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What is the best competition research tool?

by jayaron
14 replies
A couple of questions on research tools for you experienced warriors.

From what i can gather most of the i.m community agree that finding the right niche with low competition, hungry buyers and a high search volume keyword is the key formula to blogging riches or with adsence sites desperate information hunters can replace hungry buyers to get those vital clicks. Last but not least on and of page S.E.O. especially backlinks and lots of traffic.
Q.1 Have i got this right, and have i left anything out of the list?

Q.2 Would you say low or weak competition would come top of that list.

Q3.What competition tools/sites do you guys think are essential and if you use or had to use just one which would it be?

I have played with spyfu, market samurai, firefox seo tools and have purchased SERPattacks which has a host of research tools and seems a good one stop shop for saving lots of time, however Ive not put the research into practice yet so not sure if the results will add up.

Q4. Also can anyone be sure the tools you are using are giving accurate results?
#competition #research #tool
  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Originally Posted by jayaron View Post

    A couple of questions on research tools for you experienced warriors.

    From what i can gather most of the i.m community agree that finding the right niche with low competition, hungry buyers and a high search volume keyword is the key formula to blogging riches or with adsence sites desperate information hunters can replace hungry buyers to get those vital clicks.
    right niche - I tend to focus on the "right product" or "marketplace" and not the niche so much. The word niche has been flogged to death and I think a lot of people have lost sense of what it really means.

    low competition - low competition could mean one of two things...

    1. the marketplace stinks
    2. its an untapped goldmine.

    You will only really be able to tell the difference accurately with time and experience

    hungry buyers - sure, this definitely helps, but they have to be hungry buyers in the right marketplace. Theres plenty of people who are desperate to know how to bake cupcakes for their kids birthday party - but theres no money in it.

    high search volume - doesnt matter. You can be selling a $1,000 product and have only 200 ESPM and still make good money.

    desperate information hunters - stay away, they're typically not buyers

    Originally Posted by jayaron View Post

    Q.1 have i left anything out of the list?
    Probably.

    Originally Posted by jayaron View Post

    Q.2 Would you say low or weak competition would come top of that list.
    No.

    Originally Posted by jayaron View Post

    Q3.What competition tools/sites do you guys think are essential and if you use or had to use just one which would it be?
    Market Samurai. Thats all you need.

    Originally Posted by jayaron View Post

    Q4. Also can anyone be sure the tools you are using are giving accurate results?
    None of them are accurate. Use them as a general guide only.
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  • Profile picture of the author Adnimated
    I guess it completely depends on your goals. I LOVE high competition, hard to dominate type of markets like weightloss and self improvement.

    You can still find smaller niches that are relatively easy to dominate. But my main focus is building a list anyway.

    If your main focus is building adsense or affiliate blogs, you definitely need to go for lower competition. But again, so much depends on your experience.

    I, for instance, simply build authority sites around a certain subject. I don't really care for competition. When I start, I think:

    What would I want to know?

    I write all that down. Add some pieces together. And I'll just start writing a ****load of content. And dripfeed it on my blog. And then write some more the moment it nearly added all the content.

    About tools:

    Market Samurai always has been my favorite. Al though I had a lot of issues with that lately. Could be me though. But it stopped me from using it as much as I used to.

    Traffic Travis is pretty neat, too.

    Besides that:

    The grey mass between your ears. And understanding your market by browsing around on forums.

    NOTHING beats that imo.
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  • Profile picture of the author Maddaloni
    i like semrush
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  • Profile picture of the author FraserC
    The more I do this, the more I've discovered that there's no real way to predict how well a keyword is going to do before you get started. Lots of people say they know, but they really don't. And the problem with a lot of those tools is that you throw out perfectly good keywords because some algorithm predicted it wasn't good. That also crowds people into niches and specific keywords.

    I think you just need to target as many of the keywords in your niche as you can. Once you start to get real traffic, you'll be amazed the variety of search terms people are using to find your site.

    Once you've gathered some real data, you can start to focus your work, to do more of the stuff that's working for you, and less of the stuff that isn't.
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    • Profile picture of the author jayaron
      Originally Posted by FraserC View Post

      The more I do this, the more I've discovered that there's no real way to predict how well a keyword is going to do before you get started. Lots of people say they know, but they really don't. And the problem with a lot of those tools is that you throw out perfectly good keywords because some algorithm predicted it wasn't good. That also crowds people into niches and specific keywords.

      I think you just need to target as many of the keywords in your niche as you can. Once you start to get real traffic, you'll be amazed the variety of search terms people are using to find your site.

      Once you've gathered some real data, you can start to focus your work, to do more of the stuff that's working for you, and less of the stuff that isn't.

      In some ways thats kind of encouraging, i hate the time consuming and boring process of keyword research, especially when all your efforts result in little to no income, i have heared of people getting good results from unexpected keywords and very poor results from keywords they were certain would generate a good income.
      Mabey one day i will stumble upon a little goldmine of a keyword.
      Ether way i still believe analyzing the competition can save days/weeks of wasted time.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tom Ryan
        I usually analyze my competition by looking at the first page of google for my keywords, more specifically the first three positions. I like to look at things like age, PR, number of backlinks, type of backlinks, how optimized they are for the keyword, and how good their content is. From there I can decide if I can take a top position.

        As far as using a tool for competition analysis, I use the free version of Traffic Travis. It helps me with some of what I mentioned above. But even though I use a tool sometimes, I still dig into the top sites to get a better picture.
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  • Profile picture of the author IamTJM
    I like to keep it simple and use the Google keyword research tool to find monthly searches and then use Traffic Travis to analyze competition.
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  • Profile picture of the author FraserC
    Everyone wants a system to find the low competition/high paying keywords, but I think it's like the stock market. Everyone thinks they can accurately pick stocks, but the reality is that monkeys throwing darts at a dartboard are just as accurate as experienced stock pickers.

    The wise SEO learns that it's a poor use of time to predict which keywords are going to pop, and which ones aren't. Just target them all.

    Of course, we did end up building a competition column into Keyword Strategy. We're just using [exact match] competition in the search results. And sometimes it does give you some surprising hits. I've discovered high traffic keywords with competition of less than 10 competitors, but not much. And I think it's a trap...
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  • Profile picture of the author kolbywhite28
    I have found Traffic Travis to be quite good. Also, experience counts the most
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  • Profile picture of the author kashem
    Presently using SEMRush . I have done some analysis before making decision . It seemed to me the best of all
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    Niche Masterly - Get Revenue Generating Keywords For Your Niche Site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nscnikhil
    Google keyword is the best.i use it very often
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  • Profile picture of the author Global Warrior
    Hi

    Getting people to your site is one thing, but if you have done all the hard work to get them to your site and then you dont give them the answer they are seeking, youre not going to convert them so its vitally important that you get their attention with great content too.

    But tracking your keywords is vital if you're playing the PPC game. This will show you which are the best keywords you have in your arsenal.

    As well as the tools mentioned above there's Cherry Picker as well, which, among other things will help you find sites to try and get backlinks from.

    Good Luck

    GW
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    • Profile picture of the author RobertDArcy
      Perhaps a bit off topic as it's not so much about competition research tool but setting up conversion goals in google analytics and linking it to your AdWords account so you can identify the converting keywords and phrases. The more proven results you have the less 'speculative' research you need to undertake.
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  • Profile picture of the author adi12
    seo spy glass is the best
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