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How to measure competition?.

by KaterSD
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm looking at building a few sniper sites.

One thing I'm having a problem is measuring competition.

How do you guys go about seeing if a keyword is hard, medium or easy to rank for?.

Before I was looking at the number of competing sites, but recently i was told it doesn't matter what the number of competing sites are. that the competition are the top ten sites.

I currently use market samurai...I know I should look for keyword in title, description, h1, h2, etc...

anything else i should be looking for?

What should i be looking at ?... since im new im trying to building sniper sites im trying to choose something not so hard to rank for..
#competition #measure
  • Profile picture of the author PabloVTB
    Pay attention to the site's PR as well,
    amount of backlinks to domain, to page,
    domain age,
    Cache date
    Keyword density

    Just throwing some ideas at you
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    • Profile picture of the author TravisHarper
      I would also like to comment on your statement about competition #s meaning nothing and I would disagree. Now, I am not saying that competition is the only factor but I feel strongly that it does make a difference.

      As far as yourt competition being the top 10, this is also correct. It should always be your goal to get on page 1. You should also look at the PR of the top 10 sites. Here is a formula I use:

      Look at the PR for the top 10 organic results. Throw out the highest and lowest PR. Add the rest of the 8 sites PR together and divide by 8 to get an average PR.

      If it is 1.9 or under, you will have an easy time getting ranked on page 1.

      Between 2.0 and 2.9. More difficult but doable.

      3 + is hard to break into and will take time and patience to see rankings on that page.
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  • Profile picture of the author TravisHarper
    I like to use a simple system to get initial information on the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. It is going to be a little difficult to explain here without being able to insert a picture but here goes:

    If a keyword has between 0 and 500 monthly searches:
    and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

    If a keyword has between 501 and 1,000 monthly searches:
    and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

    If a keyword has over 1,000 monthly searches:
    and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Excellent
    between 10,001 and 20,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

    Using this system I have found it relatively easy to rank for keywords with an excellent rating and fairly easy for those ranking in the good range.

    I hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
      Originally Posted by TravisHarper View Post

      I like to use a simple system to get initial information on the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. It is going to be a little difficult to explain here without being able to insert a picture but here goes:

      If a keyword has between 0 and 500 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has between 501 and 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has over 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Excellent
      between 10,001 and 20,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      Using this system I have found it relatively easy to rank for keywords with an excellent rating and fairly easy for those ranking in the good range.

      I hope this helps.
      Number of competing pages is absolutely irrelevant. Your competition is on page 1. If I used your 'simply system' in deciding whether or not to target a certain keyword, I probably would not have built 90% of my micro niche sites...

      The main things I look at are:
      • PR
      • Whether or not the keyword is in the title tag
      • Age
      • Number of backlinks
        • Anchor text and sources of those backlinks
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      • Profile picture of the author KaterSD
        Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post

        Number of competing pages is absolutely irrelevant. Your competition is on page 1. If I used your 'simply system' in deciding whether or not to target a certain keyword, I probably would not have built 90% of my micro niche sites...

        The main things I look at are:
        • PR
        • Whether or not the keyword is in the title tag
        • Age
        • Number of backlinks
          • Anchor text and sources of those backlinks
        So you look at those listed but how do know whether its something you can take on and not have to work at it for 8-12 months.

        Im getting my fet wet and id rather not go for a niche that does require that amount of time to rank for..which is what im trying to figure out..

        Are you reffering to the number one site?
        so if the number one site or all the sites in the top ten....
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        • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
          Originally Posted by vApor View Post

          So you look at those listed but how do know whether its something you can take on and not have to work at it for 8-12 months.

          Im getting my fet wet and id rather not go for a niche that does require that amount of time to rank for..which is what im trying to figure out..

          Are you reffering to the number one site?
          so if the number one site or all the sites in the top ten....
          All the sites on page 1. Basically I look at what they have and determine whether or not I can do better.
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      • Profile picture of the author faysal969
        Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post


        The main things I look at are:
        • PR
        • Whether or not the keyword is in the title tag
        • Age
        • Number of backlinks
          • Anchor text and sources of those backlinks
        How can I check the age of those sites?
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      • Profile picture of the author Kurt
        Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post

        Number of competing pages is absolutely irrelevant. Your competition is on page 1. If I used your 'simply system' in deciding whether or not to target a certain keyword, I probably would not have built 90% of my micro niche sites...

        The main things I look at are:
        • PR
        • Whether or not the keyword is in the title tag
        • Age
        • Number of backlinks
          • Anchor text and sources of those backlinks
        Which Page 1? My page one for my local search? Your's? His? Her's?

        How does personal search factor in? Again, my Page 1 for my personalized search results or your personalized search results Page 1?

        Or how about people that have their settings set to show 100 results on the SERP? Does Site #86 have a Page 1 ranking in this scenario?

        Because there is no single Page 1, a "niche-wide" competition criteria should also be used IMO, especially because it's so fast and easy to do.

        To do this, I prefer the 3 "ins" used together to give me a good indicator of the SEO STRENGTH of a particuar keyword/phrase:

        intitle + intext + inanchor

        Using all three in conjunction with each other is a pretty good indicator of how many pages for that keyword have done basic SEO.

        (I use my own Inz Tuel to do this in batches...It only takes a couple of seconds to do a small batch of keywords)
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        • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
          Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

          Which Page 1? My page one for my local search? Your's? His? Her's?

          How does personal search factor in? Again, my Page 1 for my personalized search results or your personalized search results Page 1?

          Or how about people that have their settings set to show 100 results on the SERP? Does Site #86 have a Page 1 ranking in this scenario?

          Because there is no single Page 1, a "niche-wide" competition criteria should also be used IMO, especially because it's so fast and easy to do.

          To do this, I prefer the 3 "ins" used together to give me a good indicator of the SEO STRENGTH of a particuar keyword/phrase:

          intitle + intext + inanchor

          Using all three in conjunction with each other is a pretty good indicator of how many pages for that keyword have done basic SEO.

          (I use my own Inz Tuel to do this in batches...It only takes a couple of seconds to do a small batch of keywords)
          The un-personalized page 1 by not being signed in and using the Google Global plugin. Again, the number of competing pages will always be completely irrelevant, as what matters is the strength of the SEO thereof.
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    • Profile picture of the author KaterSD
      Originally Posted by TravisHarper View Post

      I like to use a simple system to get initial information on the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. It is going to be a little difficult to explain here without being able to insert a picture but here goes:

      If a keyword has between 0 and 500 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has between 501 and 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has over 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Excellent
      between 10,001 and 20,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      Using this system I have found it relatively easy to rank for keywords with an excellent rating and fairly easy for those ranking in the good range.

      I hope this helps.
      Thanks for your post.

      This would be for lower traffic keywords....but what about higher traffic keywords..are what makes $$$ right?..
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    • Profile picture of the author rvdp
      Originally Posted by TravisHarper View Post

      I like to use a simple system to get initial information on the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. It is going to be a little difficult to explain here without being able to insert a picture but here goes:

      If a keyword has between 0 and 500 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has between 501 and 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      If a keyword has over 1,000 monthly searches:
      and less than 10,000 competing pages - Rating = Excellent
      between 10,001 and 20,000 competing pages - Rating = Good

      Using this system I have found it relatively easy to rank for keywords with an excellent rating and fairly easy for those ranking in the good range.

      I hope this helps.
      This is indeed useless, reason given 2 posts back...
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  • Profile picture of the author TZ
    I usually measure competition by height. ;-)

    I like to see only 3-4 heavy weights on the first page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hortensia
    'WebComp Analyst' by Jon Leger gives a good and clear insight.

    As far as competition is concerned the only links that compete are the links with the anchortext in it.

    The other links or pr don't matter.
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  • Profile picture of the author ThomvP
    Again as mentioned above, if 2billion sites all do a crappy job youll be above them in no time. However if 5 sites are doing a killer job in the keyword youll have no chance (atleast not unless you know exaclty what you are doing) So you really only need the first page. You wanna rank for the first page so they are your competition. Also even if you have 100 results on google (wich I highly doubt alot of people have) then youll stil see the same on the first 10 results so that doesnt matter. And if you use the intitle,intext,inanchor rule, then you will find all the pages that are trying to rank. But what you need to know is the sites that actually DO rank, not the ones that try. You want to be above the ones that rank not above the sites that try and fail and therefor are on page 13.
    As for the personalised search, there are plenty of tools to see the google result without personalised results. That is what you want to use as your page 1, simply because you can't have any influence on the personalised seach. Just aim for being on page one on what one of the tools show you (im trying out serpattacks atm, seems good enough so far) and thats all you can do.
    So in short:

    Number of pages is irrelavant, ony look at the top 10

    Use a tool to see what page one is (market samurai is great for that)

    I think PR is more or less irrelavant but Im not sure. Just my opinion.

    For the rest see the above posts wich gave some good advices (exept the ones I just mentioned)


    Plz correct me if im wrong and I hope this helps
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    • Profile picture of the author Kurt
      Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post

      The un-personalized page 1 by not being signed in and using the Google Global plugin. Again, the number of competing pages will always be completely irrelevant, as what matters is the strength of the SEO thereof.
      Because you are searching using an un-personalized search doesn't mean everyone else is. Plus we still need to consider no matter what IP you use will give you a geo-location.

      And only taking into account the SEO strength of the top 10 for your given search doesn't factor in any of the conditions I mentioned above.

      Like I said above, I prefer to ALSO measure the niche-wide strength of SEO by including the 3 "ins" combined in a search and never mentioned the total number of competing pages. I brought up the total number of pages that contain the keywords in the page title, in the body content and AND in anchor text, which gives an indication of how many pages have done basic SEO.

      My point is simple: There is no longer a single "Top 10" SERP, there can be many, and Google's SERPs are not totally dependant on the strength of only 10 sites. Doing a survey of how many pages have the 3 "ins" only takes a couple of seconds.

      intitle:"dog training collar" + inanchor:"dog training collar" + intext:"dog training collar"

      And this research isn't in place of top 10 research, it's in addition to this research.
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      • Profile picture of the author Edgardo400
        Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

        Because you are searching using an un-personalized search doesn't mean everyone else is. Plus we still need to consider no matter what IP you use will give you a geo-location.

        And only taking into account the SEO strength of the top 10 for your given search doesn't factor in any of the conditions I mentioned above.

        Like I said above, I prefer to ALSO measure the niche-wide strength of SEO by including the 3 "ins" combined in a search and never mentioned the total number of competing pages. I brought up the total number of pages that contain the keywords in the page title, in the body content and AND in anchor text, which gives an indication of how many pages have done basic SEO.

        My point is simple: There is no longer a single "Top 10" SERP, there can be many, and Google's SERPs are not totally dependant on the strength of only 10 sites. Doing a survey of how many pages have the 3 "ins" only takes a couple of seconds.

        intitle:"dog training collar" + inanchor:"dog training collar" + intext:"dog training collar"

        And this research isn't in place of top 10 research, it's in addition to this research.
        How do you check for all the sites that have that do you use a tool like market samurai?
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  • Profile picture of the author ricky pounting
    Use the tool of Google Adwords Keyword Tool in order to have an indication regarding the level of competition that a keyword has....
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