Long Tail Pro keyword competitiveness

What score would you consider ok for keyword competitiveness on Long tail Pro? I started a new site and I'm looking between 35 to 40 with global searches of 40000, I have seen keywords at 20 to 25 that look good , but the volume is only 500 per month.

I've got Amazon links at present, but I'm going to switch to Shareasale companies with 20% commision.

Hi Tribal Fusion,

For ranking without backlinks I usually look to KC under 30. Of course you're right in saying that low KC terms generally have poor search volume.

What sort of manual analysis are you doing? Are you looking at top 10-20 phrases and seeing whether they are weak web 2.0s, crappy YT videos etc?

When I reviewed Long Tail Pro I came to the conclusion that KC score isn't a "be all and end all". Manual analysis is actually more important than what KC is.

You shouldn't be using LTP's KC score solely to determine the competition of a keyword.

The "formula" they use to calculate the KC isn't accurate nor reliable.

1. Filter all scores under 35 (maybe 40, depends on your niche). I have seen plenty of KW's with 50-60K searches that have a score under 35.

2. Check Page 1 - MANUALLY. Are they optimized well? Are there category or search pages ranking? Any forum threads ranking? Youtube/Amazon/eBay ranking? Are the descriptions keyword-rich? Are there are "new" sites ranking (thin content sites, churn/burn sites), etc.

3. Voila.

Your manual analysis is going to get you the best results.

If you're simply picking your keywords using just LTP based on the KC and then you just start buying SEO services using those keywords, you're setting yourself up for a disaster. Once again I repeat, KC is not a true indicator for the competition of a keyword.

I am looking at if you tube videos and other affiliate sites are in top 10, plus exact keyword in title and url. I've got 3 sites, so I'm thinking of switching to my travel blog and finding some niches to hit, the travel blog has a better domain authority being 18 months old and maybe easier to rank on the first page than the 2 new sites, 2 months old and 1 week lol

Guess you covered the most, i completely agree whit this!

Leith said:

You shouldn't be using LTP's KC score solely to determine the competition of a keyword.

The "formula" they use to calculate the KC isn't accurate nor reliable.

1. Filter all scores under 35 (maybe 40, depends on your niche). I have seen plenty of KW's with 50-60K searches that have a score under 35.

2. Check Page 1 - MANUALLY. Are they optimized well? Are there category or search pages ranking? Any forum threads ranking? Youtube/Amazon/eBay ranking? Are the descriptions keyword-rich? Are there are "new" sites ranking (thin content sites, churn/burn sites), etc.

3. Voila.

Your manual analysis is going to get you the best results.

If you're simply picking your keywords using just LTP based on the KC and then you just start buying SEO services using those keywords, you're setting yourself up for a disaster. Once again I repeat, KC is not a true indicator for the competition of a keyword.

Click to expand...

Leith said:

You shouldn't be using LTP's KC score solely to determine the competition of a keyword.

The "formula" they use to calculate the KC isn't accurate nor reliable.

1. Filter all scores under 35 (maybe 40, depends on your niche). I have seen plenty of KW's with 50-60K searches that have a score under 35.

2. Check Page 1 - MANUALLY. Are they optimized well? Are there category or search pages ranking? Any forum threads ranking? Youtube/Amazon/eBay ranking? Are the descriptions keyword-rich? Are there are "new" sites ranking (thin content sites, churn/burn sites), etc.

3. Voila.

Your manual analysis is going to get you the best results.

If you're simply picking your keywords using just LTP based on the KC and then you just start buying SEO services using those keywords, you're setting yourself up for a disaster. Once again I repeat, KC is not a true indicator for the competition of a keyword.

Click to expand...

I'm only buying backlinks to my tier 1 web 2.0s. I have seen quite a few with a KC of 35 with 50000 searches, but it's low value products, but I thought I would give a go for the new site.

Hey

honestly I was using LTP also a long time, and now that I found alternatives, and found out that the KC is completely useless and not accurate at all (for so many reasons, the calculation of it is just non-sense), I reallized that many keywords (which I either found myself and declared good or even some that I bought from keyword services of various forums) I thought were good are actually not that good at all (I even invested time and money for nothing), as well as many keywords LTP showed me as too high competition, actually are not that difficult at all.

I can proudly recommend you this, please read the reviews (this is not a sales pitch, I really love this service):
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ompetition-analysis-tool-fully-web-based.html

If you want to use it, doesn't matter if you just try it for free for 5 Seed searches and 50 deep analysis, just sign up here: www.keysearch.co
(if I would have an affiliate link I would post it here! )

After I used that service for some hours and realized how much better it is than LTP, I directly asked for a refund for LTP, for countless reasons. LTP's "license" servers are often offline, I could not use it, the whole keyword research is very very slowly and time intensive. It is poorly "programmed" (Adobe AIR), even a minor could program that, and like never updated, as well as the support is one of the worst I ever experienced.

In Keysearch these problems just don't exist, the whole process is ULTRA fast. I invite you to just try it for free.

Regards

I was also wondering the same thing!

Leith said:

You shouldn't be using LTP's KC score solely to determine the competition of a keyword.

The "formula" they use to calculate the KC isn't accurate nor reliable.

1. Filter all scores under 35 (maybe 40, depends on your niche). I have seen plenty of KW's with 50-60K searches that have a score under 35.

2. Check Page 1 - MANUALLY. Are they optimized well? Are there category or search pages ranking? Any forum threads ranking? Youtube/Amazon/eBay ranking? Are the descriptions keyword-rich? Are there are "new" sites ranking (thin content sites, churn/burn sites), etc.

3. Voila.

Your manual analysis is going to get you the best results.

If you're simply picking your keywords using just LTP based on the KC and then you just start buying SEO services using those keywords, you're setting yourself up for a disaster. Once again I repeat, KC is not a true indicator for the competition of a keyword.

Click to expand...

Can you explain what factors are indicators of easy competition and hard? You list some factors but don't tell if these show it is hard or easy to compete against.

I agree with most. Look to stay under 40. There should be plenty of KW you can rank for under that. You can also try above that and see what happens.

It's not as simple as checking the metrics, some members rightfully pointed it out else everyone will be rushing to load up KWs from sellers, no?

Perhaps, you might want to go deeper into the past 5-7 pages of search networks and determine the "potential" value of your kws. Once you've determined, proceed to KW shitter or other tools to dig for further goldmine.