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How do you assess the strength of SEO competition?

by TooHigh
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Sun Tzu said, "Tactics are like water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak."

Ranking for keywords is like this: you avoid keywords that are hard to rank for and attack those where the competition is weak.



So how do you measure the strength of the competition? I hear some people saying you should look at the total number of returned results in Google, while other people say to ignore that and just focus on the top ranking site - its PageRank and number of backlinks.

What do you think?
#assess #competition #seo #strength
  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Some people might say that picking fights with weak people does not build your strength and going for low-hanging fruit is not the path to greatness.

    There are many ways to assess competitive strength and they are not the same for every niche.

    Also - different people use the term competition differently.

    From one perspective - competition is anywhere else that the money you want the customer to spend will get spent.

    From another perspective it is the people who are currently dominating the niche you are targeting.

    From another perspective - there are no competitors, only potential partners.

    I adopt a customised swap analysis based on the business I am helping. It's very rarely the same for 2 different companies.
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    • Profile picture of the author TooHigh
      Originally Posted by Andyhenry View Post

      Also - different people use the term competition differently.

      From one perspective - competition is anywhere else that the money you want the customer to spend will get spent.

      From another perspective it is the people who are currently dominating the niche you are targeting.
      By 'SEO competition' I meant something very specific: the other sites that Google ranks for a keyword you wish to rank. I am not talking about general business competition.
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      • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
        Originally Posted by TooHigh View Post

        By 'SEO competition' I meant something very specific: the other sites that Google ranks for a keyword you wish to rank. I am not talking about general business competition.
        Then you probably already know the answer.

        You do a search for the term you are targeting and see what comes up - that is your competition.

        Then you run an SEO analysis tool, software, browser plugin (like seoquake etc.) and see how many links they have, where their links come from, what their PR is and make a decision about whether, knowing what you know about your own abilities - you can beat them.

        The number of links is not as important as where they come from.

        Ignore all low PR links, ignore all low value links (like forum sigs, .edu sites, web 2.0 profiles etc. - they are easy to beat) and see which ones are left that are giving 'weight' to that site.

        If you know you can beat them - go for it.

        Many people get into a niche based on their keyword research alone and have no idea about the dynamics of the niche and then get lots of low value links thinking they will rank well, but if the top sites have links from industry giants because they appear at conferences etc. where big players advertise then without a big budget you can't beat them.
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  • Profile picture of the author jesseholmes
    I created a quick video on how to do SEO competition analysis:

    Competitive Analysis | Windsor Marketing.ca

    Jesse
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