Need help with SEO numbers - KeyWord Popularity vs Competing Pages?

[jcorkern]

There area bunch of steps that would do that, and this is where the allintitle/content and url come into play. Since links from pages with your targeted keywords in the title/content and url carry more weight this is a factor you need to look at. Then the PR of the page the links come from.

How many outbound links are on the page where your link is affects the value also. Then the anchor text, which is very important. IP addresses are also a factor, the more links from any IP adress makes the links less valuable.

You can do this with a pen and paper checking out the comps backlings and visiting the pages they have links from, or, if you are planning on this being you main source of income, invest in some SEO software. It will be money well spent.

 

[djbaxter]

The total # of competing pages is not the best way to evaluate KW volume, as those are pages that just happen to mention the KW anywhere on the page and may not be pages that are actually very hard to compete with. It also may include lots of pages that arent even about your niche directly.

So once you think you have a good key phrase search for Key phrase

Then check for "Key phrase" in quotes which will only show pages with that specific phrase

then check allintitle: "key phrase" which only shows pages that have the keywords in the title of the page which gives you a better idea of actual competition.



Now you can look at the top listings in the allintitle search to see what they are doing to get up high and see if it would be hard to beat them. Check to see if the top listing are dominated by big authority sites or smart small marketers and affiliates that have lots of links or what. Sometimes you can find a niche that appears to have some competition but once you drill down and look you can see that there really isn't very stiff competition.

HERE'S a great example of a key phrase someone used as an example in a marketing video I watched for some product they were trying to sell.

canon G7 camera (broad match) 1.4 million competing pages (looks too competitive at 1st glance.)
canon G7 camera - Google Search

He drilled down with his KW tool to find "canon G7 price" (in quotes) only 145 competing pages. HE WAS ABLE TO GET IN THE #2 SPOT with a little SQUIDOO PAGE!

Here's the search page:
"canon G7 price" - Google Search

Here's his little Squidoo page which comes up #2 for me.
Canon G7 Price on Squidoo

Excellent summary!

I do think a good basic starting place is to check out the compeition pages including a view source on those pages to see what they're doing and obtain hints for how you might modify your own pages to rank better. This won't necessarily give you your best keywords, since ranking is dependent on so many factors these days in all search engines, but it may lead you to havd a look at components that you're not currently utilizing.

I haven't explored Squidoo at all as yet but your post would indicate that perhaps I should take a look at it...

 

[matthewferry]

It could be targetted it could be the density of the competitors keywords

Hi All,

I found a few keywords that with some programs say it gets searched 50,000 a month and google gives 4,000,000 search results.

Is this something I could target or is it being targetted by to many already?

Kind Regards,

K. Koopman

 

[chyneclicks]

It could be targetted it could be the density of the competitors keywords

Yes that is right. It could always be the density of the competitors keyword. As always whenever I search for a certain keywords and it brings in less than 30 thousand results I dig it in and go compete for that keyword.

 

[DMCyrus]

Since you are so hugry for knowledge, I wanted to share some videos I just watched. One of these videos was the one I referred to in the Canon example.

Its trying to sell a fairly new product called Micro Niche Finder.
I'm not suggesting you buy it, although I have read pretty good reviews.

Just watch the videos because it will give you some great insight and most of
what it shows could be done manually, it would just take more elbow grease.

[link removed so I could post this] Watch the very top video just to get an idea, [link removed so I could post this]Micro Niche Fi
then if you learn something from that and want to learn more watch the others.

Thanks Linda, for all your great posts. Looks like I may learn a lot here. Hopefully without any information overload, which I tend to do from time to time.

 

[tbarntsen]

wow , very impressive LINDA
and at least i know the total # of competing pages does equal KW volume.
thanx indeed

 

[dieseldave]

is there any tool can help me to get that data??

i mean how to judge the competiting page ?

 

[Toucan-marketing]

As a rule of thumb for me anything with a total search volume of 10 million results or less on Google can be dominated with a little SEO.

Yes, I agree, for you. What is little SEO for you that might be a big job for others. To decide if you can dominate the keyword you have to take the following into consideration, too:

See if there are Adwords ads on the sidebar and the top of the listings (if yes there is money in the keyword.)
Do an exact match search with " -s
If you have under 200.000 results and there are articles ranking at page one, or PR0 pages, it will be easy peasy. If there are only authority sites in the first page, you don't really have much chance.
Hope this helps.

 

[ugniesdebesys]

At first check, how and what is your pages indexed: I use w w w.programva.com/en/compare-search-engines comparison tool

next enter search phrase:
site:w w w.yourdomain.com

or related:

related:w w w.yourdomain.com
or find similar page and explore, where is it advertising.

Here is formula
w w w.programva.com/en/seo-tips-and-tricks
How to count calculate google pagerank

 

[Mike22]

As a rule of thumb for me anything with a total search volume of 10 million results or less on Google can be dominated with a little SEO.

You must rule the SEO world than because there are some small niches and even those small niches have many competitive websites.

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Don't forget! You need to be relevant

You must rule the SEO world than because there are some small niches and even those small niches have many competitive websites.

Although I do agree that SEO is a numbers' game, you also have to consider how relevant the keywords are to your website. For example you can get loads of visitors and a high SERP if people think they cannot relate to your content and do not think it is relevant to the keyword. So narrow your keywords and can dominate the micro-niche easier, and Google will like you too, for being relevant.
(Just a side note...)

 

[ConnorBringas]

SEO is annoying and time consuming..but the payoff is big in the long run. The more competitive the keyword..the longer itll take to rise to the top

 

[djbaxter]

Some people actually like it...

 

[Saabs]

Linda, what I normally do is select keywords with the highest number of searches (no matter how many competing pages) using the Google KEyword External Tool and then verify these keywords using Google Insights

thank you for your tip, now I know better, I mean another recipe added to my SEO menu

thanks

 

[ConnorBringas]

Linda, what I normally do is select keywords with the highest number of searches (no matter how many competing pages) using the Google KEyword External Tool and then verify these keywords using Google Insights

thank you for your tip, now I know better, I mean another recipe added to my SEO menu

thanks

Well its a good idea to do that for the broad keywords you want to rank for in the long term. However, rank for long tail keywords so you can see faster results..which will also help your broad keyword efforts at the same time.
For example if you wanted to rank for puppy chow..you would aim to rank for something like puppy chow food i love or something...so you hit long tail and broad at the same time

 

[Toucan-marketing]

I use a really good tool for analyzing the competition, shows PR, backlinks etc... I decide on that too.

 

[jzhao1688]

It's no use having #2 or even #1 ranking on google by searching with quotes, because when people do a real google search they don't use quotes?

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Sure but exact match is more relevant for Google than not exact. However a PR 6 not exact match search result is going to overrank a PR 0 exact match result for sure. And you have to have a look at what is the title tag of the competing sites, too. If many of them have the exact phrase and you do not, it will be hard to beat them.

 

[freight guy]

Also use long tail keywords, it will help you with ranking as well

 

[jmwidmer]

I started off focusing on 30,000 in the challenge last year and had good success. I now am focusing on anything under 1,000,000 competing pages (exact). With great on page and off page SEO you can dominate 1st page of google. Good luck!