Another case study which will be a bit of a comparison to the manual link structure case study I am running in another thread.

I have another keyword I want to rank for that has similar competition levels, and a nice load of search traffic.

For this keyword I am using just BHW services so I can see:

1. If I can rank it in top #10
2. how quick it ranks compared to my link structure method.

Keyword is as follows:
60,000 local exact monthly searches
1.1billion search results
24million "keyword" results

Top ten competition:



Current position:
#43 (traffic travis).

The page I'm trying to rank is a subpage and contains a unique and informative article on the subject in question.

I am going to pick several Bhw services to start things off...

Gonna be tough.Looking forward to it.

I'd just like to point out that the number of "results" Google reports has absolutely 0 to do with competition. For starters there's not even that many results, it's only an extrapolation. If you go to the last page you'll see it only actually finds 200-900 or so pages. Even that means absolutely nothing.

The competition of a keyword is determined by the sites on page 1 to 5, most importantly page 1-2.

There isn't any "metric" that can determine competition. The only way to do it is, as a human, to look at the results.

As a human do they look relevant? Keyword in the title etc? Does the description seem to relate strongly to the keyword?

If so then there's pages targeted to those keywords.

It could still be an easy keyword, that in its self doesn't tell us much.

Next I look at the type of results. Are there any authority sites for the broader niche? Are there wikipedia pages, are there emds.

If there are authority sites, wikipedia pages and other major sites highly targeted to the keyword then it's high competition.

If the above are only loosely targeted to the pages then it's medium, and you can beat them with a page that's not as strong, but more relevant.

Next, if all you see is a bunch of emds for the keyword, mini-authority type sites for the broader niche(if you're targeting say best diet for 2012 then you might see something like bestdietreviews.com/best-diet-2012), then it's anything from low to medium competition.

From there you have a look at the domain age and backlink profile for those sites to see what you're up against.

If you see a bunch of youtube videos, squidoo lenses, blogger blogs and general web 2.0 stuff then it's definitely a low competition keyword that you can smash with a good emd and a few backlinks.


I see SO many people talk about how they're going for a "medium comp" with X results, when really you may as well just write a bunch of competition levels on a few bits of paper, pop them in a hat and pick one at random.

Competition analysis is most definitely 100% an art. There's very little science to it, which is why there's no programs that can do anything more than give you a loose indication of the competition of a keyword. When doing keyword research the best thing any keyword analysis tool can do is check for emds, as that's the best indication for how many other people are targeting it.

For that keyword there's a bunch of them with a dmoz listing. That alone tells us there's some strong sites in there. Since some of them have the keyword in the url, title and desc there's at least a handful of them targeted for the keyword, one of which has a dmoz listing.

I can't see you getting anywhere except maybe with the spam gone wild, providing you have an aged domain. :-)

Thanks for the info blueturtle
I thought search results and quoted search results gave a rough idea of how many sites were optimized for the keyword.

OK, in the top ten there are:
5 authority sites (Wikipedia, national newspaper 2 regulatory bodys and yahoo).
2 exact match domains
1 plural of exact match domain
2 other sites that I compete with

Another one I will be following David!

BTW I think someone else started a thread similar maybe a month ago, however I have not seen it pop up at all.

I know you will keep it going though.

That's freaking tough competition man. 700k backlinks?

Will be tough be most things are doable in life if you know how. Good luck and please post the services you use.

I know the competition is tough. It will be interesting to give it a go though
There is another very similar keyword: "addition keyword" I am ranking #9 for that and 6 of the same sites (including the 1 with 700k) are in the top ten with me

Originally Posted by davids355

I know the competition is tough. It will be interesting to give it a go though
There is another very similar keyword: "addition keyword" I am ranking #9 for that and 6 of the same sites (including the 1 with 700k) are in the top ten with me

And that is with no SEO done at all for the page.

This will be very tough but I will be following it closely!!! Keep us posted often and Good Luck!

You can rank for this High Competitive Keyword all you need a High Quality Backlinks along with patience and you will surely Rank in the 1st page of Google..
Best of luck..
Post the services you use..

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

thats a good point, you have to think in terms of long term investment, also the cost and time of getting there.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

Depends on the words and the method you use to monetize. For instance if you are targeting a business niche and you land on the 1st page and see people paying adwords for the same KW you may be able to convince them that either buying your site or hiring you for SEO would be a good investment.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

Good point, I was thinking about that.
I estimate 100 visitors a day would be worth $300-$400 per month for me in adsense, lots more if I get CPA going - my goal is to get involved in a custom CPA agreement with the biggest Uk retailer in my industry, at the moment we are too small to interest them.

That's partly why I'm going for big keywords.

Having said that I am a noob compared to most here, so it's sort of a learning curve

Didn't even know what keyword research was 6 months ago

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

I think it partly depends on how much potential he has for earnings from the visitors he gets. If we are talking about adsense then it might not be worth the effort. But if he is monetizing with affiliate commissions that are based on a percentage of the sale (and if his site is geared toward buyers, not just information seekers) it could be worth it.

You can't just look at the puzzle from one perspective, you have to take into consideration the monetization of the visitors you can get.

Originally Posted by davids355

Thanks for the info blueturtle
I thought search results and quoted search results gave a rough idea of how many sites were optimized for the keyword.

OK, in the top ten there are:
5 authority sites (Wikipedia, national newspaper 2 regulatory bodys and yahoo).
2 exact match domains
1 plural of exact match domain
2 other sites that I compete with

You're welcome.

Yeah, the quoted search results is really just some sort of extrapolation they make based on some unknown factors. There's usually not many highly targeted pages for a keyword unless it's very broad, but for broad pages it's hard to be "highly targeted" anyway.

If there's a couple of emds in there then that's a good sign that it's not too crazy. If those strong sites are newspapers then that's also good, as newspapers are generally very broad and wouldn't compete with a strong authority site.

Although a newspaper is a sort of 'authority site'. It's more of an authority on general things. What you want to look out for are authority sites in the exact niche. Those general authority sites are ranking more because they're strong, rather than hugely relevant.

You can beat them by being hugely relevant, and not quite so strong. :-) Ranking is a factor of both relevancy and strength, a distinction a lot fail to make and one that's crucial for determining competition and how you should approach getting on page 1.

The regulatory bodies are tough ones. Who's sitting where exactly?

ie 1) regulatory body 1. 2) wikipedia. 3) newspaper1 and so on..

That'll give us an idea of how relevance of the sites to the keyword. If wikipedia and the newspapers sitting at in the top 3 then they'll be quite relevant to the keyword which will make them hard to beat.

If the regulatory bodies are 1-2 with wiki/newspapers 3-5, and the rest 5-10 then it means you can get number 3-5 by being extremely relevant(on page seo with strong lsi keywords + keyword in anchor text with lsi keywords there too + backlinks from relevant sites), and of course still having some good link juice/power, but with your increased relevancy you won't need as much "power/juice" as wikipedia/newspapers.

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

You're welcome.

Yeah, the quoted search results is really just some sort of extrapolation they make based on some unknown factors. There's usually not many highly targeted pages for a keyword unless it's very broad, but for broad pages it's hard to be "highly targeted" anyway.

If there's a couple of emds in there then that's a good sign that it's not too crazy. If those strong sites are newspapers then that's also good, as newspapers are generally very broad and wouldn't compete with a strong authority site.

Although a newspaper is a sort of 'authority site'. It's more of an authority on general things. What you want to look out for are authority sites in the exact niche. Those general authority sites are ranking more because they're strong, rather than hugely relevant.

You can beat them by being hugely relevant, and not quite so strong. :-) Ranking is a factor of both relevancy and strength, a distinction a lot fail to make and one that's crucial for determining competition and how you should approach getting on page 1.

The regulatory bodies are tough ones. Who's sitting where exactly?

ie 1) regulatory body 1. 2) wikipedia. 3) newspaper1 and so on..

That'll give us an idea of how relevance of the sites to the keyword. If wikipedia and the newspapers sitting at in the top 3 then they'll be quite relevant to the keyword which will make them hard to beat.

If the regulatory bodies are 1-2 with wiki/newspapers 3-5, and the rest 5-10 then it means you can get number 3-5 by being extremely relevant(on page seo with strong lsi keywords + keyword in anchor text with lsi keywords there too + backlinks from relevant sites), and of course still having some good link juice/power, but with your increased relevancy you won't need as much "power/juice" as wikipedia/newspapers.

In order:

Regulatory body
Competitor
Emd
Competitor
Yahoo
Emd
Newspaper
Regulatory body
Emd
Wikipedia

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

If you're not ranking, or don't have a chance of ranking #1 or #2, you're wasting your time. I'd really look at the top 3 rankings and see if you have any chance to beat them before wasting time on this.

60,000 exacts is really not as good as it sounds. That's 2,000 searches per day, meaning if you're #1 you'll get about 800-1000 visitors a day, and if you're #2, you'll probably get anywhere from 250-500 visitors a day. Is that really worth it?
I have:
#7 ranking for 650,000+ exact term per month, gets under 1000 visitors a day.
#1 for 150,000+ exact, gets just over 1,000 visitors, should be a lot more.
#2 for 165,000 exact
#3 for a different 165,000 exact
#4 for a 110,000 exact
#5 and #6 for another 165,000 exact

For the time, money and effort to get them there, it's really not worth it. You're better off going for a 8000-10000 exact term, where you know you can get #1. Then move on to similar keywords.

Outside the top 3 (top 2 even) for a 60,000 exact keyword, you'll probably get under 100 visitors a day.

It all just depends on how much money you can make out of each unique. You can make a lot of money out of 50 uniques a day if you're shit hot at copywriting.

Most people don't spend ANY time reading about copywriting and getting sales in general. Everyone just focuses on traffic and all the traffic in the world(well, maybe with *all* of it you would won't make you money if you can't convert.

It does of course depend on the keyword, but people are people. If you've got people coming to your site you can make money out of them, no matter what. Anyone can make money out of highly commercial, targeted searches, but it's the good copywriters that can make money out of general traffic, or people who weren't looking to buy.

It's not that hard either. People are always potential sales, anywhere, anytime. That's how the high street shops make their money. People don't sit at home writing a list of things they're going
to buy, they just head out for a day at the shops, then end up seeing a ton of stuff they 'want' or 'need'.


1000+ uniques a day is huge. If you're not making a good living from that then you need to start studying the top copywriters.

Originally Posted by Getwhatchuwant

Depends on the words and the method you use to monetize. For instance if you are targeting a business niche and you land on the 1st page and see people paying adwords for the same KW you may be able to convince them that either buying your site or hiring you for SEO would be a good investment.

Just learn to sell and you'll never think of running an SEO company or selling your site to anyone again. Running an SEO company or selling a site is small money compared to what you can make if you can convert people on your pages yourself. You'll also do far less work. Once you've setup the page you can hit the beach and sip mojitos :-) Running an SEO company is an on-going full time job, where the more clients you have the more work you need to do. You can hire employees, but it's still much more work/time/hassle than just doing an amazing landing page and converting people directly into $$$.

Agree with the above definitely. Our traffic does convert, we sell some physical products as well, and they sell pretty well to our current visitors.

Have been thinking about hiring someone specifically for sales strategy though - it's something I'm terrible at

Anyway, got to try these things - If it fails then hopefully I'll still learn something

i think this keyword willn't hard trust me
use ahrefs.com to see what top 10 have anchor text keyword target.
you must build link with anchor than total on top 10 website have will get a good result
trust me LOL :P

Yes, how much money can be made of course is factored in, but you all seem to have missed the whole point of my post.

From the looks of this term even, you're more than likely not only going to be more successful at ranking, but ranking sooner, and making money sooner, if you target one of it's smaller keywords.

Sure if I can rank for "loans" and get to #5 and get a few hundred visitors a day, it's going to pay off. But is it going to be easy to get there? Are a few BHW services going to get me there? No.

But if you go after "loans in Nevada"(just made it up), you're going to be targeting less searches, but much easier to rank #1, and a lot quicker. Than you move on to "loans in California". Next thing you know you have 5-10 keywords ranking #1-#2 and they're brining in more traffic than "loans" would.

Again, you rank say #5 for the OP's keyword, that's 2000 searches per day, #1 will get about 40-50% of that. #5 is probably going to get 100 visitors a day, maybe 200 at most. And if you look at competition getting to #5 isn't going to be easy either.
You go after a keyword that's 9,000 searches per month, that's 300 searches per day. You're more than likely going to get to #1 a lot easier than you'll probably get to even #5 of the main keyword.

It's about dominating the WHOLE niche, starting from the outside,and making your way to main piece.

My main niche is 165k exacts (where I'm ranking #5 and #6 and actually #9).
But I have 100+ EMDs targetting keywords with 1000-12000 exact searched terms per month. A good chunk of them are #1 for their keyword. Soon I will be linking these to the main site, to be pushing it to #1 for the main niche. I'm trying to dominate the whole niche.

One more thing to think about. Assuming you have a quality site, and you're ranking #1 for a smaller site, you're more than likely to get real organic links from other sites, rather than if you are #5. Most webmasters, like searchers, will look at the first couple sites if they want to reference something.

Already rank top 3 for slot of small terms. Just tying something big for a new challenge, but I do take your point.

If nothing else, if I get stuck at say #15, then at least I can apply the same technique to a less competitive keyword and have a good idea that I can rank

Originally Posted by davids355

In order:

Regulatory body
Competitor
Emd
Competitor
Yahoo
Emd
Newspaper
Regulatory body
Emd
Wikipedia

#1 spot is virtually impossible. A regulatory body with 17k gov/edu backlinks and almost 4 mil regular backlinks which are going to be strong ones. It also has a dmoz and a yahoo listing. lol is all I can say there. It just doesn't get any stronger than that. :-)

#2 has a dmoz, so it's going to be quality, and a quality site with that many backlinks means a lot of them are going to be good, strong, trustworthy backlinks. (Also, on your MS snapshot #2 has the keyword in the url, although I guess it's not an emd, just the competitor with the keyword in the title)

On your MS snapshot the emd is #4 btw, so I'll assume #3 is a competitor.

Possible to get #3 or #4, as the RDD is lower there and there's no dmoz/yahoo listing. They're still probably fairly strong, but I'd imagine there's a lot more spammy backlinks, but with a 4 and 12 year old domain they can get away with that.

#5 there is obviously very strong, but it's not any higher than #5 because it won't be considered as relevant or authoritative if it's a news story. News stories aren't considered an authority for a specific keyword since they are just news stories, which are more about telling the reader what's going on at a superficial level, rather than providing them with strong factual information.

#6 on your MS snapshot definitely isn't the emd, so I'm guessing it's a newspaper. The RDD seems fairly low for a newspaper. It also doesn't have the keyword anywhere in the title/desc. Seems like a wildcard.

#7 On your MS snapshot this has a keyword in the title, so I'm guessing this is the emd you've listed as being at 6 above. An interesting one because it has high RDD, a lot of backlinks, it's 13 years old and it has both a dmoz and yahoo listing. Very bizarre.. On paper that seems extremely strong.



It seems like you could take #3 or #4 with a fair bit of effort, but I don't understand why such a strong, and seemingly relevant domain sits at #7. The only way I see you taking #3-#4 is if you created more content and aimed to bring your site closer to an authority on the subject.

At a push you might take #9-#10 as #9 is quite weak and wikipedia at #10 will be too general compared with a targeted article, especially an lsi one.


I'm looking forward to seeing how your page progresses up the rankings.

On the plus side I think this is the most engagement I've had yet on a thread

Fair enough. Good luck.

Originally Posted by jon_xx_x

From the looks of this term even, you're more than likely not only going to be more successful at ranking, but ranking sooner, and making money sooner, if you target one of it's smaller keywords.

Indeed, that point was overlooked. I totally agree, and when trying to make money I always go for lots of longtails since it's easier to bring in traffic from 25 longtails than it is 1 big keyword.

David's case study is more just about experimentation and learning though in this case.

Yes it is about experimentation I guess.

There is the long tail version that I mentioned. I'm #9 and there's between 4k-8k locals, can't remember. So I guess from what your saying that might be a better choice.

But I do have Seo services running for lots of keywords already, so rather than a refined tactic this is more of an experiment. I do concede that long-tails would be a wiser choice

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

Just learn to sell and you'll never think of running an SEO company or selling your site to anyone again. Running an SEO company or selling a site is small money compared to what you can make if you can convert people on your pages yourself. You'll also do far less work. Once you've setup the page you can hit the beach and sip mojitos :-) Running an SEO company is an on-going full time job, where the more clients you have the more work you need to do. You can hire employees, but it's still much more work/time/hassle than just doing an amazing landing page and converting people directly into $$$.

Point well taken and for someome who has done very well with face to face selling, online has been a whole new beast for me. I feel I am dlling well for ranking low/medium comp kw's but my ability to land commissions through sales or generate cpa $'s is not working for me. Something just hasn't "clicked" yet. On the other hand I don't find doing seo work to be that time consuming with all the resources available and I also don't think flipping a bussiness site for $xxxx to be a bad investment for 2 weeks to a months time. I do get your point though, getting $xxxx every month on autopilot for each of 5 or 6 sites every month is a better situation most of the time.

Originally Posted by Getwhatchuwant

Point well taken and for someome who has done very well with face to face selling, online has been a whole new beast for me. I feel I am dlling well for ranking low/medium comp kw's but my ability to land commissions through sales or generate cpa $'s is not working for me. Something just hasn't "clicked" yet. On the other hand I don't find doing seo work to be that time consuming with all the resources available and I also don't think flipping a bussiness site for $xxxx to be a bad investment for 2 weeks to a months time. I do get your point though, getting $xxxx every month on autopilot for each of 5 or 6 sites every month is a better situation most of the time.

I know it's probably obvious but I found using CPA you have to find the exact offer for your visitors.

I have tried CPA offers in the similar area and got nothing. I think it's about knowing your visitors.

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

#1 spot is virtually impossible. A regulatory body with 17k gov/edu backlinks and almost 4 mil regular backlinks which are going to be strong ones. It also has a dmoz and a yahoo listing. lol is all I can say there. It just doesn't get any stronger than that. :-)

#2 has a dmoz, so it's going to be quality, and a quality site with that many backlinks means a lot of them are going to be good, strong, trustworthy backlinks. (Also, on your MS snapshot #2 has the keyword in the url, although I guess it's not an emd, just the competitor with the keyword in the title)

On your MS snapshot the emd is #4 btw, so I'll assume #3 is a competitor.

Possible to get #3 or #4, as the RDD is lower there and there's no dmoz/yahoo listing. They're still probably fairly strong, but I'd imagine there's a lot more spammy backlinks, but with a 4 and 12 year old domain they can get away with that.

#5 there is obviously very strong, but it's not any higher than #5 because it won't be considered as relevant or authoritative if it's a news story. News stories aren't considered an authority for a specific keyword since they are just news stories, which are more about telling the reader what's going on at a superficial level, rather than providing them with strong factual information.

#6 on your MS snapshot definitely isn't the emd, so I'm guessing it's a newspaper. The RDD seems fairly low for a newspaper. It also doesn't have the keyword anywhere in the title/desc. Seems like a wildcard.

#7 On your MS snapshot this has a keyword in the title, so I'm guessing this is the emd you've listed as being at 6 above. An interesting one because it has high RDD, a lot of backlinks, it's 13 years old and it has both a dmoz and yahoo listing. Very bizarre.. On paper that seems extremely strong.



It seems like you could take #3 or #4 with a fair bit of effort, but I don't understand why such a strong, and seemingly relevant domain sits at #7. The only way I see you taking #3-#4 is if you created more content and aimed to bring your site closer to an authority on the subject.

At a push you might take #9-#10 as #9 is quite weak and wikipedia at #10 will be too general compared with a targeted article, especially an lsi one.


I'm looking forward to seeing how your page progresses up the rankings.

Thats an excellent breakdown and analysis of the competition, i would love you to take a look at something similar for me, I have a 60k keyword which I have taken from position 56 to position 6 in just over 12 weeks, but I am struggling to move it any higher and need some advice on where to go next and how to push it top 3

Good luck, but it does look like an extremely competitive keyword, especially with that site that has 17k .edu backlinks.

What services are you planning on using from BHW? I'd branch out a little than just use BHW alone..

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

#1 spot is virtually impossible. A regulatory body with 17k gov/edu backlinks and almost 4 mil regular backlinks which are going to be strong ones. It also has a dmoz and a yahoo listing. lol is all I can say there. It just doesn't get any stronger than that. :-)

#2 has a dmoz, so it's going to be quality, and a quality site with that many backlinks means a lot of them are going to be good, strong, trustworthy backlinks. (Also, on your MS snapshot #2 has the keyword in the url, although I guess it's not an emd, just the competitor with the keyword in the title)

On your MS snapshot the emd is #4 btw, so I'll assume #3 is a competitor.

Possible to get #3 or #4, as the RDD is lower there and there's no dmoz/yahoo listing. They're still probably fairly strong, but I'd imagine there's a lot more spammy backlinks, but with a 4 and 12 year old domain they can get away with that.

#5 there is obviously very strong, but it's not any higher than #5 because it won't be considered as relevant or authoritative if it's a news story. News stories aren't considered an authority for a specific keyword since they are just news stories, which are more about telling the reader what's going on at a superficial level, rather than providing them with strong factual information.

#6 on your MS snapshot definitely isn't the emd, so I'm guessing it's a newspaper. The RDD seems fairly low for a newspaper. It also doesn't have the keyword anywhere in the title/desc. Seems like a wildcard.

#7 On your MS snapshot this has a keyword in the title, so I'm guessing this is the emd you've listed as being at 6 above. An interesting one because it has high RDD, a lot of backlinks, it's 13 years old and it has both a dmoz and yahoo listing. Very bizarre.. On paper that seems extremely strong.



It seems like you could take #3 or #4 with a fair bit of effort, but I don't understand why such a strong, and seemingly relevant domain sits at #7. The only way I see you taking #3-#4 is if you created more content and aimed to bring your site closer to an authority on the subject.

At a push you might take #9-#10 as #9 is quite weak and wikipedia at #10 will be too general compared with a targeted article, especially an lsi one.


I'm looking forward to seeing how your page progresses up the rankings.

Thanks to Elvis for flagging this post, I nearly missed it

BlueTurtle that's a wicked breakdown thanks!!!
Sorry about the mixed results - although I used MS I done my breakdown direct from google so I guess there's some slight variations!

Your post has made a lot more sense out of the info MS provides though : thanks!!

I will say a few things though -
The regulatory sites are authorities in the general niche and not really targeted at all to the keyword.

The EMDs are quite authoritative EMDs not just 5 page sites.

The newspaper is not an article but a niche subdomain on a newspaper site but for the overall niche, not targeted.

My page will be re-written to become more comprehensive, the content is written by an industry professional so should be very high quality and 100% unique, hopefully that will help.

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

It all just depends on how much money you can make out of each unique. You can make a lot of money out of 50 uniques a day if you're shit hot at copywriting.

Is there any guide/article about what copywriting is?

Originally Posted by gz_cp

Is there any guide/article about what copywriting is?

There's lots of material and courses out there. It has to be something you study like you'd study physics if you want to become good, although some people are naturally gifted, but anyone can learn to become a master of guiding others' emotions with words.

Copywriting is taking someone on a journey to where you want them to be so they'll purchase what you're selling. If they're not in the right place then they won't buy and it's your job to take them to that sweet-spot where they'll be begging you to buy.


I don't want to share all my copywriting secrets, but I'll point you towards an amazing book that by its self if studied properly will transform your ability to sell on web pages, email, ads or direct mail.


Eugene Schwartz - The Brilliance Breakthough

It's an old book from 1994, so it won't be all that easy to track down, but if you manage to track it down it'll change your life.

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

Eugene Schwartz - The Brilliance Breakthough

It's an old book from 1994, so it won't be all that easy to track down, but if you manage to track it down it'll change your life.

This?

h**p://www.scribd.com/doc/58102300/The-Brilliance-Breakthrough-Gene-Schwartz

Originally Posted by elvis1973

This?

h**p://www.scribd.com/doc/58102300/The-Brilliance-Breakthrough-Gene-Schwartz

Yup, that's the one. Good job. +rep

Originally Posted by BlueTurtle

Yup, that's the one. Good job. +rep

Il look it up. No amazon link?

damm.. thats what I call high competition :O

subscribed ^^

keep us updated please. ehehe

also can you tell me what services are you buying and in what order?

Originally Posted by davids355

Il look it up. No amazon link?

http://www.amazon.com/Brilliance-Bre.../dp/0963868403, but it's apparently out of print.

Looks like an interesting book. Will have to keep a look out for a physical copy: can't read on the computer.

Originally Posted by thegoods

damm.. thats what I call high competition :O

subscribed ^^

keep us updated please. ehehe

also can you tell me what services are you buying and in what order?

Ya still looking through services at the moment.

Thinking about Deadly SEO, BTB linkpush SEO Lovers manual blog commenting and maybe a few others.

Will have definitive list in the next few days though

I just want to outline that mr "BlueTurtle" here have got some pretty nice points here :-)
well contributed!

UnBhaxor

Originally Posted by davids355

Looks like an interesting book. Will have to keep a look out for a physical copy: can't read on the computer.

Print it off :-)