a whole book on competition analyzing so better stopping myself before I start brain storming the whole night in this message

      Dude, you have NOOOO Idea of what you're talking about.

      - you do have control over your own seo via your own backlinking strategies.
      - true that google could change their algorithm but backling will not be going anywhere anytime soon.
      - competition analysis is not that difficult as you make it sound. It's actually really quite simple.

      There are really only 3 things that you have to worry about when optimizing for the first page of google:

      1- Keyword research - to determine your search demand.

      2- Commerciality of the keyword to ensure that it's a buyers keyword phrase.

      3- how strong the top ten competing pages are in google. Your competition and only REAL competition is the first ten on the first page of the google serp. If you can beat them, then you can win. If you can't beat them, then don't bother to optimize.

      I can clearly tell by your comment that you definitely aren't making any money with your negativity of making things so much harder than what they really are in winning.
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      • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
        If you want a free tool, check the one in my signature. You can quickly check up to 20 keywords at a time. You can easily go back and forth between keywords to check the top 10 for each keyword, without having to do the lookup and parsing again. We also check the title and description for each top 10 link and your domain and up to three competitors for your keyword so you can get a quick glimpse of some important on-page SEO.

        While our tool isn't as in-depth as some commercial tools out there, it is accurate, easy and convenient to use, and it's FREE!
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        Check top 300 Google SERP results free. WhatsMySERP.com tracks and graphs changes for multiple domains/keywords/regions. Also includes advanced keyword density tool.

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        • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
          Originally Posted by aygabtu View Post

          If you want a free tool, check the one in my signature. You can quickly check up to 20 keywords at a time. You can easily go back and forth between keywords to check the top 10 for each keyword, without having to do the lookup and parsing again. We also check the title and description for each top 10 link and your domain and up to three competitors for your keyword so you can get a quick glimpse of some important on-page SEO.

          While our tool isn't as in-depth as some commercial tools out there, it is accurate, easy and convenient to use, and it's FREE!

          Actually what we need is a tool that you can dump or enter a list of keywords into and have it analyze the top ten sites in the serps without having to go in and do it manually everytime. It will display the columns & rows as usual except it will have a scroll bar so that you can keep scrolling down and checking each top ten. Then based off of the results, the tool will analyze for you and make the final decision for you based off of the algorithm of site age, PR, Backlinks, and the main aspects that we need to analyze. If it's worth going after, and each column or row looks good (kinda like in Market Samurai when there's a bunch of green) then you will see some sort of green light saying to "go for it!"... This would be great for both noobs and vets! Damn, I shoulda kept this idea private!
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  • Profile picture of the author Hossain
    Originally Posted by MoneySavingLisa View Post


    What 's the best way to go about this with free tools? And, is it just about the number of back links I'm trying to beat? I understand that quality back links count, but how do I then determine that a website in a #1 position receiving say 100 links is worth pursuing? Granted 100 isn't a lot but it's just an example.

    Any advice would be appreciated.
    First of all check domain authority. Pages with small amount of backlinks can be hard to outrank for only high trust factors that we call authority. Consider the example of wikipedia pages. Sometimes some wiki pages are very tough to outrank even if there are very small amount of backlinks feeding the site. For the term SEO an wikipedia page is on #1 position. Do you think SEO companies didn't try to outrank the page?

    To check competition I should say you don't need to subscribe any expensive service at all. If you are not using SEO Moz authority checker plugin then you surely missing a free but very useful tool. So along with SEO spyglass you should use this small beautiful adon.

    Well the steps you can follow..

    0- Check domain age and relevancy. If the keyword is something like "texas Rangers" and you see their official webpage is on spot one then surely it would be nearly impossible to get #1 rank for that terms. Consider this example for checking webpages are on first page for your keywords.

    1- See how strong onpage optimization they have.

    2- Check how many quality backlinks are pointing towards the site. How many of them are using the keyword/keywords you are targeting. That can be checked by SEO spyglass easily. Also run do/nofollow checker to check how many of these backlinks are nofollow. The more nofollow backlinks the good you should feel. Use google operators, seo spyglass, scrapebox etc. to check analyze backlinks.

    3- Now have a look on all collected parameters after the research. If you see first 3 spots are occupied by 3 authority sites you had better go away and think about another keyword. Probably a long tail keyword which has been less targeted by authority sites would be good for your SEO endeavour.
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  • Profile picture of the author C Rebecca
    Indeed, competition analysis is a daunting task...
    I have been using 'Keyword Country' for this task, it’s quite helpful in on page comparison of competitors' and helps me tracing their backlink traces.
    You may try with its free version.
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    FREE 30 minutes of Ecommerce Marketing consultation. Consulted clients like Overstock.com, About.com, Lowe's and more...
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  • Profile picture of the author dikoro
    Many cool answers already but let me sum up what i always do. If I find any sites on first page of Google to have some weaknesses, and I'm sure i can make it better, for example, meta tags, on-page seo blah blah blah, or exact domain name that nobody use, then I have a winnable keyword. Just don't rush things, it will only make it harder. And the following tools can help you find out your true seo competitors who are on the Google's 1st page:

    1. Niche Market Finder (Free from SEODEVGROUP.COM - number of google regions are limited)
    2. Traffic Travis - quite good just to get the overall idea who your top 10 competitors are
    3. Market Samurai > SEO Competitor - very detailed competitor data
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