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Does It Really Matter How Much Competition There Is...

by TTran
11 replies
...if the sites ranked on the first page are sites like amazon, wikipedia, and youtube?

I'm just wondering. Because there is a keyword phrase I'm planning to go after has 1.1 million competition in quotes

It shocked me and I'm not sure if I should go after it. There are 5 PR0 pages in the top 10.

Should I still go for it?

Thanks,
Thao Tran
#competition #matter
  • Profile picture of the author Darth Executor
    Depends. The more competition, the harder you'll have to work. But, the rewards will usually match your efforts as well. It's up to you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lisa Gergets
    You should ABSOLUTELY go for it. The number of competing sites is simply a mark of popularity...you obviously have found a profitable niche! And being that you have found a phrase that has little competition, I'd say yes, go for it.

    What kind of monetization are you doing? And the other five sites on the first page - what are the PR's of those? How many backlinks does each site on the first page have?
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    • Profile picture of the author RMC
      Competing pages can be an indicator of popularity, and in a roundabout way when there's a popular topic, there's competition....but doesn't mean it's impossible or the end all be all factor, or that you can't rank.

      I've got a site on page two for a phrase with 12.9M competing.

      I've got another on page 1 spot #3 for an 8M competing page keyword. #1 spot for 2M

      Somebody has to be on page one, it might as well be you. If you don't make it at least you learn something and established a foothold in the market for potential down the road.

      Besides, if you go for the big keywords you'll still pull down a lot of long tail traffic even if you're not on page one. Use analytics and see what niche or long tail visits you're getting and target those prospects better.

      My number one factor for a niche is traffic, then i look at competing pages, and page one sites to see if it's an active niche with ads/products.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Dotcom Hippie
    No, it doesn't matter much at all. What matters is what's happening on the first page. It's the STRENGTH of the competition that's going to give you trouble, not the amount. Google RANKS pages, it's not an odds machine. If it was, then you'd be out of luck anyway. Drop below top five and your traffic is fraction of what it is when you're number one.

    The reason why stuff like Keyword Effectiveness Index is not used by people who do a lot of niche marketing themselves is because of the simple fact you quickly learn that it matters very little whether you have fifty competitors or fifty million if everyone on the front page is a ten year old optimized page rank 6 with a ton of really evil backlinks for the keyword you're targeting. Going by the number of competitors is simply an irrational way of trying to assess whether or not you're going to rank well for that term.

    Why do people keep arguing that it makes sense? It's simple. They do it because they heard someone else say it and because 'everyone' has been doing it. It just so happens that most of the advice given on making money on the internets is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash of something that might not even have been all the smart the first time someone came up with it. You better get used to it.

    Statistically, can the numbers of competitors give you an idea of how strong the competition is? Perhaps, but why not just take a look at it directly? After all, it's on the front page of Google.

    I mostly look at the top five results. If I think I can beat those, then I give it a shot. Knowing what the top five (or even top ten) look like I couldn't care less how many others there are out there. And I do ok.

    And seriously: This is VERY simple. The fact that people fail to get it baffles my mind.
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  • Profile picture of the author SeanSupplee
    It matters in some cases. If your going for a keyword and you see a .gov site or Wikipedia or other high end sites in the top 10 with all honesty you will never out beat those websites to get ranked above them for that keyword.
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    • Profile picture of the author Lisa Gergets
      Originally Posted by SeanSupplee View Post

      It matters in some cases. If your going for a keyword and you see a .gov site or Wikipedia or other high end sites in the top 10 with all honesty you will never out beat those websites to get ranked above them for that keyword.
      But even though you may not rank above them, you can rank among them...which can still be valuable.
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  • Profile picture of the author TTran
    Thanks for the great input guys. I've always had a feeling that it was only the strength of the competition that mattered. But I've always been told that anything over 500,000 competition is "impossible."

    Anyways, there is a PR5 page at rank 1 and a PR4 wikipedia page at rank 2 and a PR4 Amazon page at rank 3.

    I'm pretty sure I can get at least rank 4, but I'm not sure if I can go any further.

    I've heard that it isn't too hard to beat an Amazon page. Have any of you had success outranking Amazon before?
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    • Profile picture of the author rapidscc
      Yeah I agree with sean. Wikipedia is one authority site, so is Amazon and Youtube.

      Originally Posted by SeanSupplee View Post

      It matters in some cases. If your going for a keyword and you see a .gov site or Wikipedia or other high end sites in the top 10 with all honesty you will never out beat those websites to get ranked above them for that keyword.
      Yups you can rank among them but if you fall below the top three you'll only get a very small portion of the traffic.

      Originally Posted by Lisa Gergets View Post

      But even though you may not rank above them, you can rank among them...which can still be valuable.
      Pagerank by the way doesn't matter in search results according to google. Here's the quote from wikipedia.

      On October 14, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true." [26] PageRank was still displayed on the Google Toolbar web appliance two days after Moskwa's confirmation.
      This is probably the reason why you're seeing 5 pagerank 0 sites up there.

      You said there are 1.1 million "exact" competition, that is already a factor to consider, try checking out the "allintitle:keyword" and "allinurl:keyword" to give you other points to consider.

      Why you should consider this when ranking? Simple, it gives you an estimate of how many people are competing for that phrase, and most probably they are also backlinking the heck out of those sites, like what you're planning to do with yours.

      So after that, check the backlinks of each of the top 10 competing pages.

      I myself would only check the backlinks of the exact competition to give me an estimate of how competitive the owners of those competing pages are and how strong the pages are in terms of backlinks. If the "exact" competing pages have thousands of backlinks then I say it's a waste of time.

      Last thing, the secret in ranking is not just doing it by a single entry. Work hard on putting several sites up there. I have one keyword phrase where I have the first, second, third and fourth position. I did it by building properties on several popular web 2.0 properties and backlinking the heck out of those properties.

      It didn't happen overnight in fact it took me three months before all of them started showing up in the first page.

      All the best,

      Omar
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  • Profile picture of the author TTran
    Thanks for the insight, I'll be checking all of that out.

    The first page results for this keyword phrase seems to consist of all authority sites of some sort with very little backlinks to the actual page listed. Only one site is actually dedicated to that keyword phrase, and that is the website belonging to the actual product that I plan to promote.

    Do you guys think it is possible to outrank these authority sites that are not optimized for this keyword phrase?
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  • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
    I used to pay attention to the competition way back when, then I decided I no longer cared and I was going to go after anything as long as it was not super broad. I have been more successful not spending time worrying about the competition and just getting things done and out there.

    Benjamin
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  • Profile picture of the author petehols
    Competition matters but only to a degree. If it has millions of competing pages it doesn't mean that you can't get to page 1. If those competing pages is from ezine, prlog, yahoo answers sites like that then you can definately go for it. Competition is only an indicator of how many people are trying to list for that phrase it is not the be all and end all.

    Pete
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