STEP by STEP Keyword Research for Newbies | With AWESOME TIPS

There's multiple things you can look at in the SERPs for checking out competition, the first thing is, you have to decide which position you want. That might sound odd (everyone want's the 1st SERP position) but the #1 SERP position isn't always realistic. If you have a $50 budget to rank a keyword & Wikipedia owns the #1 position with Google Sitelinks, start looking at position #2 as being the competition (just an example). My point is you have to size up the competition & be realistic about it.

Looking at the SERP count (50k - 60k (example)) isn't going to do anything, those are not competition. The guy on position #397 in the SERPs isn't competition, even for tough keywords. Google loads up the SERPs just so it looks like they have a lot to pick from, most traffic stays on the 1st SERP page, maybe a few stragglers on the 2nd SERP page.

The first thing I do is open Chrome Incognito, search for my keyword, scan the 1st page of the SERPs. If I think I can take the first position on page #1 I change the SERP results view to 100, then click the search button & see how many pages the 1st position guy has. When you change the SERP results to 100, Google will group all the pages for each domain which makes it a little easier to quickly see how serious the competition is about the keyword.

Next check the backlinks (spyglass, etc...) on those comp. pages displayed on the 100 SERP results. A lot of times the comp. might only have 1 or 2 pages showing up in the SERPs for the target keyword.

Another thing you have to watch out for on the competition is folks that know what they're doing (keyword variations & relevant keywords). Example, I have one popular keyword in my niche that gets traffic with the keyword variation both forwards & backwards (ex: keyword-1 keyword-2) & (keyword-2 keyword-1), just something else to watch out for.

On relevant keywords it's a little harder to track down, my advice is look at the comp. pages Google Cache (text version) for the pages you dug up in the SERPs & the external anchor-text (spyglass, etc...).

Here lately I've been messing with my comp. (lol), I've been setting up small internal link wheels all running the same keyword anchor-text, usually around 10 internal pages per keyword. I start with the page I want to rank, then loop through about 10 pages pointing the same keyword anchor-text at the next page & so on, on the last page (ex: page #10) I point the same keyword anchor-text back at the target page that I'm actually trying to rank (close the loop). Also throw a few external links at the target page, depending on SERP competition.

The fun part about internal links is competition won't usually look at that.

Something else I should point out about tough competition keywords. Example, If the whole first page is tough competition (ex: car insurance) go ahead & build the car insurance page/s as If comp. doesn't exist. The reason you should do this is so Google can associate your pages/keywords with that niche/subject which can help later on with relevant keywords that you want to rank (ex: low cost auto insurance chicago). Google loves keyword relevancy.

Use internal links to pump up the relevant pages. Don't stuff keywords, less is more.