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How Much Is Too Much Competition?

by BlueBetty
10 replies
When researching keywords for competition on Google how many resulting pages is too much to realistically get on the first page?

Also what is the difference between broad and exact on match type on google's keyword tool?
#competition
  • Profile picture of the author Preben Frenning
    If you use the command "allintitle:keyword" in google, you can get a good indication of who have optimized for that keyword.

    How much competition is too much, is totally up to yourself, your ability to build good backlinks, doing on-page SEO etc.
    However, usually more competition means more profits in that niche.
    There are very few untouched niches these days, so finding a profitable one and working your way over the competition might be the most profitable.

    You should start out with a few keywords that aren't that competitive, and find out if you are able to dominate them. If not, you will need to learn more about SEO.
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    • Profile picture of the author BlueBetty
      Hi

      I've used the intitle tag a few times when looking up keywords but I was wondering more about when you put your keyword in quotes, "keyword", and say for example 50,000 resulting pages come up is that too much to try and get listed on the first page?
      What is most people's cut-off point?
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  • Profile picture of the author SiteLabs
    Its not always about how many results there are in google for a specific term, but more about how strong the SEO is for those pages that are in the top few results.

    How many links do the top palces have, have they anchored the keywords to the page, what is the PR of the pages they have anchored links from etc etc.

    If the competion has masses of links correctly anchored, from high PR pages, then my advice would be stay away and pick a more specific buying keyword term that hasnt been anchored by the competition to give yourself a much higher chance of hitting the number #1 spot.

    Believe me there is a world of difference between being on the front page and being number #1.
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    • Profile picture of the author BlueBetty
      Originally Posted by SiteLabs View Post

      Its not always about how many results there are in google for a specific term, but more about how strong the SEO is for those pages that are in the top few results.

      How many links do the top palces have, have they anchored the keywords to the page, what is the PR of the pages they have anchored links from etc etc.

      If the competion has masses of links correctly anchored, from high PR pages, then my advice would be stay away and pick a more specific buying keyword term that hasnt been anchored by the competition to give yourself a much higher chance of hitting the number #1 spot.

      Believe me there is a world of difference between being on the front page and being number #1.
      So it's not so much about how many competing pages there are it's more about how many high PR backlinks the top places have.
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      • Profile picture of the author SiteLabs
        Originally Posted by BlueBetty View Post

        So it's not so much about how many competing pages there are it's more about how many high PR backlinks the top places have.

        More specifically, how many high PR backlinks using the exact keyowrd term you are going after as the anchor text.
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  • Profile picture of the author Preben Frenning
    Using quotes and getting 50,000 results doesn't have anything to do with it really. It just means that they have the exact phrase somewhere on their site.
    Even if they have massive PR, and many good inlinks, you can still beat them if you have it in your title, and they don't.

    The allintitle command works way better in my opinion. If you check their strength after an allintitle search ,that gives the best indication.
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    • Profile picture of the author BlueBetty
      I've just tried intitle"Keyword phrase" on google and it had 6,450 results. The sites at number 1 and 2 according to yahoo site explorer has no links, and the 3rd placed site has 30 links.

      There is no ezine articles, goarticles, squidoo etc. on the page at all. Do I need to check anything else to see if this is worth my time?
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  • Profile picture of the author Preben Frenning
    Use "allintitle" command. I prefer that over intitle.

    If there are no web 2.0 properties whatsoever, there can be 2 reasons:
    1. No other marketers have found that keyword yet, and you can be really lucky.
    2. The sites showing up is way more powerful than the web 2.0 sites, and you will have a very hard time to rank well for that keyword.

    So check out the other pages in Google as well. If still no results from web 2.0 sites, I would have checked a few of the sites showing up that's below spot 5 to see if this might be an occurrence of number 1. If it is, praise god, and enjoy the traffic =)
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    • Profile picture of the author BlueBetty
      On page 1 there is an ehow article in 7th place and on page 2 there is an ezine article and an articlebase article. None of them have many backlinks either.

      They don't seem seo (if that's the right term) either, the 1 article has the keyword phrase in it 20 times.
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    • Profile picture of the author hhayman
      I also use "allintitle" to get a feel for competition, but for me the best way to check out the competition is by using Traffic Travis's SEO Analysis tool. Shows you the top 20 sites, their backlinks, if the keyword is in their title, h1 tag, etc.

      Then you just need to decide if you can get more backlinks, or beat them with onpage optimization.
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