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Is this a necessary part of analyzing competition?

by karmadog
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
All tutorials I've seen tell you to check the top 10 results' page authority and domain authority and backlinks etc, but almost none of them mention checking the number of results for the search terms. Like for instance typing in "google" in quotes in google shows "About 11,170,000,000 results"

So is this something that you need to look at? If it is, how do you do it, with quotes, or without quotes?
#analyzing #competition #part
  • Profile picture of the author zebek
    There is no need to check the number of results. Thats why
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelkoehler92
    I see many researchers looking for the total number of results but I don't find it that much useful.
    But if you are going to do that do that best would be to go with quotes.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by karmadog View Post

    All tutorials I've seen tell you to check the top 10 results' page authority and domain authority and backlinks etc, but almost none of them mention checking the number of results for the search terms. Like for instance typing in "google" in quotes in google shows "About 11,170,000,000 results"

    So is this something that you need to look at? If it is, how do you do it, with quotes, or without quotes?
    The number of results doesn't matter for SEO.

    Matter of fact If you click through to the last page on the search results odds are the longer the keyword the less likely you'll actually end up with 100 search result pages.

    Example, search this keyword (how to rebuild car engine), Google says there's 17,500,000 results but If you keep clicking through the search results pages there's only 37 Google pages, roughly 370 indexed pages.

    Your real competition is the exact search results position you want to rank for, nothing else matters. If you want position #1, that's the only competition that matters, everything else is irrelevant.
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    I try to keep my mouth shut when this topic comes up... I just don't understand how you cant look at that number. As an example.. you can take a root word.. say "WordPress" comes in with 1.7 billion results. then you can start niching this to say "WordPress Theme" that comes in at right around 48 million. then you can go deep niche with something like "wordPress solostream theme" with 174k results.

    In this instance you can drop even deeper and get to a specific theme niche level with something like "WordPress solostream wp-blossom theme" and get the results down to not quite 1500. Again only looking at this data.. I can safely say I could get 2 listings on page 1 here. A quick CSS text based tutorial on a website, and then a YT video like how to install Solostreams wp-blossom WordPress theme. With a competing page count so low.. probably wouldn't even need any back linking.

    Repeat the process over a few different themes like wp-inspire and wp-business with some solid onpage seo and you can then go after wordpress solostream theme with little to no offpage effort.

    Things start to change when the page count hits about 1,000,000. This is when you start to see the possibility of bigger players coming into a niche. Even still at this level decent ranking can be had with very little effort. You get into the 5 million mark, and this is the level you need to start looking at what others are doing.

    What I would label a low comp term would be any term that returns 1 million results or less. A moderate is 5 million to 1 million and high is 5 million or more. I very rarely run into any issues with a low comp term - that I would need to go back in and look at the competitions pages.

    My overall strategy is this... I look for the deepest reach I can get to.. in this case it is specific theme level and the example wp-blossom is a dead gimme... Repeat this a number of times and get good solid top 5 to top 3 listings, then you go after the next tier up the page comp latter. I believe this builds DA.. I don't have pages that simply don't stand a chance at getting rank ( dropping DA ) mixed with some that are page 3 and 4 ranks, and maybe getting a single page onto page 1. ALL the pages I initially create I want to have on page 1. Its at this point you go up a tier.

    In this example the next or 3rd jump would be to list for "WordPress Theme" and the reality is I wouldn't really want to be there. with 48 million competing pages I know I would have to have a pretty aggressive backlink strategy. Some may say, but there is a lot of traffic there... the reality is it would be the wrong type of traffic.. sure I might get some conversions but overall my conversion rate at the lower levels will be much higher than at the top level.

    I use competing page number to determine the overall likely hood of getting ranked, without all the time of the technical research. I would say if you are looking at terms in the 1 million plus category, you need to find that deeper seed of terms and start there.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by savidge4 View Post

      I try to keep my mouth shut when this topic comes up... I just don't understand how you cant look at that number. As an example.. you can take a root word.. say "WordPress" comes in with 1.7 billion results. then you can start niching this to say "WordPress Theme" that comes in at right around 48 million. then you can go deep niche with something like "wordPress solostream theme" with 174k results.

      In this instance you can drop even deeper and get to a specific theme niche level with something like "WordPress solostream wp-blossom theme" and get the results down to not quite 1500. Again only looking at this data.. I can safely say I could get 2 listings on page 1 here. A quick CSS text based tutorial on a website, and then a YT video like how to install Solostreams wp-blossom WordPress theme. With a competing page count so low.. probably wouldn't even need any back linking.

      Repeat the process over a few different themes like wp-inspire and wp-business with some solid onpage seo and you can then go after wordpress solostream theme with little to no offpage effort.

      Things start to change when the page count hits about 1,000,000. This is when you start to see the possibility of bigger players coming into a niche. Even still at this level decent ranking can be had with very little effort. You get into the 5 million mark, and this is the level you need to start looking at what others are doing.

      What I would label a low comp term would be any term that returns 1 million results or less. A moderate is 5 million to 1 million and high is 5 million or more. I very rarely run into any issues with a low comp term - that I would need to go back in and look at the competitions pages.

      My overall strategy is this... I look for the deepest reach I can get to.. in this case it is specific theme level and the example wp-blossom is a dead gimme... Repeat this a number of times and get good solid top 5 to top 3 listings, then you go after the next tier up the page comp latter. I believe this builds DA.. I don't have pages that simply don't stand a chance at getting rank ( dropping DA ) mixed with some that are page 3 and 4 ranks, and maybe getting a single page onto page 1. ALL the pages I initially create I want to have on page 1. Its at this point you go up a tier.

      In this example the next or 3rd jump would be to list for "WordPress Theme" and the reality is I wouldn't really want to be there. with 48 million competing pages I know I would have to have a pretty aggressive backlink strategy. Some may say, but there is a lot of traffic there... the reality is it would be the wrong type of traffic.. sure I might get some conversions but overall my conversion rate at the lower levels will be much higher than at the top level.

      I use competing page number to determine the overall likely hood of getting ranked, without all the time of the technical research. I would say if you are looking at terms in the 1 million plus category, you need to find that deeper seed of terms and start there.

      It doesn't matter if the search result has 1 billion results or 100,000 results if you can't beat #3.

      The number of search results tells you nothing about how tough the competition is on page 1 and that is all that matters. Site #39,067 doesn't mean squat.
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      • Profile picture of the author savidge4
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        It doesn't matter if the search result has 1 billion results or 100,000 results if you can't beat #3.

        The number of search results tells you nothing about how tough the competition is on page 1 and that is all that matters. Site #39,067 doesn't mean squat.
        The number of results absolutely tells you the more than probable amount of competition. If the term has 1500 competing pages, chances are better than likely that the term will be low comp, and more than likely you will be able to get ranked well with onpage only. As the number of competing pages increases, the likelihood of greater effort to rank increases.

        Think for a moment.. there are 1500 pages in total that rank for a keyword term. How many of those actually have any amount of links to them? Lets take the example above... all the pages that will be listed here are the parent company and then affiliates. pretty straight forward and direct.

        What happens when you inject non affiliate content? IE a YT video and a web page with useful well written content? In this case.. all the math and stats you are talking about can literally fall to the way side. No, your probably not going to beat out the top position or 2 held by the parent company, but by throwing non affiliate related material into the mix you will rank pages.

        Lets look at "WordPress Mystile theme" for a moment shall we? 34,000 total pages, #3 #4 and #10, I can personally account for. #10 is a google plus share for the love of pete ( AND it was shared privately ) if that's ranking that tells you exactly how much competition there is. ( also a good example of Social being good for SEO )

        Lets look at say "virtue theme fixed top navigation" with 4 million related pages. whats #1? I haven't checked lately ( I sold out my position in that venture ) but there was not a single back link aimed at that video. This one actually defies my logic being at 1 to 5 million you probably need to start back linking. ( there wasn't 4 million back almost 3 years ago when that was posted. Granted my text pages that used to be on page 1 have fallen off ( page 2 now - due to in activity I am sure ) these could easily be brought up with some new related content and some onpage linking. AND I can say that without even looking at what the other pages are doing.

        The reality is this... all the programs and apps and whatever else you may use to figure out what you think you need to rank a page is not going to tell you the whole story. There is more to SEO than matching link for link. There are simply hundreds of other variables at play.

        I will be very straight forward with how I work.. pages with less than 1 million in comp pages, I roll in with my best onpage strategy, and I see where that gets me.. before I even start looking at what the competitors are doing. Onpage SEO has more strength than most give it credit for.

        And here is the thing... those that go in and analyze this and that and the other.. its like 90% are trying to find a reason why NOT to get in there. The Example I gave above ( wp-blossom theme ) I can tell you without question there is some stiff competition there.

        How do I know? ( even though I say I don't need to run any type of analysis ) because I started at the root and narrowed my way down, I saw at the 43 million mark Solo Stream had a top 10 listing.. you don't get there unless your juiced, it would then stand to reason that the listings in the 1500 competing pages by solostream will also be juiced. The simple fact there is not a YT video present.. tells me there is room to bump listings with little to no offpage effort. Its the nature of the niche - I obviously have some experience in this niche as well which doesn't hurt.

        It comes down to this.. I don't for 2 seconds doubt your ability to rank pages. you have a system and it works for you. I would like to think with the examples I have given here, I have displayed my ability to rank a page or 2 as well, so obviously my method works as well. Neither of us are wrong in our methods - our methods are simply different. I am an on page SEO kind of guy, and most others here are more the offpage type.

        I discussed how I find my target terms, I touched on my methodology of how I rank pages in order of competition ( a deliberate pattern ) The actual finite details of what it is I do with onpage SEO? There is not enough time in the day to sit here and argue my point. All of the things that get shot down as stupid around here... Keyword Density, social, code positioning, etc etc.. I'm guilty of doing all of that. BUT it works for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shaun Marrs
    Looking at it from this point of view already puts you ahead of the competition. My keyword research method uses something similar to this to weed out keywords that tools say are easy but I would have a hrd time ranking for.
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Something from outside SEO to clarify:

    A keyword has only 3 competitors. Another one has 755,555,555. Which one should you go for?

    The analogy:

    Which fight do you think you'd have an easy time winning: you fight Bruce Lee, the current mixed martial and the world's heavy weight boxing champion or you fight 755,555,555 1 year old children?

    Point? You need to know if the top 3 are Bruce Lee level or 2 year old level; not how many babies are in the competition.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ricky Parker
    karmadog, I can tell you from just my personal experience that checking in quotes and not like you ask is not worth the time. There are so many metrics you can use but at the end of the day the best bet is to TEST, TEST, TEST yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Albert Tan
    Google has never publicly announced what factors and how they are using them to rank keywords. But that doesn't mean these factors have no correlation in determining which keywords are rankable.

    That being said "number of results" could just be one of the factors but what is the weightage Google assigns to it is unknown.

    Look at below articles for the 200 factors:-

    https://moz.com/blog/the-myth-of-goo...anking-factors

    Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List
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