Keyword Competition Confusion

IM wars 3: Return of the noob

So about now is the time I'm starting to get my game together. I'm doing some intense research on keywords and traffic for 10 micro-niche sites which I intend to create. I've read a huge amount about the ins and outs of this, but there's still one thing I'm not clear on: Competition.

I've heard some people say that average to high competition is a good thing, and others say not to bother unless competition is low... Added on to this confusion is the seemingly broken correlation for the "competition bar" on the Google Keyword tool and the number of matches in google - and then the average CPC?!

I've seen some exact match keywords with "VERY low" competition in the keyword tool which have returned over 9 million pages when searched for in Google.

So what I'm asking is: say I wanted to find a good micro niche with averag/low competition and a reasonable CPC - what would I do?

• What competition level ranking should I look for in the keyword tool?
• How many page matches should I look for in an exact google search (and is this related to the competition ranking in keywords)?

Cheers

"competition bar" on the Google Keyword tool" ouch. That is for how much competition there is for the advertisers, not web pages. lol - do NOT use that.

Competition doesn't mean really how many pages are listed either in the SERPS. It means like... How heavy they are.. Do the sites in the top 6 have high PR? High PR backlinks? how many backlinks, hows their onpage SEO.

I look for google having around 50k exact match sites, more than 1000 local Exact match searches per month. At least SOME PR 0 sites in the top 10, Some sites with under 300 links in top 10

Use a program like Market Samurai or Seoquake to evaluate the top 10 results for whatever keyword you're going after.

I usually only go after keywords that have 3+ sites that are PR0 in the top 10. These will be easy to rank for especially if you have the exact match domain.

Good luck,
handsomedude

How you will measure competition if you dont have a link building plan that you already used before ?

For trully know competition,you need experience using the same methods.

But if you want weak competition you should look for: Page rank 1-3,Backlinks 3k-,on page optimization weak withot proper title,description,etc,and more subpages than homepages.

Use market samurai trial.

Judge the competition of the keyword by the pageranks and backlinks of the pages that google returns when you query. If you search your keyword and google returns a bunch of pagerank 0 sites then you will likely have no problem ranking for that keyword.

Thanks a lot guys

I just download SeoQuake because Traffic Travesty was loading for about 2 hours - and I'm extremely impressed by it's helpfulness in KW research

I've already found 1 keyword which is pretty awesome, around 58,000 results and all top 10 are PR 1-3 (one of them is 0) so I'm pretty pleased.

In answer to Pirondi: you're right, I should probably spend a lot more time learning the ins and outs of off site SEO before I dive into sizing up KW competition. I do already own 1 domain from a while back that I haven't done any off site SEO on, so I guess I'll play with that over the next few weeks before I take my new niche sites any further

handsomedude said:

Use a program like Market Samurai or Seoquake to evaluate the top 10 results for whatever keyword you're going after.

I usually only go after keywords that have 3+ sites that are PR0 in the top 10. These will be easy to rank for especially if you have the exact match domain.

Good luck,
handsomedude

Click to expand...

VERY TRUE! If you don't know what your capable as far as ranking a site, there's no way really to see if you can do it. You can guestimate, but once you have a strategy thats proven, you will say"oh, this will be able to beat that within x amount of time"..

etc..

Great point.

What is the best tool for keyword competition evaluation that won't piss off google.

You would search it on Keyword Scout and choose the keyword with the smallest competition score and EMD available.

Yep, as others said, use Market Samurai for this.

It'll tell you how many new sites are ranking for the keyword, the no. of backlinks they have, their age, etc etc. In other words, you can easily see what kind of authority they possess at a glance.

Do not ever go for 'X' number of competing pages. It's about the strength of the top 3-5 and not the number going for the keyword.

you could check the top 10 urls, the best condition is all back links under 100-300...