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Long Tails and The Serps

by coil101
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Just a quick question, i wanted to search for long tail key words for each artical on my blog,
but how many is to many results in google SE to not worry about like for eg:

The key word "dvd to divx converter" has 193,000 results is this to much compention, what is a good target to go for under 100,000 results or lower does any body know ?
#long #serps #tails
  • Profile picture of the author rainking
    is that search with or without quotes - if it's without quotes it will take some time, but it's doable - if it's without quotes - what's the total number without?
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    • Profile picture of the author ValleyArch
      Hi,

      Difficult to put a meaningful number to it, but I'd say if you search for the phrase using quote marks then aim for ones with less than 50,000 results.

      Sam
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      • Profile picture of the author JustaWizard
        My take based on my experience is that if you're adding pages to a site for SEO purposes, then the competition factor isn't an issue, you're creating those new pages based on any level of traffic, but based on proper keyword research.

        Competition for a competing phrase, then, is not really a relevant issue for new pages on a site. It is, however, a very important question when it comes to doing a new site based on that keyphrase.

        Sure, the new pages you make, if done on low competition keyphrases, have a better chance of ranking, but look at the big picture here as noted above.

        I did exactly that, and my site right this second ranks #5 in Google (broad match search, by the way) out of 12.9 million competing (and older) websites.

        Hope that helps! :-)

        David
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  • Profile picture of the author tummer
    You may be surprised to know that the total number of results from the SERPs does not even matter. Why? Because google only shows that number that tells you how many pages are being indexed. If you are looking at competition, the best is to type in 'allintitle:your keywords' on the google search box to see how many sites/pages are actually have the keyphrases on their title tag. This means that marketers are having the intention to compete and thus you can conclude your real competition.
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  • Profile picture of the author intelinside
    Yes, allintitle should give you more accurate results of your competition and the numbers will be well less than the broad search (in many cases) may be in thousands as compared to six figures in broad search.
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  • Profile picture of the author michael_nguyen
    Ok this how you should really analyze competition. Alot of people just say look at "allintitle" use quotes under 100000 etc
    This doesn't mean anything as it's only a number. What really matters is the competition on first page without quotes.

    You can have 100,000 "competing pages" results for a keyword but it doesn't mean they are competing, it might just mean they have that keyword on their page or site.

    You will need seoquake firefox plugin to help you do this.

    Type in your keyword without the quotes and if your first page competition has little backlinks and very low PR then you have a good keyword to go for.

    Damn I should make a tutorial post about this.
    Anyone interested ?
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    Yep, Michael's right. Too many people stop short in their keyword research. Yes, search with quotes to find competition that has the exact phrase you're looking at on their page. Yes, do an allintitle:"keyword" check. Also do an allinanchor:"keyword" check. The lower the numbers, the better.

    But ultimately, you'll want to size up the competition on the first page of SERPs for number of backlinks and PR. Use Yahoo Site Explorer to get a better idea of how many backlinks a domain has. Google's backlinks results are notoriously incomplete and misleading. Yahoo's probably isn't accurate either, but more so than Google's.

    John
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