List of sites: Are these sites "difficult" to beat ?

Dammit man, I've tried to answer this best I could and finding it hard to explain lol.

If you want me to consult with you how to analyse those top 10 results properly hit me up on Skype.

Michael -

Hi.

I tend to look at the number of backlinks and their anchor text as a better indicator of "beatability" than just sheer PR.

Do a backlink check on each of the top 10 sites and see what they have as their anchor text. If you find very few backlinks or few backlinks with your keyword then there may be some hope of outranking them.

Just my 2 cents. I'm sure everyone has their own particular competitive assessment algorithm...

Wendell

Anything is doable.
I know one sure fire way to find out if you can do it or not

Difficult? I guess that depends upon your definition of the word.
For some people just getting out of their chair is difficult.

I say go for it.

You said you believe you can get on page one for sure, so I'd say go for this KWP based on your own analysis. You can make money with any listing on page one and once you're there, you can work on moving up the ladder if you want.

Personally, seeing an article site in the top 10 tells me that a page one ranking is possible (especially since it's a weak site).

I'd be looking at on-page SEO here. How many of these sites have your KWP in the url, title, description, H1, etc? If it's all of them, you might have a nice little fight on your hands. If it's none and you see other weakness, you could walk right in laughing all the way.

Also, don't just look at link counts. Quality matters (and I'm sure you know, links to the actual page matter most).

And of course, listings don't have to make sense. I'm looking at a KWP that I've just scored a page 1 rank for. The first page is full of domains with domain ages from 10-13 years, some links, some PR and some on-page stuff (and all with tons of domain links).

Anyway, the 1st listing has a 0 PR, 0 links, 0 on-page SEO and a Yahoo listing. Huh?

This tells me that Google is forcing this listing (well, possibly).

The listing right under it has a PR of 2, 6 years age, complete YES for on-page SEO, Yahoo listing, Dmoz listing and a cherry on top.

At the end of the day, you won't know for sure unless you jump in and mix it up.

Thanks for the reply. Difficulty...hmm my sites that have reached number 1 I gave a period of 3-4 months so if we're talking difficulty then anything over 4 months is too much for me. I'm gonna stab at it.