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Does exact phrase competition REALLY matter?

by CcKilian
2 replies
  • SEO
    • |
It would seem that many people have there own little magic number for exact phrase competition (I've heard less than 10,000, also heard less than 100,000), and I may be missing something, but does it really matter?

I am new at this whole SEO game, but if I'm aiming to be on the first page of google my thought would be that I only need to be better than the top 10 already there. Does it really matter if there are another 10,000 or 100,000 pages out there beyond the top ten spot?

While doing KW research I've found a number of keywords where the top 10 results have next to no links, and are poorly optimized on-page according to a few different programs (microniche, market samurai, traffic travis), and appear as though it shouldn't be too much to get on to page one..... but then that nagging little rule I keep hearing floating around about the amount of exact phrase match competition keeps popping into my head!

Am I missing something?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Carney
#competition #exact #matter #phrase
  • Profile picture of the author khtm
    Yes, the # of competition does matter, but what also matters is what you touched on...the "strength of competition". If there's 1,000,000 competition and the top 10 have 0 backlinks and simple 1-page non-keyword-optimized sites, then obviously the # of competition is meaningless.

    I use an app called Micro Niche Finder which saves a lot of time in doing keyword analysis. It calculates the strength of competition (SOC) using these factors:

    inAnchor Count - How many sites are linking to the target site with the keyword phrase as the anchor text?
    intitle Count - How many sites use the Keyword phrase as part of the title of the page?
    inurl Count - How many sites use the keyword phrase as part of the URL?

    You can do these calculations yourself manually but it would take a heck of a long time

    As a general rule of thumb, < 100,000 competition and > 1,000 monthly searches is pretty "do-able" for an SEO campaign. However, there's a lot of wiggle room is these numbers based on factors such as SOC, high monthly searches, and how much time and $$$ you can afford to spend on your campaign.

    Hopefully that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author LinkBuildingRobot
    Yes the phrase definitely matters. I have ranked sites (#2 Google) with over 200 million competing pages but they take a lot of work (and a decent budget). Anything under 500,000 is not that difficult if you have a consistent seo strategy including monthly back links. Anytime you had a geographic area to the phrase I can almost guarantee top 5 rankings. Very few people understand SEO at the local level.
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    - Don
    www.LinkBuildingRobot.com
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