Help i evaluating the competition

[SamiMM]

Hi BHW,

I'm new here, also new to IM.
I have been reading through some threads and some journeys and was thinking of starting my own.

I have decided starting with BlueMatter's "$100 a Day In Adsense From 1 Blog" Method.

Unfortunately the thread is closed and i can't ask questions there and that's the reason i came here to you guys.

So what i have done is :
- Go to DMOZ and check for some niche ideas about the stuff i like the most
- Go to forums and get more ideas
- Go to Google Keyword Planner and check for the search volume and CPC estimation the competition.
- Start checking for the keyword with higher CPC and check how many resuslts is it there on Google when i look for he "Keyword"
- I decided following the work on keywords/niches with less than 500k results in Google.


And then comes the hard part, where i need to EVALUATE THE COMPETITION, and that means :
- How many websites where my keyword doesn't match in the title in the 1st page
- How many domains less than 2 years old in the first page
- How many domains with a PR less than 4.



So here are my questions :

1 - To check for the first page results title match, should i search for "Keyword" or should i search for Keyword ???
I personally think it's the second option as it's there where we want to rank.

2- How to check for domain age ??/ since SEOQUAKE is showing "Age : error" for most of the domains.

3- How to check for the PR ??? Seoquake doesn't show any PR information. Also read somewhere that the PR is dead, google isn't using the PR anymore. Well, in case it's still alive, how to check for it ( for free if possible ).

in case the PR is really dead, based on which indicator do you guys evaluate the competition and know if it;s possible to rank next to those websites or no.


Thanks in advance for the answers.

Sami.

 

[validseo]

Hi BHW,
1 - To check for the first page results title match, should i search for "Keyword" or should i search for Keyword ???
I personally think it's the second option as it's there where we want to rank.

Just Keyword... note the leading matches too (where the title begins with the search term)

2- How to check for domain age ??/ since SEOQUAKE is showing "Age : error" for most of the domains.

Google wayback machine and look up the earliest indexed site. You want to see how it was used in the past too. It is a misconception that domain age is a factor... it is not... the length of time a site has been indexed in Google however is a factor which is why domain age correlates but is not causal. Wayback machine is best way to determine when a domain had a webpage hosted.

3- How to check for the PR ??? Seoquake doesn't show any PR information. Also read somewhere that the PR is dead, google isn't using the PR anymore. Well, in case it's still alive, how to check for it ( for free if possible ).

Google doesnt share page rank anymore. PR is a "powers of ten" scale. If you find a decent estimation of the number of backlinks a site has just take the log of that number to estimate page rank. This will at least give you a way to compare the relative PR of websites assuming all their links are accepted by Google.

 

[SamiMM]

Just Keyword... note the leading matches too (where the title begins with the search term)


Google wayback machine and look up the earliest indexed site. You want to see how it was used in the past too. It is a misconception that domain age is a factor... it is not... the length of time a site has been indexed in Google however is a factor which is why domain age correlates but is not causal. Wayback machine is best way to determine when a domain had a webpage hosted.


Google doesnt share page rank anymore. PR is a "powers of ten" scale. If you find a decent estimation of the number of backlinks a site has just take the log of that number to estimate page rank. This will at least give you a way to compare the relative PR of websites assuming all their links are accepted by Google.

I have heard about some PA and DA that helps "calculating" the competition .. but not much information that explains the whole process to newbies.

And what parameters do you find best, if i want to rank a website in 3 months with less than 500k "keyword" search results, 5k local search/month and $2 CPC ? ( is this a good keyword to work on ? )
Parameters are the 1st page domains age, exact match in the title & "PR" of the competing websites

Also, which software do you suggest ?

Thank you for your answer !