Can I rank it...keyword with 74k exact local searches, low competition...

Wow,your still learning and this is the keyword you are targetting. Could take a few years maybe. University and Wikipedia pages are hard to beat

Have no idea the actual competition without taking a look at the keyword myself - you need to look at onsite SEO for the competitors and not strictly backlinks. There's obviously a shot of ranking on the 1st page, but rankings over EDU's and a 1100 backlink wikipedia is going to be a bit more difficult.

Sounds like that's one heck of a project! Are you willing to spend the extra months (maybe even years) to gain the authority in that niche? Are you willing to go months with little to no traffic? Are you still willing to pump out fresh content when it seems nobody is reading it? If you truly are, then I say that's a great reason to pursue that niche.

Because once you do get to page one, you'll have a truckload of traffic. If done right, the eventual success will be worth the months waiting in the page-10+'s.

My advice is to build your brandable, authority domain. Seek out those long tail keywords, and push out 2-3 updates per week. Uniqueness + Freshness + Beneficial for reader.

You'll have to build backlinks eventually, but not yet. Focus on that content, and take any hint of traffic to one of your pages as a sign something's going right, and then replicate.

Oh, and after a year compile your month-to-month struggles and successes and make a guide to share with the community. Undertaking a project like this can give insight to the community and pave the way for future community/marketing based projects.

May the SERPs be with you!

It can be done but it will be very difficult. You will need a lot of unique content pages focused on that one topic and LOTS of backlinks from web pages focused on a similar topic. Don't even think about using anything except absolutely original content.

25 million competing pages is a lot.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, an .edu or .gov backlink does not rocket your site to the top. Those links are generally authority links, but they do not carry anywhere near the value that some people think unless the page where the link appears focuses on the same topic as your web site.

I've been doing SEO work since 1997 and we have tested this extensively. We have not seen any special ranking benefit over the past few years from .edu or .gov links unless the linking page focuses on the same topic as the receiving page. Those types of links can be VERY difficult to obtain.

What you want to do can be done, but it will not be easy.

Yes indeed.

That will be difficult, but If you have the resources and to do it go ahead.
Start with your domain, It should be aged domain at least, with PR is a lot better.
With the recent changes in Google algorithm, automating backlinks is very risky.


Cheers

I know the subject line asks "can I rank it", but I do plan to hire an SEO company/individual to assist. I have spoken with an SEO expert and felt the need to inquire in an open forum manner. ...Glad I did. I love WF!

Absolutely. If you have the money and the right team anything is possible.

You can always rank it, but it's all about how hard it will take. Personally saying, you've definitely got a better opportunity than most because of the nature of the keyword and competition. It won't be easy, but definitely doable.

Good luck!

If you find an exact 100% matching domain for the keyword i.e. com, net ,org. That will be a big boost.

What tool are you using to check your comp?

Traffic Travis is good and i often combine this with SERPIQ before i base my conclusion.

My point is, the amount of queries a keywowrd receives does not determine its competitiveness.

If your research continually say less competitive then it should be if you follow the result it gives you.

If most of the top ten result don't have the keyword in their title, desc, keyword tag, no .gov, .edu and so on then you should have those in your site backed up with quality links and you will win.

What do you consider decent? Also, do you mean in the local results, or in national results?

I think you'd probably have a pretty easy time ranking in your local slots (3-9) but it's going to be a lot more difficult to get one of those "national" slots.

The chances of that are slim to none. Anything can happen, but that's a pretty long shot.

(There are people who would have a decent shot at it. No offense intended, we all start somewhere ... but anyone with that capability wouldn't be here to ask about if they should target a keyword.)

I would rethink it if you mean low competition from GAKT. That generally means there aren't many advertisers. (Double check it of course.) If there aren't advertisers, there probably isn't a lot of money in the keyword.

If I'm going to spend a year building and ranking a site, I definitely want some confirmation that there's money in the niche first.

"25M google results in quotes"

Honestly knowing the number of people that have tried to rank for your keyword is irrelevant. Just ask yourself if you can beat the top 3 people ranking for the keyword and that's all you need to know. Wikipedia is easier than you might to think to outrank because it probably doesn't have many (if any) eaxct match backlinks for the kw. I have never competed with a .edu but you might find it difficult. If you put in enough effort it shouldn't be impossible though. .edu only counts for so much.

The number of results in the SERPS means absolutely nothing, in quotes or not in quotes. There are not 25 million sites competing for the keyword.

The PR you mentioned of the sites in the top 10, is that the actual page or the domain? Either way, it is pretty insignificant. You need to analyze the backlinks and see what keywords they are really targeting. Now if they have a lot of high PR links targeting your keyword or very closely related keywords, then it could be much more challenging. If not, then it really does not matter if it is a PR 1 or a PR 9. You can outrank them.

As far as .edu and .gov backlinks, they are no better than any other links. Don't be fooled. Only people selling .edu and .gov backlinks will tell you otherwise, and in their case they are selling absolute spam links. Nothing more.

Other than that, it is pretty difficult to give you any guidance one way or the other without seeing the actual keyword.