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SEO COMPETITION ANALYSIS - DO IT THE RIGHT WAY!

by MarketingAce
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Can we clear this who "SEO Competition Analysis" up once and for all? I'm sure that you're just another person like myself who has realized how important it is to learn Search Engine Optimization if you want to succeed at internet marketing. We've all come to acknowledge that there are 3 main aspects to analyzing the market:

1- Find the search demand.
2- Find the commerciality.
3- Find the keyword or seo competition.

If you've done all three the right way, we land on the first page with success.

The problem with a lot of people (and I've experienced this myself) is that a lot of us aren't really too sure about how to "analyze the competition". Well, the purpose of this thread is to help out our I.M. community by contributing some help to each other by sharing some knowledge that some of possess through experience of "SEO Competition Analysis".

Here are some of the things that I've heard personally with how to go about "analyzing competition":


"You need to use the google operators and put your keyword phrase in quotes ("KEYWORD")"

OR

"You need to put your keyword phrase with allintitle:"KEYWORD" "

OR

"You need to put your keyword in quotes, allintitle:, and inurl: because all three are sooooo important."


But the one that really makes the most sense to me is very simple and not that complex at all. I once went on a SEO forum for help because I wasn't sure and was truly determined to find out. I even asked if I should buy Micro Niche Finder, Market Samurai, or what software should I invest in.

Finally one guy stepped out and told me like it really is. He said it so bluntly. He said, "Just forget all the hype and diffuclty of Keyword Research and Competition Analysis. It's not really all that hard!". He said, "Don't worry about the 103rd page of google or how many competiting pages there are! The site out on the 103rd page is not your real competition. Only the top 10 are your real competition! If you can beat them, then you can win PERIOD"


Now.... to me, this seems to make the most sense and has helped me to better understand Keyword/SEO Competition.


Feel free to throw in your own experiences as I'm sure that it will help others who are trying to learn...

"KEYWORD SEO COMPETITION!!!"
#analysis #competition #seo
  • Profile picture of the author cardine
    I agree with what you said, and for that reason I would recommend SerpIQ. It takes your keyword and analyzes the competition of each site in the top 10 to figure out how 'competitive' a keyword is. It is obviously not perfect, but I've found it's definitely good enough to get a quick idea as to how competitive a keyword is.

    Anyone who is worrying themselves about sites that are outside of the top 10 are wasting their time.
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
      Originally Posted by cardine View Post

      I agree with what you said, and for that reason I would recommend SerpIQ. It takes your keyword and analyzes the competition of each site in the top 10 to figure out how 'competitive' a keyword is. It is obviously not perfect, but I've found it's definitely good enough to get a quick idea as to how competitive a keyword is.

      Anyone who is worrying themselves about sites that are outside of the top 10 are wasting their time.
      I'm not too crazy about the way that SERPIQ looks. It looks like it pulls back too many extra data quotia that's not necessary. If all you really need to know is:

      "the number of backlinks to a particular web page has" "the page rank" "the age" and "the on page seo" then why pull back all that other bs? Traffic Travis does this for free & so does Market Samurai if you download the free trial.
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  • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
    The only page that matters is the first page. Why even care about anything beyond that obviously the only place you want to be is on page one.

    Just look at the types of backlink it has and the quality

    Also pay attention to some of the other factors like said above

    I myself use serpiq
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
      Originally Posted by sovereignn View Post

      The only page that matters is the first page. Why even care about anything beyond that obviously the only place you want to be is on page one.

      Just look at the types of backlink it has and the quality

      Also pay attention to some of the other factors like said above

      I myself use serpiq
      Yeah I know, but apparently a lot of people do care about the other pages or else they wouldn't be putting the allintitle or their keyword phrases in quotes.

      Enough about SerpIQ. I didn't want other marketers to come here just to promote their products. I was looking for sincere replies without the promotion. Hell, I use Market Samurai & Traffic Travis which are both free to analyze the top 10....
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Not even the top ten, but the top 3 results are most important for most keywords that the IM'ers are targetting.
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      • Profile picture of the author dchuk
        Originally Posted by MarketingAce View Post

        Enough about SerpIQ. I didn't want other marketers to come here just to promote their products. I was looking for sincere replies without the promotion. Hell, I use Market Samurai & Traffic Travis which are both free to analyze the top 10....
        just to clarify, no one in this thread who has posted so far is actually affiliated with serpIQ. I am though (I built it). Also, we have a free account as well.
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      • Profile picture of the author Grindstone
        Originally Posted by MarketingAce View Post

        I'm not too crazy about the way that SERPIQ looks. It looks like it pulls back too many extra data quotia that's not necessary. If all you really need to know is:

        "the number of backlinks to a particular web page has" "the page rank" "the age" and "the on page seo" then why pull back all that other bs? Traffic Travis does this for free & so does Market Samurai if you download the free trial.
        I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on this: dchuk and I designed serpIQ to be the SEO competition analysis tool we always wanted to use to help us rank faster in the toughest niches but wasn't available. So we had it pull all the metrics that DO matter in the toughest niches.

        High level SEO is much more than "page rank" "age" and "backlink" count. Sure, age and backlink count matter more than other metrics, but if that's all that counted, how do I routinely outrank older sites with more links for money making terms like payday loans, satellite tv, hcg diet and way too many more to list with younger sites with less links?

        As for your claim of "page rank" being a highly correlating factor, that's just plain wrong and we have 160 thousand page 1 SERPs (1.6 Million sites) analzyed to back it up.

        I'll agree with you on "on site factors" though, those should always be dialed in before anything else.

        Originally Posted by MarketingAce View Post

        Yeah I know, but apparently a lot of people do care about the other pages or else they wouldn't be putting the allintitle or their keyword phrases in quotes.
        Just because other people care doesn't mean it's worth spending your time on. Your first post was spot on regarding only the top 10 sites for any given term matter.

        Enough about SerpIQ. I didn't want other marketers to come here just to promote their products. I was looking for sincere replies without the promotion. Hell, I use Market Samurai & Traffic Travis which are both free to analyze the top 10....
        Nobody else in this thread is promoting serpIQ, they're just paying customers happy with a quality product. However, the affiliate program launches on Monday, PM me if you've got quality webmaster traffic....now that's self promotion!
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  • Profile picture of the author paul nicholls
    its def true

    i just use serp iq along with some other manual checks and this works fine for me

    we all over complicate seo competition anaylasis at first but as you become more experienced you will find that it really is quite simple and shouldnt take more than 5 mins

    paul
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  • Profile picture of the author pwtmike
    I like to look at intitle competition... it gives you a quick idea of what you are really up against.
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    • Profile picture of the author dchuk
      Originally Posted by pwtmike View Post

      I like to look at intitle competition... it gives you a quick idea of what you are really up against.
      there's little if any correlation between allintitleor intitle: or inurl: etc) and how competitive a keyword is. it's just one of those relics of SEO past that people still spread around as fact unfortunately.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I doubt very much anyone has ever cared about page #103 in the SERPs. I know that's just an example, but seriously I can't remember a forum post that was worried about being on page #102 (example), like it was any better than page #103.

    I fail to see this as a problem, considering everyones goal is position #1 on page #1 in the SERPs. I'm sure everyone knows page #103 in the SERPs is worthless.
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I doubt very much anyone has ever cared about page #103 in the SERPs. I know that's just an example, but seriously I can't remember a forum post that was worried about being on page #102 (example), like it was any better than page #103.

      I fail to see this as a problem, considering everyones goal is position #1 on page #1 in the SERPs. I'm sure everyone knows page #103 in the SERPs is worthless.
      I don't think that you understood what I was saying. I was saying that when you put your keywords in Quotes, intitle, allintitle, inurl, etc., that it's going to show you all the page indexed by google for those particular operators. I wasn't saying that people directly say to themselves that "Hey! I care about page 103!!!". I was saying that indirectly this is what's happening, so why even bother to do it when only the top 10 sites matter? Get it?
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      • Profile picture of the author MarketingAce
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Not even the top ten, but the top 3 results are most important for most keywords that the IM'ers are targetting.
        Well everyone has their own opinion on that one. I've heard "Top 3", "Top 5", "Top 10", but quite honestly I'm in the 5 position for a keyword phrase that makes me plenty of sales. So I have to say "Top 5" is just fine.

        Originally Posted by Grindstone View Post

        I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on this: dchuk and I designed serpIQ to be the SEO competition analysis tool we always wanted to use to help us rank faster in the toughest niches but wasn't available. So we had it pull all the metrics that DO matter in the toughest niches.

        High level SEO is much more than "page rank" "age" and "backlink" count. Sure, age and backlink count matter more than other metrics, but if that's all that counted, how do I routinely outrank older sites with more links for money making terms like payday loans, satellite tv, hcg diet and way too many more to list with younger sites with less links?

        As for your claim of "page rank" being a highly correlating factor, that's just plain wrong and we have 160 thousand page 1 SERPs (1.6 Million sites) analzyed to back it up.

        I'll agree with you on "on site factors" though, those should always be dialed in before anything else.



        Just because other people care doesn't mean it's worth spending your time on. Your first post was spot on regarding only the top 10 sites for any given term matter.



        Nobody else in this thread is promoting serpIQ, they're just paying customers happy with a quality product. However, the affiliate program launches on Monday, PM me if you've got quality webmaster traffic....now that's self promotion!
        Originally Posted by pwtmike View Post

        I like to look at intitle competition... it gives you a quick idea of what you are really up against.
        That's fine, but I still disagree with you respectfully too. I don't think that it's necessary to go wayyyy out and dig too deep into your competition with too many metrics & graphs because I think that it's what's going to make SEO Competition Analysis more complex then what it really is. Not only that, but more time consuming than necessary as well. No need to make things complicated. Simple, concise, & to the point is the key to many things. I took a quick look at "SerpIQ" & noticed that I didn't really like the UI on it (respectfully it's just my opinion).

        I didn't try to specify all of the major factors in my first post as to what the complete analysis should consist of. I just gave a few of what I thought was extremely important right off the bat. I understand that you also need to identify where your competitors are getting their link juice from and the quality of the backlinks that they possess (Market Samurai does this for free).

        And yes, somebody that left the first reply (might have deleted it) sound like they were trying to promote the "SerpIQ" by leaving a comment and it was in their sig. Then a second person came and left another comment. Was starting to think that it was you pretending to be multiple people to spam your product here, but I apologize if I'm wrong.

        Anyhow, thanks for contributing to the thread. People need this kind of info...
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  • Profile picture of the author BigNorm
    SEO Quake is all you want to know how easy a keyword is going to be to rank for.
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  • Profile picture of the author kaedus
    I personally don't care about allintitle or any of that. I look at the top 10 sites, because that is where the money is. If you aren't on the first page, your site might as well not exist.

    I have been using serpIQ lately and just want to say that it's awesome. Especially now that they added bulk keyword upload I save even more time. I can put in a bunch of keywords I'm curious about, get a quick overview, and if there are any that need more analysis I can dive in on those.

    The other nice thing is I can save PDF reports since I have an agency account and I show these to potential clients. If you are doing client work, it can really help you make that sale!
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  • Profile picture of the author BigNorm
    Problem I find with all those keyword tools, is that there all using the same data to tell you if a keyword is going to be easy, medium or hard to rank for. Things like keyword in URL, title, H1-3 tags, description etc. When I've lately seen websites ranking for highly competitive keywords which have had none of those attributes, and in some cases less than 10 backlinks taking spots in the top 10 based on what I can only gather as authority and domain age.
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