I recommend just typing in your keyword into Google and then looking
at the first page of results. If it's full of article directories, pages
with few back links or pages that aren't optimised well then it should
be easy to rank.

If however it's full of authority sites such as wikepedia, about.com
and other sites that seem to rank well for all their keywords in that
niche then it's going to be a bit harder.

Don't rely on tools too much to give you information. Make your
own decisions about whether a keyword is too competitive or not
based on your own SEO skills.

Will

Micro Niche finder and SENuke are great tools to pick up a lot of long tail keywords with decent searches but extremely low competition!

When looking at these type of long tail keywords, you generally just look at how many sites in the title, in the content... which is what you are doing now.

However, this doesn't give you absolutely accuracy, the most accurate way to find the competition is JUST look at the first page for that keyword.

Do a background check on the top 10 ranking website, see how many backlinks they have and you will have an idea how competitive this sites are...



Having said that, it doesn't mean Micro Niche Finder and SENuke are wrong, which some warriors will say it is!

You need to understand this - when picking low hanging fruit, the search volume is small, and you need a lot of long tail keywords to really see some good traffic, if you perform top 10 analysis on all sites, it would not be "cost effective"!

That's why sometime Micro Niche Finder doesn't work, but work most of the time. You just need to do the volume game and you will be OK!

Kok Choon

a combination of assessing the first page of results and using the allintitle: and allinanchor: and allintext: searches give you a pretty good idea of who is where and why.

I've found MNF is pretty right on for everything. the software's not based on opinion, but numerical equations.

Yeah there is all this fancy competitor research stuff, but really u can get an idea of the competition in just a few seconds. I first put the keyword into google as a broad match and examine the top 30 sites and the number of search results appearing. Then i dig a little deeper and starting looking at the top ranking sites more in depth such as checking out their backlinks, how long they have been around and how big they are in general.

Takes a little practice but eventually you can spot a good niche quickly.

[DELETED]

Hi FT, here's what I do...

First you'll need the SEO4Firefox plugin from seobook.com

Once you have that installed, restart firefox and head over to google.

Enter your search, exactly like you expect your target audience to enter it, then hit return

Once you see the results, click on the "100" link (this forces google to return the results in their true order and not your own personalized view, which is misleading to a lot of people who are not aware of it)

If you see at least 3 sites with a PR- or a PR-0 and without a crazy number of Y! page links, then you can move on that niche (assuming you can get the exact match domain name for the search you just did)

That's the real world test for strength of competition :-)

I've attached a pic to help illustrate the point...

We would not move on this niche (only 1 target opportunity, we want at least 3)

What would it take to get a green light for this search?

1) Three or more PR- or PR-0 pages in the top ten search results (we only have 1 here)

2) At least 5 advertisers which as you can see from this search, we have.

3) Sufficient search volume using exact match on MNF or GAKT (they use the same data, mnf is paid, GAKT is free)

4) We can get the exact match top level domain

5) Spyfu returns at least .50 PPC for this search (prefer $1 or more)

Good advice there, Scott. But a word of advice for MNF users - just because you get a green light on MNF doesn't mean that the niche is there for the picking. Double check your competition on Google and see if it is beatable (using Scott's advice).

John (XFactor) recommends at least 2500 searches/month, but you can find some real nuggets at 1000 searches/month. In fact, I found one at 1300 AND the competition is nearly nonexistant AND the spyfu numbers look great AND the .com was available. Don't go below 1000, though - not worth your time.

Finding the HUGE nuggets at 5000 searches/month or above takes a lot of time, but when you do find them, you'll be swimming in clicks.

Question for Clickbump:

Google displays different results in each country. How we deal with that for checking ?

I use market samurai to have a glance on the competition, however, if you are building authority sites, you need top 10 competitor analysis, which is much more accurate for competitive terms.

Hey clickbump why was your other thread deleted? You know the one about your first $100 day in adsense?

That thread was awesome and now its gone what happened?

Hi clickbump,

I want to say one thing, i have become a fan of you.

You are really very generous, they way you share your knowledge and all is quality stuff.

I tried to do what you said... It was all fine but could not find the 100 Link when my plugin search for it... I have look that you have pointed towards it with an arrow but it simply does not appears when i search on my browser....

Note: I was signed out of my Google account...

I could send you a screenshot of it if you want...

According to your advice i have found a keyword with the no of ads on right side and the first page with PR- and PR0 sites...

It will be difficult to find a domain name although as all the domains have been sold and come up when one searches for it...

I would like to ask can one get an idea of the worth of ads which will be displayed if i put a site for this niche?

The local keyword search volume is 22,200

Regards

Gave the tool a one more try and it has started to show the options...

Thanks

found a good google sandbox here...