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How competitive is too competitive?

by andywang
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've heard two different things when it comes to ranking high for a search term.

1) If you want to rank on the first page of google, then your main concern should be the strength of the websites on the first page, such as how optimized those sites are for that specific keyword, its backlinks, and whether or not they are root level or inner pages.

2) If a search term returns more than x million results, then this search term is too competitive and it wouldn't be worth the effort to build your site around that term.

Which is true? If a keyword returns 100 million results but the websites on the front page are not that well optimized and do not have many backlinks pointing to it, would this term be one that I can easily rank high for?
#competitive
  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    Which is true? If a keyword returns 100 million results but the websites on the front page are not that well optimized and do not have many backlinks pointing to it, would this term be one that I can easily rank high for?
    chances are... yes.

    it's not how many, it's who is ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author fir3d
    I personally have found that checking the status of the sites on the first page is the best way to calculate your competition. You could have a high number of competing websites and if most of them had no backlinks/pr it would be an easy keyword to rank for.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rush
      The number of pages found for a keyword mean very little. Your first method is the key. There could be a million pages found for a keyword, but if your competition only has several links, then it will be easy to outrank them.
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  • Profile picture of the author butters
    Doesn't this all depend on how good you are? But i try to avoid over crowded niche, IE high ammount of pages
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    • Profile picture of the author kkchoon
      Originally Posted by fir3d View Post

      I personally have found that checking the status of the sites on the first page is the best way to calculate your competition. You could have a high number of competing websites and if most of them had no backlinks/pr it would be an easy keyword to rank for.
      Checking for how many pages to see if that keyword is competitive is just a way for article marketer to find "low hanging fruit" fast, when you are doing long tail, there are thousands of keywords to pick, this is the fastest way to do it!

      However, it is not accurate! the Top 10 result backlinks analysis is the most accurate way.

      You need to look at how many links the top 10 website has, what is the quality of their links and how well they do on page optimization!

      Then you might have some ideas about how many links you need and how long it takes for you to out rank them!

      Originally Posted by Rush View Post

      The number of pages found for a keyword mean very little. Your first method is the key. There could be a million pages found for a keyword, but if your competition only has several links, then it will be easy to outrank them.
      Absolutely right! However, you need experience to know how to read those competition data...
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      • Profile picture of the author Rush
        Originally Posted by kkchoon View Post

        Absolutely right! However, you need experience to know how to read those competition data...
        Yeah most definitely. The SEO for firefox addon really helps with that.
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  • Profile picture of the author warrior123
    Originally Posted by andywang View Post

    I've heard two different things when it comes to ranking high for a search term.

    1) If you want to rank on the first page of google, then your main concern should be the strength of the websites on the first page, such as how optimized those sites are for that specific keyword, its backlinks, and whether or not they are root level or inner pages.
    #1 is your correct answer.

    Judging a keyword phrase by simply putting it in "quotes" and looking at the competition doesn't tell you ANYTHING about your real competition -- which are the 10 websites listed on the front page.

    You need to dig deeper for each of those sites and look at their backlink strength, anchor text, Title Page description and the age of the domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author sweetfranky
    I agree with number 1 only. It is very important to research how your competitors got to the number 1 slot.

    As for 2, You CAN compete even at words in the 10's of millions. It's just a lot more work. If your starting out fresh, try and target some smaller words first.

    Example: Go after "Tiny Red Car Sales" first.

    Then go for "red car sales" next.

    Finally go for "car sales" once you've got the other ones ranked page 1.

    Long tail is a great way to get fast results. You can get the big words over time.

    Good Luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author WealthWithin
      Originally Posted by sweetfranky View Post

      I agree with number 1 only. It is very important to research how your competitors got to the number 1 slot.

      As for 2, You CAN compete even at words in the 10's of millions. It's just a lot more work. If your starting out fresh, try and target some smaller words first.

      Example: Go after "Tiny Red Car Sales" first.

      Then go for "red car sales" next.

      Finally go for "car sales" once you've got the other ones ranked page 1.

      Long tail is a great way to get fast results. You can get the big words over time.

      Good Luck.
      What would you do in a situation like this?

      1. "Tiny red car sales" - has 5 million exact match results

      2. You check the first 10 results of Google, and realize they all are authority sites (eg. amazon, answers, epinions), but with a maximum of 3-4 backlinks. Highest PR seen is 4.

      3. You do a search for inanchor:"tiny red car sales", and it returns only 2 results

      4. You see 'tinyredcarsales.com' is available.

      Is this worth going after?



      Cheers,
      WealthWithin.
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      • Profile picture of the author K6x
        Originally Posted by WealthWithin View Post

        What would you do in a situation like this?

        1. "Tiny red car sales" - has 5 million exact match results

        2. You check the first 10 results of Google, and realize they all are authority sites (eg. amazon, answers, epinions), but with a maximum of 3-4 backlinks. Highest PR seen is 4.

        3. You do a search for inanchor:"tiny red car sales", and it returns only 2 results

        4. You see 'tinyredcarsales.com' is available.

        Is this worth going after?



        Cheers,
        WealthWithin.

        Yes for sure. That's low hanging fruit. I used to do this by hand, but i got market samurai a few days ago and I'm amazed how much easier my life is. It shows a big graph with green and red strength indicators so you get all of the information you mentioned just at a glance. the main weakness in the scenario you describe is only 2 inanchor links. that's extremely low. you might also want to try inurl.
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  • Profile picture of the author caliray
    After looking at thousands of Google results across a wide range of keywords, it still surprises me to find 0 PR sites on some keyword results. Further checking almost always shows these sites have a high number of backlinks. Looks to me like Google is putting a high value on backlink quantity, especially when those backlinks are coming from pages with PR 2 or higher.
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    • Profile picture of the author kkchoon
      Originally Posted by caliray View Post

      After looking at thousands of Google results across a wide range of keywords, it still surprises me to find 0 PR sites on some keyword results. Further checking almost always shows these sites have a high number of backlinks. Looks to me like Google is putting a high value on backlink quantity, especially when those backlinks are coming from pages with PR 2 or higher.
      Can you show us some examples? I would like to study it more...
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    • Profile picture of the author fir3d
      Originally Posted by caliray View Post

      After looking at thousands of Google results across a wide range of keywords, it still surprises me to find 0 PR sites on some keyword results. Further checking almost always shows these sites have a high number of backlinks. Looks to me like Google is putting a high value on backlink quantity, especially when those backlinks are coming from pages with PR 2 or higher.
      It depends does the page listed in google have a high number of backlinks or is it the main domain that has a lot of backlinks. It could be from an authority site where the main domain is worth a lot to google on keywords related to that term so they give it some more preference. As kkchoon said, it would be nice to see some examples.
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      • Profile picture of the author marlon
        Hi,

        1. Go to google.com

        2. Insert: inanchor:"keyword here"

        3. Run the search

        4. That shows you how many people have linked to the site using that
        keyword phrase.

        5. There aren't any 1 time fee software programs I know of that will just give you the list of keyword phrases and their in anchor links.

        6. This is still a rough estimate because the PR of the sites linking in tells you a lot also.

        You can have a zillion web sites in quotes but then when you check the inanchor find there are almost zero inbound links with the text. Those are your only real competition.

        Marlon
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