Probability of getting the #1 Google spot

Hello!

As always, being a noob in SEO can bring very noobish questions. I can find answers in Google most of the time, but not this time.

Question:
How do you estimate the probability of getting the #1 for a specific keyword?
And how do you estimate the work needed to get that?

Here are metrics from the top 1 website for my keyword (from Semrush):
Authority Score: 29
Backlinks: 12.4k (7.28k follow / 5.18k nofollow), (75% text, 25% image, 1% form, 1% frame)
Branded vs. non-branded traffic: 90.4% (8 keywords) to 9.6% (137 keywords)
Keywords by intent: Informational 38.6%, Navigational 44.6%, Commercial 6.6%, Transactional 10.2% (it's a listing website, having a list of game servers)
Domain age: 19 years+

Here are my metrics (from Semrush):
Authority Score: 17
Backlinks: 13.8k (5.32k follow / 8.5k nofollow), (86% text, 14% image, 0% form, 0% frame)
Branded vs. non-branded traffic: No data
Keywords by intent: Informational 45.8%, Navigational 30%, Commercial 12.5%, Transactional 11.7% (it's a listing website, having a list of game servers)
Domain age: 2 years~

depends on what's currently ranking for that term. Also the amount of effort, time and money you will be spending on this term.

BuildMoreLinks said:

depends on what's currently ranking for that term. Also the amount of effort, time and money you will be spending on this term.

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Homepages are ranking for that term (but also others most lucreative, as those sites have a list of game servers on their homepages).

My page ranks from places 6 to 3, depending on the keyword and country.

Ahrefs says that the best keyword we'd like to be positioned as high as possible has "medium" difficulty (25). The problem is that the keyword is used exactly in their domain name (or maybe it's not a problem?).

jemzozole said:

Homepages are ranking for that term

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homepages are the hardest to outrank because they carry the most authority

jemzozole said:

How do you estimate the probability of getting the #1 for a specific keyword?

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I never estimate in terms of numbers, but rather in terms of gut feeling and experience. But that's me and I am pretty sure that I do things in non-conventional ways, which is why I'm speaking from my own experience in this case

jemzozole said:

And how do you estimate the work needed to get that?

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I check the overall authority of the sites ranking on page 1, then the number and quality of links that are pointing to the pages ranking on page 1 (of google). And based on what I'm seeing I'll (usually) know without further inspection whether I'll be doing months / years worth of work, or whether I can beat the competition with just a few well placed links and content optimization (but most of my efforts - when I had sites - used to go into the planning and siloing of the sites, which are very important for SEO... or at least they used to be important, God knows what's going on nowadays with all sorts of weird sites ranking without any logic)

Anyway, that's how I estimate the work (based on my experience and gut feeling when I check the URLs and backlinks pointing to those URLs). If you have enough experience you'll know almost instantly whether a keyword is worth pursuing or not, and what it might take you to get to the top.

For as much as I like to bash 3rd party metrics like DR or DA, when the DR / DA are high enough (over 60 is my go-to number) they tend to be pretty accurate. A site that has 12 DR, for example, might or might not be easy to outrank, but a site with 80 DR will almost always be hard to outrank..

So yeah, I check the DR / DA, then I check the site's structure and their content quality and optimization, I check the backlinks and I also consider whether it's a big (especially when it's niche-specific) brand or not, because google loves big brands so they'll do everything they can to favor them, which makes the job more difficult for the little guys...

jemzozole said:

Here are metrics from the top 1 website for my keyword (from Semrush):
Authority Score: 29
Backlinks: 12.4k (7.28k follow / 5.18k nofollow), (75% text, 25% image, 1% form, 1% frame)
Branded vs. non-branded traffic: 90.4% (8 keywords) to 9.6% (137 keywords)
Keywords by intent: Informational 38.6%, Navigational 44.6%, Commercial 6.6%, Transactional 10.2% (it's a listing website, having a list of game servers)
Domain age: 19 years+

Here are my metrics (from Semrush):
Authority Score: 17
Backlinks: 13.8k (5.32k follow / 8.5k nofollow), (86% text, 14% image, 0% form, 0% frame)
Branded vs. non-branded traffic: No data
Keywords by intent: Informational 45.8%, Navigational 30%, Commercial 12.5%, Transactional 11.7% (it's a listing website, having a list of game servers)
Domain age: 2 years~

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domain age doesn't matter.

Everything else seems very balanced, both for you and your competitor, so I think you have a good chance (about 50% if you want numbers) of outranking him / her.

The thing that I don't understand is why you have no traffic on a 2 years old site (or is this only the domain's age, not of the site? Because that would explain it).

Also, since both your site, and your competitor's site have similar stats but (s)he's ranked #1 I think that these elements decide the rankings:

- content age (they were probably ranking up top for way longer than you, so this might be one of those cases where content age matters)
- brand (their site / brand might be way more popular and valuable and, like I said, google loves established / popular brands, in which case I don't think you'll ever take #1 spot from them)
- number of indexed pages (not as important factor usually, but sometimes lots of ranked pages means that google really likes the site and unless you surpass the numbers of ranked pages and traffic that they have you'll probably not be able to take their spot)

If none of these 3 elements exist I think you have a really good chance (over 50%) to outrank them at some point, but you'll have to improve your authority by getting better links.

Also, what does the anchor texts look like for both sites? This is mostly for my curiosity than anything...

Use KGR - Keyword Golden Ratio to test your keywords.