Question about keywork ranking..

OK, this is probably a stupid question, but bear with me..

I'm on the Google Keyword tool at the moment, and in my niche, there is a two word keyword that has 21,000,000 global searches a month, and the competition is "low".

Now, at the risk of sounding stupid, should I be trying to rank for that keyword?

The reason why I ask is because it seems the obvious answer is yes, but then why is competition for that keyword so low?

If anyone can shed some light, that would be great.

Thanks.

I won't take too much into consideration what the Google Adwords tools says about competition.
Put your keyword into brackets and see how many results appear. I am sure you won't find the competition so low

Also, as another poster said, I wouldn't put too much weight on that. The competition listed is for adwords and not the SERP (search engine results page). What I mean to say is, their measure of competition might not be the same as what you are thinking it is. Google isn't interested in telling you how hard it is to rank in their organic listings. They are just telling you for adwords, which means paying them money. As Maecenas23 said, try putting brackets around the keyword and see what the competition looks like.

Maybe you set Match Types of this keyword is Broad, so global searches is very large.

Basically what Casey101 said. Adwords isn't meant for people trying to SEO their way to the top, it's for people trying to use (duh) Adwords to get PPC traffic. Competition is a measure of how many adwords clients are bidding on that keyword. You need to use a keyword research program like traffic travis, market samurai or others to get a sense of how hard it would be to rank for that keyword. Either way, you should confirm the results by doing a search in google and seeing what comes up. Are the results established authority sites? What kind of backlinks do these sites have? Are they matching on accident (just because they're an authority on something else) or on purpose (because they're actually optimized for that keyword)? All of these things can help you decide if that keyword is worth persuing.

pnvhq said:

Basically what Casey101 said. Adwords isn't meant for people trying to SEO their way to the top, it's for people trying to use (duh) Adwords to get PPC traffic.

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I don't think that's what OP thought while posting.Adwords Tool is meant for people trying to SEO their posts.google keyword tool is only a estimator .along with that you may also search google trends for knowing its relevancy.Also focus on techniques that will drive traffic to your site.the broad match is pretty accurate for what it is. It is not telling you how many people search for a specific keyword. It is telling you how many times those keywords are searched along with other keywords

famalam said:

OK, this is probably a stupid question, but bear with me..

I'm on the Google Keyword tool at the moment, and in my niche, there is a two word keyword that has 21,000,000 global searches a month, and the competition is "low".

Now, at the risk of sounding stupid, should I be trying to rank for that keyword?

The reason why I ask is because it seems the obvious answer is yes, but then why is competition for that keyword so low?

If anyone can shed some light, that would be great.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I still use google keyword tool for my SEO research, you just have to keep in mind that its just a tool, not a beacon of absolute truth..

to answer you question OP, you probably typed something like "car". The reason why the competition is low is that its not really useful to rank for the keyword car in terms of targetted traffic. The person might be looking for car insurance, or maybe a photo of a car, or maybe even information about how a car engine works, or maybe a local craiglist listing to buy a car, or maybe a ... you get my point? People choose keywords like:

car insurance (or even better, car insurance quote)
car repair ( + lcoal word.. car repair toronto, car repair north london)
buy second hand car
etc etc..

See if the competition is still low for those

Actually a better example would be jaguar.. if someone types jaguar.. are they looking for the car manufacturer, the animal, the football team, etc.. although its great to rank for it, no one will pay google adwords to appear in the sponsored results for a keyword like that because the traffic is just too broad.

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. I suspected it wouldn't be as simplistic as Google made it seem.

I won't lie, I was hoping someone was going to tell me I was about to become rich, but oh well


Thanks again everyone

kbklash said:

I don't think that's what OP thought while posting.Adwords Tool is meant for people trying to SEO their posts.google keyword tool is only a estimator .along with that you may also search google trends for knowing its relevancy.Also focus on techniques that will drive traffic to your site.the broad match is pretty accurate for what it is. It is not telling you how many people search for a specific keyword. It is telling you how many times those keywords are searched along with other keywords

Click to expand...

To me it was pretty clear that OP thought that "low" competition meant the keyword would be easy to rank for. My point was that google KWT isn't telling you anything about ranking, it's telling you how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword. The search part of it is still useful, but that wasn't the part I was focusing on in my answer.