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figuring out competition

by espresso
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have two sites in the same niche
One is about a year old and on wordpress
the other I got in January and is a static HTML

They are in a very competitive niche and I have been driving traffic to them using PPC

However I would like to drive free traffic to them and also try my hand at seo
As I said they are in a competitive niche and when I do a google search for the main key phrase for each site it get

site A says there are 28,000,000 results
site B 3,400,000

However when I go to the end of the search for site A key phrase
It says there are 222 results
site b 290

I know this may sound very old school but what if anything does this tell me about the competition for those keywords and how easy it is to rank

In the case of site A on the first page of the results for its key phrase there is a lot of authority sites but also a generic wordpress blog
A quick check on backlinks should most came from related blog comments easy to copy

Anyhow what are your thoughts on this or the best way to assess competition for key phrases
#competition #figuring
  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Originally Posted by espresso View Post

    site A says there are 28,000,000 results
    site B 3,400,000
    Those numbers have nothing to do with the competition, and as you pointed out they can be rather arbitrary sometimes. Even the Adwords search volume/competition is a better metric, and those don't have much to do with organic search.

    I'd concentrate on your top 10-20 competitors, and how strong they are compared to you. That's where you want to be.
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    • Profile picture of the author SnackMemory
      Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

      Those numbers have nothing to do with the competition, and as you pointed out they can be rather arbitrary sometimes. Even the Adwords search volume/competition is a better metric, and those don't have much to do with organic search.

      I'd concentrate on your top 10-20 competitors, and how strong they are compared to you. That's where you want to be.


      I agree, those search result number rarely did me much good to evaluate competition.


      Worry about the quality, not the quantity. Looking your top competitors and seeing how good there page is, and their link make-up, is far more effective in most cases.
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  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    The number of results is definitely not a great indicator to judge true competition. All that really matters is the strength of the top 10 domains. How authoritative are the domains/pages ranking. Are they optimized for the keyword or are they just placeholder results ect...
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  • Profile picture of the author mkii
    Banned
    Originally Posted by espresso View Post

    I have two sites in the same niche
    One is about a year old and on wordpress
    the other I got in January and is a static HTML

    They are in a very competitive niche and I have been driving traffic to them using PPC

    However I would like to drive free traffic to them and also try my hand at seo
    As I said they are in a competitive niche and when I do a google search for the main key phrase for each site it get

    site A says there are 28,000,000 results
    site B 3,400,000

    However when I go to the end of the search for site A key phrase
    It says there are 222 results
    site b 290

    I know this may sound very old school but what if anything does this tell me about the competition for those keywords and how easy it is to rank

    In the case of site A on the first page of the results for its key phrase there is a lot of authority sites but also a generic wordpress blog
    A quick check on backlinks should most came from related blog comments easy to copy

    Anyhow what are your thoughts on this or the best way to assess competition for key phrases
    Use Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, or SEMRush, to look at the backlinks.

    The actual number of results that appear in Google (not the estimate, you go to the last SERP page and get the real number) shows the number of pages that Google calculates to be related to the search query. This is useful if you know the search query is low competition but that number isn't based upon the sites competing, it's about the granularity of the search query. So for example, if you Google "Apple" then go to the last page, there's a surprisingly low amount of sites in the visible index. Only 154, that doesn't mean that "Apple" is low competition. That means Google has enough strong signals about the query and the other 5 billion webpages that have the word on the page are relatively poor competitors to the competition for the term.

    If you've looked at enough backlink profiles and SERPs, you will eventually have enough experience to just look at a SERP and know if you can rank on it.
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  • Profile picture of the author espresso
    thanks
    So should I just ignore the amount of results google dives back as been iirelevant to seo
    There are two sites in the top 10 which are what I call basic sites that I feel I can reverse engineer and try and compete with it
    Alot of their links are also coming from secondary and obscure websites but topic related pages
    I am trying to build backlinks at the moment to the sites and may create video content as well

    My site currently isnt ranking at all but hopefully I can get it to the top 10
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    • Profile picture of the author mkii
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      Originally Posted by espresso View Post

      thanks
      So should I just ignore the amount of results google dives back as been iirelevant to seo
      There are two sites in the top 10 which are what I call basic sites that I feel I can reverse engineer and try and compete with it
      Alot of their links are also coming from secondary and obscure websites but topic related pages
      I am trying to build backlinks at the moment to the sites and may create video content as well

      My site currently isnt ranking at all but hopefully I can get it to the top 10
      Remember, it's also about the quality of the sites linking and not the amount of links.

      So if a site only had 10 backlinks, that might seem really easy to beat.

      But if you look at the backlinks in theory those could be fbi.gov, whitehouse.gov, nasa.gov, (man the US gov has a really sick PBN btw) and what not. So if you look at the backlink profiles of those sites you will realize that those links are extremely powerful.

      What I consider to be a very low competition keyword: None of the sites in the top 10 of the SERP have more than 100 links, and their best links have less than a 100 links to them.

      A keyword like that could be beaten with a handful of guest posts alone, or a small PBN consisting of relatively weak sites with nothing but directory links.
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    What position do you want to be? 1? Then, the only site that matters is the site currently at #1. Check out their onpage optimization and links. Can you do better? That's all that matter.

    If you were interested in a keyword with lots of searches and #4 would be a good enough position. You'd be interested only in the page that's currently at #4.

    It never matters how many people compete, only how strong the one you want to take down is.

    Silly but useful analogy: who would you rather fight:
    a. 24,156 1-year old boys
    b. 1 man, but his name is Bruce Lee?

    By the logic of the people who tell you to ask how many sites are competing, you should be going for Bruce Lee no matter who you are. Go figure!
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  • Profile picture of the author nwik
    You cannot base the success of your site based solely on the number of results.

    Just focus on the top 10 domains.

    And don't forget to create a good quality content for your site. Avoid posting unnecessary links.
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