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Keyword Competition & Search Volume - what are the right numbers?

by venkateshk
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey Everyone,

I have always wondered what exactly are the numbers related to the following terms. For any given keyword, I know there is no exact number but probably we could attribute a number range to each term.

1. High / Low / Medium Competitive Keywords
2. High / Low Search Volume

I have got different answers to these questions but for any given keyword there should be some kind of a benchmark figure or yardstick number that is considered when someone says a keyword has High, medium or low competition and the same holds good for Search Volume as well.

What is your number?

Cheers
Venkatesh
#competition #keyword #numbers #search #search engine #search volume #volume
  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Venkateshk,

    If you are referring to the competition number in the Google keyword tool, this number is indicative of the number of advertisers bidding for that keyword in relation to all keywords across Google. That number is not accurate in representing the competition for a given phrase in general for organic search.

    More on that here,

    Understanding Keyword Tool columns - AdWords Help

    best,

    Shawn
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  • Profile picture of the author Malcolm Thomas
    Originally Posted by venkateshk View Post

    Hey Everyone,

    I have always wondered what exactly are the numbers related to the following terms. For any given keyword, I know there is no exact number but probably we could attribute a number range to each term.

    1. High / Low / Medium Competitive Keywords
    2. High / Low Search Volume

    I have got different answers to these questions but for any given keyword there should be some kind of a benchmark figure or yardstick number that is considered when someone says a keyword has High, medium or low competition and the same holds good for Search Volume as well.

    What is your number?

    Cheers
    Venkatesh
    My general rule of thumb is I always target keywords with at least 1,000 monthly searches per month. Then I analyze the top 10 websites ranking for that keyword and determine if I can outrank them or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author imoffersonline
    keyword research such a difficult task .... but its help us a lot . if you do this work wisely then it helps you by lowering the seo budget , and gain traffic .

    i do for my lates cb product in health niche and guess what for 3 keyword traffic less than 100{exact} my site number 1 page and for number 1 ranking for 1 keyword. with in a week. just doing only a small fiverr campaign.
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  • Profile picture of the author venkateshk
    Thanks everyone for the inputs.

    It leads to the understanding that there could not be a fixed number that can be termed as High/Low/Medium competition for any given keyword and it is more an indicative number that depends on the number of advertisers competing for that particular keyword with respect to all the keywords in Google.

    Whereas for the search volume for my targeted keyword can I assign a number (such as 3000 or more) to classify a keyword as having a high search volume or is search volume also just an indicative figure?

    Venkatesh
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    • Profile picture of the author Alex Blades
      Here is a rule of thumb I use to check the competition, also like Malcolm Thomas said, I target keywords with atleast 1000 exact match searches.

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  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    There are a ton of varying opinions about KW research. Myself, I generally target low competition but BUYER oriented keywords. I don't even care if it gets less than a few hundred searches a month as long as it's laser targeted towards someone looking to buy the product.

    I'll also take a look at the top 10 and, more specifically, the top 3 competition. Don't worry about the total # of results for your keywords. Only worry about the 1st page. That's your real competition.
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    • Profile picture of the author theultimate1
      Originally Posted by JSProjects View Post

      There are a ton of varying opinions about KW research. Myself, I generally target low competition but BUYER oriented keywords. I don't even care if it gets less than a few hundred searches a month as long as it's laser targeted towards someone looking to buy the product.

      I'll also take a look at the top 10 and, more specifically, the top 3 competition. Don't worry about the total # of results for your keywords. Only worry about the 1st page. That's your real competition.
      And what factors will help you decide if you want to wage a war against the Top 3 (or even Top 10) results?
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      • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
        Originally Posted by theultimate1 View Post

        And what factors will help you decide if you want to wage a war against the Top 3 (or even Top 10) results?
        use something like SEOmoz Open Site Explorer to look at each of the top search results.

        Open Site Explorer

        It's free but you will need to register to get more than 5 searches.

        Look at the Page Authority. This is a measure based on the backlinking of a page (not content). It is an indication of how hard/easy it is to rank.

        I consider anything with a PA up to 35 as relatively low competition but you should test these numbers for yourself

        Use some common sense. If all the top sites have a high PA then it likely to be tough challenge.

        Of course we since Panda/Penguin we know that links alone do make rankings however in my experience it seems that links are still a very strong ranking factor but content or link/anchor abuse can get you penalized and will effectively kill off the link value.

        So in practice (as a default) you should be putting up pages with high quality content and not over SEO'd. When you do add links use good portion of high quality and diverse source links, do not mass spam with low quality links, ensure a good diversity of anchor text.

        In OSE you will also see a measure of "linking root domains". This is much more important than total links. However it gives no indication of the quality or strength of the links. This is why you should use PA as your competion measure

        Like everything in SEO these are indications and not absolutes
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        • Profile picture of the author venkateshk
          Originally Posted by Tony Marriott View Post

          use something like SEOmoz Open Site Explorer to look at each of the top search results.

          Open Site Explorer

          It's free but you will need to register to get more than 5 searches.

          Look at the Page Authority. This is a measure based on the backlinking of a page (not content). It is an indication of how hard/easy it is to rank.

          I consider anything with a PA up to 35 as relatively low competition but you should test these numbers for yourself

          Use some common sense. If all the top sites have a high PA then it likely to be tough challenge.

          In OSE you will also see a measure of "linking root domains". This is much more important than total links. However it gives no indication of the quality or strength of the links. This is why you should use PA as your competion measure

          Like everything in SEO these are indications and not absolutes
          Is there a way to check PA without any software, any online applications that can help with this? I didnt get 'OSE', would you mind expanding it please?

          Thanks
          Venkatesh
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  • Profile picture of the author MaryB
    I found this info in some notes I had taken a few years back from a successful blogger:

    Post articles with keywords/keyword phrases with under 40,000 competing websites (under 20,000 is ideal) with at least 1,000 searches per month.
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    • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
      Originally Posted by MaryB View Post

      I found this info in some notes I had taken a few years back from a successful blogger:

      Post articles with keywords/keyword phrases with under 40,000 competing websites (under 20,000 is ideal) with at least 1,000 searches per month.
      Why does any of that even matter when your true competition is the results on page 1? I've never understood why people are so concerned about the results on page 15, 20, 25, whatever. If a keywords has 500k overall results, but the top 3 is fairly weak, I'm going to go after it. Nothing else matters.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
      Originally Posted by venkateshk View Post

      Thanks everyone for the inputs.

      It leads to the understanding that there could not be a fixed number that can be termed as High/Low/Medium competition for any given keyword and it is more an indicative number that depends on the number of advertisers competing for that particular keyword with respect to all the keywords in Google.

      Whereas for the search volume for my targeted keyword can I assign a number (such as 3000 or more) to classify a keyword as having a high search volume or is search volume also just an indicative figure?

      Venkatesh
      The competition measure in Google Adwords keyword tool refers to the competing Adword advertisers.
      "Paid for" keywords and SEO keywords are completely different. You can make no assumption from GAKT as to the SEO competition of a keyword.

      Yes you can assess a keyword SEO competitiveness using other tools like SEOMoz that offer measures like domain authority and page authority that basically give a measure of how easy/difficult a keyword is rank (in very simple terms).

      Traditionally for SEO of small (sites, the ones Google now do not really like, but were built in their thousands over the last few years) an exact monthly search volume of 1000+ and PPC value of $1+, buyer keyword & low competition was the norm.

      There used to be an idea that under 30,000 returned results was low competition but that quickly faded as that area was targeted by everyone on the planet. It is now outdated and advice.

      As mentioned above your true competition is Google page 1.

      That's 10 sites (some may even say the top 4./5). Either way all the rest are irrelevant.

      Also note there are 4 pillars that support a good SEO keyword. Losing any one (like a wonky table) will see you fall over

      Good Search Volume (Google searches)
      Commercial Value (CPC estimate)
      Commercial Intent (buyer keyword, does it have a lot of Adwords ads)
      Competition (can you rank it, SEOmoz, check pagerank)

      Also consider, what would you consider as the most valuable keyword?
      (assuming all else being equal)
      200 exact matches a month and an estimated CPC of $10
      or
      1000 exact matches a month and an estimated CPC of $1

      The above is just a rough guide but you can get too bogged down in keyword research and never get your site running.

      Things have changed in SEO over the last year or so. The mini sites that would rank fast and long (and needed high search volume keywords as they didn't have many) no longer do so. Panda and Penguin etc. have changed the playing field and authority sites are now the new SEO.

      If you now consider that your site will have a lot of content (many pages) then suddenly you do not need to be so demanding from any one keyword.

      Targeting multiple keywords per page become realistic, ranking keyword much faster and easier because of the site authority means you can target higher competition keywords.

      Most traffic from authority sites come from long tail keywords that you probably didn't target anyway

      Yes it's still true that keyword research is important but if you aim for the longer term, build good content and authority into your sites then you will find that will overcome many of the poor keyword choices that would kill off a minisite before it even got started.


      Originally Posted by MaryB View Post

      I found this info in some notes I had taken a few years back from a successful blogger:

      Post articles with keywords/keyword phrases with under 40,000 competing websites (under 20,000 is ideal) with at least 1,000 searches per month.

      Like I said above, The number of competing websites is not a measure that is now valid for SEO competition. Your only competition are the sites returned on page one search results.
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      • Profile picture of the author venkateshk
        Thank you very much Tony Marriott, for taking time to leave a detailed reply. Appreciate it
        Originally Posted by Tony Marriott View Post

        The competition measure in Google Adwords keyword tool refers to the competing Adword advertisers.
        “Paid for” keywords and SEO keywords are completely different. You can make no assumption from GAKT as to the SEO competition of a keyword.

        Yes you can assess a keyword SEO competitiveness using other tools like SEOMoz that offer measures like domain authority and page authority that basically give a measure of how easy/difficult a keyword is rank (in very simple terms).

        Traditionally for SEO of small (sites, the ones Google now do not really like, but were built in their thousands over the last few years) an exact monthly search volume of 1000+ and PPC value of $1+, buyer keyword & low competition was the norm.

        There used to be an idea that under 30,000 returned results was low competition but that quickly faded as that area was targeted by everyone on the planet. It is now outdated and advice.

        As mentioned above your true competition is Google page 1.

        That's 10 sites (some may even say the top 4./5). Either way all the rest are irrelevant.

        Also note there are 4 pillars that support a good SEO keyword. Losing any one (like a wonky table) will see you fall over

        Good Search Volume (Google searches)
        Commercial Value (CPC estimate)
        Commercial Intent (buyer keyword, does it have a lot of Adwords ads)
        Competition (can you rank it, SEOmoz, check pagerank)

        Also consider, what would you consider as the most valuable keyword?
        (assuming all else being equal)
        200 exact matches a month and an estimated CPC of $10
        or
        1000 exact matches a month and an estimated CPC of $1

        The above is just a rough guide but you can get too bogged down in keyword research and never get your site running.

        Things have changed in SEO over the last year or so. The mini sites that would rank fast and long (and needed high search volume keywords as they didn't have many) no longer do so. Panda and Penguin etc. have changed the playing field and authority sites are now the new SEO.

        If you now consider that your site will have a lot of content (many pages) then suddenly you do not need to be so demanding from any one keyword.

        Targeting multiple keywords per page become realistic, ranking keyword much faster and easier because of the site authority means you can target higher competition keywords.

        Most traffic from authority sites come from long tail keywords that you probably didn't target anyway

        Yes it's still true that keyword research is important but if you aim for the longer term, build good content and authority into your sites then you will find that will overcome many of the poor keyword choices that would kill off a minisite before it even got started.

        Like I said above, The number of competing websites is not a measure that is now valid for SEO competition. Your only competition are the sites returned on page one search results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Greene
    If you are referring to the competition number in the Google keyword tool, this number is indicative of the number of advertisers bidding for that keyword in relation to all keywords across Google.
    This was a great information for me. I always used to think that the competition number there indicates the competition among the competitors within that keyword.
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