Do YOU consider this a genuine low-comp keyword?

Looking for some input on this. Right now, I've got one affiliate site which does fairly well. I've been adding "filler" articles which has slowly but surely increased traffic over the last 6 months. I went on a search to find a low-comp keyword (something with sub 1000 local search volume) in which to write a nice article for. I'm mainly doing this because I want to see how much traffic it realistically generates. So, I came upon a keyword which appeared "low-comp" from everything I know anyway. Here are the metrics in Long Tail Pro:


I'm not seeing a ton of Page authority and pretty much no juice links.
The 10 results you see there are:
1. an online magazine
2. amazon
3. amazon
4. niche site (although it doesn't appear to be monetized - odd - but it is a very nice site, not a lousy throw-together)
5. site that sells this type of product
6. forum
7. niche site (lousy)
8. forum
9. barnes and noble
10. some type of small news site - not local

Anyhow, the article has been indexed for about a week now. It's around 600 words and follows on page SEO best practices. I've been monitoring it's ranking and it did a little bounce between 500+(long tail pro's way of saying it is non-existent) and high 100's for a couple of days and now it is hanging around 180. I wanted to get some feedback on what you all thought of the metrics I posted because it seems to me that my article (which is very well written - by me) would be a 'shoe-in' to the first 10 in Google.

Have I misjudged this keyword? Thoughts?

Thanks!

Build some links (slowly and don't go overboard with the anchor text) to your article and hope for the best.

Whats the PR/DA of your site?

i think its a low comp kw

How accurate those stats are?

If PR N/A sites and PR1's are sprinkled on the top 10 I don't see how you can call it anything but low. It depends on your definition of low, but nobody would call that hard I'd think of.

This is embarrassing - a little.
PA=1(for this new article) DA=13 ROOT PA=24 PR=0

Those stats are populated from Moz so I figure they are pretty accurate. I feel like this is a low comp keyword as well but seeing as how my new article is at 180+, that makes me wonder if something is off. I definitely, absolutely, for sure used on page SEO best practices - H1 title, H2 sub headings for paragraphs, keyword mentioned multiple times, plus, it's a well written piece and has a nice chart in it too. I consider a "low comp" keyword something that a 500 word article, properly optimized, can rank for immediately with no links.

When did you upload the article?

With some good high authority backlinks you can outrank most of the competitors on G00gle page 1 IMHO. Based on screenshot provided, it looks like fairly low competition.

Maybe contribute on Niche Magazine Pinch ...

Pvlman said:

When did you upload the article?

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The article was published June 3rd and it indexed in WMT on June 7th.

@ramanan - I'll have to check out that magazine - thank you for the input.

@johndefoe - This is what I need to look for. I'm just surprised the article didn't do better right out of the gate - if for no other reason than the fact that in the top 10, only (1) of those sites has <keyword> used in it's title!

I'm wondering if my content isn't as good as I think it is. Does the ~500 word theory still apply? I've read a few places that short-winded content is not really favored any more. Can anyone clear up my question about whether or not you can rank a low comp keyword such as this one without any links?

(About Your Content Being Good) It depends without seeing the actual article AND with a domain authority that low, I doubt you would be able to get inside top 10 WITHOUT a decent off-site SEO.

What's your KW density? How's the KW diversity? Have you done any backlinking campaign on the article?

For guidance, an effective method on beating aged pages would be to copy the backlinks. The links don't have to be on the same page, just be on the same IP/domain.

ConsultJoseph said:

(About Your Content Being Good) It depends without seeing the actual article AND with a domain authority that low, I doubt you would be able to get inside top 10 WITHOUT a decent off-site SEO.

What's your KW density? How's the KW diversity? Have you done any backlinking campaign on the article?



For guidance, an effective method on beating aged pages would be to copy the backlinks. The links don't have to be on the same page, just be on the same IP/domain.

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UPDATE: - My page has been ranking at 180-205 for the past week. This morning, I checked and it was at 83 which very much excited me. However, hours later, I checked again - 203

My keyword is a 3 word combo. It is used (4) times (strictly in the post, not including the title or meta tags, etc) and the text is 580 words. That's what, about .7%

For diversity, I've used parts of the 3 word combo many times throughout the article. However, one thing I have not done is include relevant keywords - you know, phrases and words google considers relevant as per their keyword planner. As far as backlinking, I have tweeted the article, submitted to reddit and the pictures are pinned on pinterest. Should each of my pictures have <keyword> as the alt tag? I feel like that may be over-optimization but I'm not sure.

Thanks for your input!

burgertime said:

UPDATE: - My page has been ranking at 180-205 for the past week. This morning, I checked and it was at 83 which very much excited me. However, hours later, I checked again - 203

My keyword is a 3 word combo. It is used (4) times (strictly in the post, not including the title or meta tags, etc) and the text is 580 words. That's what, about .7%

For diversity, I've used parts of the 3 word combo many times throughout the article. However, one thing I have not done is include relevant keywords - you know, phrases and words google considers relevant as per their keyword planner. As far as backlinking, I have tweeted the article, submitted to reddit and the pictures are pinned on pinterest. Should each of my pictures have <keyword> as the alt tag? I feel like that may be over-optimization but I'm not sure.

Thanks for your input!

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Is your website brand new or aged ?

Have you used lsi keywords? I doubt you will reach anywhere without decent off site seo.

divok said:

Is your website brand new or aged ?

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According to whois.net, my domain was born 04/17/2013. Not sure how old that is in relative SEO/Google terms.

WeavingThoughts said:

Have you used lsi keywords? I doubt you will reach anywhere without decent off site seo.

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Sadly, no. My article has very few, if any Lsi keywords. Plus I'm starting to feel like it isn't long enough either. I might add to/re-write it. Of course, it did jump down to 83 from 200+ but as I said before, in a matter of hours it was back up to 200+.

Big brands may be tricky to outrank but it seems that top 3 result pages only have this authority power not page backlink. It depends what title and anchor structure these first 3 results have. If they seem somewhat optimized - it may provide with some competition. If not, a few good backlinks may rank you above.

SEOShine said:

Big brands may be tricky to outrank but it seems that top 3 result pages only have this authority power not page backlink. It depends what title and anchor structure these first 3 results have. If they seem somewhat optimized - it may provide with some competition. If not, a few good backlinks may rank you above.

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I'm going to re-write this article. I'm convinced it isn't written well enough to please Google - that's based on the feedback I've gotten here.

I appreciate all the input from all of you. I'll update this post once I've re-written the article and have seen the results.