When judging competiton: Page Rank? Back Links? Etc?

I look at the top 10 sites.

i never look at PR.

backlinks is important. should see which keywords they are targeting, where they are getting links from etc.

domain age is important, but u cant do anything about it.

Wolfman, what specifically do you look at?

I look at a lot of things.

1) PR - In my experience PR is gained in one of two ways. The most obvious is by having back links from high PR sites which usually takes time or $$. On the other hand if the top 10 sites mostly have PR 0 then that tells me they do not have many important back links. The second way is to have a lot of content. I have a site with PR 3 that does not have any back links. It gained it's PR strictly from content.

2) I look at the age of the sites. If there are a lot of sites that are less than a year old then it tells me the keyword is fairly easy to rank for.

3) I look at the on page SEO. If very few of the sites have on page SEO then it tells me they are not trying to rank for that keyword.

4) Since I build Amazon Review sites I only look at the number of exact USA monthly searches. The number I am looking for will depend on what i need the keyword for. If it is for a product review then it will depend on the price of the product. If the prices high than I feel I need fewer searches than I would for low-price product. If the keyword is for supporting article then I do not worry about the number searches at all.

5)Keyword Density – I do not worry about this as long as the keyword appears a couple of times and the content reads naturally.