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Keyword / Competition questions

by adamcm
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

I came across a niche in the sports equipment industry that I think is doable with a little bit of work, but there have always been a few things I am unclear about on keyword research/competition.

1 - When I look at BLP, I find the #1 site has a few thousand links. But on closer inspection they only have 6 linking domains. They have a feedburner links, along with lots of internal linking pointed to this particular page. Should these links be counted when analyzing the competition?

2 - Should I ever compete against commercial terms? For instance "golf clubs" or "baseball bats" (not my keyword). I'm not sure if this is right but have heard that Google can recognize when a real "shopping cart" site is listed and will often display them ahead of affiliate sites no matter how much more content I have.

3 - Is it ever worthwhile to go after commercial keywords as mentioned in Q2, or should I stick with keywords like "reviews".

Thanks!
#competition #keyword #questions
  • Profile picture of the author mgreener
    Hi,

    You can compete for most terms if you are willing to put in the time and effort. If you can give the visitor great value for what they are searching for, that's a good start (doesn't matter if it's a shopping cart or not because they might be searching for information).
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  • Profile picture of the author mikegeller
    After 19 april update my understanding about ranking on google against keywords which are not related to your website is impossible. If you are trying to target those keywords which are not related to your website contents then no way they will get ranking on search engine.

    I think now backlinks have less weight as my or other well optimize website have very few backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author JayWiz
    Hi,

    1. Can you explain what do you mean by closer inspection? For me thousands links for BLP means red alert, better find other long tail keyword with little or no backlinks, possibly under 100 backlinks.

    2. Any keywords are fine but i recommend stay away from brand keywords, keywords that contains popular brand names like iphone, adidas, samsung, etc. If you use this kind keyword and buy exact match domain for it, you can be sued for copyright infringement.

    3. "Reviews" keyword usually used to build product or clickbank product. It's fine if you build using "reviews" keyword.

    Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author adamcm
      Hi all,

      Will try to explain this a bit more. Let's say I find that "golf drivers" is the niche I want to get into.

      Site #1 is a high authority golf store, we'll call it Golfing.com. They have 2000 backlinks, but i'd say 90% of them come from various interiour page within the golfing.com website. Do these count? i.e. they are on the same IP.

      The other thing I don't understand is informational vs product. I could write a 3,000 word article on golf drivers. But is that what the user really wants when they search for "golf drivers"? My guy says no, they want to see a wide variety of products to buy. So is it possible to get into niches like this by providing content but not being an e-commerce store?
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  • Profile picture of the author NewYorkerRocks
    Don't go after short keywords- but go after long tail keywords and the ppc is much cheaper for those as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author ozone100
      I recorded a video on this same topic yesterday: (can't post links yet but see if this works: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=t0UTcdR4K-U

      Basically you need a tool to analyze keyword competition. There are various ways to analyze keyword competition but the most effective way involves looking at the backlinks to the domain and URLs of the front page of Google. If you're not on the front page you're missing out on 95%+ of clicks in the SERPs. If you have the money I would recommend SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool but if you're on a budget (like me) you can use Learn2Rank's Keyword Inspector.
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  • Profile picture of the author JaynKeth
    I don't think it is as easy as looking into the number of links only. I have done quite a bit of research recently on my latest project and analyze the top 10 sites on page #1. The site that appear on page #1 is not necessary with the most number of backlinks. In fact, it also depends on the page rank as well as the relevancy of the sites that link to you.

    One strategy that I used is targeting for other keywords that has lesser competition. The once I get ranked on the lower competition keywords, then I will move on to the higher competition keywords.
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