When checking SE competetion, how do you check it?

for example, if you want to know how many competing sites you have, will you use:
"baby diapers"
[baby diapers]
or just simply
baby diapers

?

Look at Market Samurai and compare the results. Within minutes you will know the right answer.

Scubachadd

Without the quotes, like a normal person would search for it. Then I just look at the competition on page 1, don't care how many sites there are total, don't care about PR much, just look at backlinks, on-site seo, titles and descriptions. You will know, or have a feeling, if you can beat them based on that. If you don't, try it and learn.

check the top 10's content and backlinks. The more relevant content and backlinks they have, the harder they will be to beat.

I look for how many pr 4-5 are on the first page, after that it's cake, then start writing articles
Posted via Mobile Device

you should use without quotes.

important :

if some site has pr4 or pr 5,do not get disheartened.Those sites may have optimized for a different keyword rather than your desired one.

so what you need to do is that analyze their anchor text and see which keyword they desired the most.you can do that thru' this tool:
http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/

Also if many of the top sites in SERP are aged domains,do no waste time.get an aged domain yourself and start building.Aged domain matters a lot in google but not so in bing.

First I check with quotes, to see how many are likely intentionally SEOing for it. Then I check without, to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises.

In most of my niches, I'm so familiar with the competition that that's all I have to do.

If I'm new to a niche, then I check out how many links the competition has and their on-page SEO. I never look at PR, since I've seen no real correlation between that and SERP rank.

I analyse the top 10 results for my keyword both with and without quotes, using market samurai and my own experience. I check the backlinks in Google and Yahoo, and check the on-page SEO of their site.

i never check the number of results google returns for a keyword. with qoutes or without, i don`t care about that.

i just enter my keyword or keyphrase in google like any other user would and see how strong the pages are that are in top 3, or if it is a high volume keyword i`ll check the top 10.

it doesn`t matter if there are 20 or 20 million competing pages, i want a top 3 listing.
to achive that i just have to beat the 3th listing. if i can beat number 3, i`ll automaticly leave all other 20 million pages behind me.

if there are only 1k competing pages but the top 3 is to hard to beat or takes to much time to overtake i`ll search for another keyword, even though it has jus 1k competing for it.

I check the top 10 in Market Samurai or seoquake firefox plugin. If there are a few pr 0-3 sites (at least 2 to 3 of them) with few backlinks I will go for it. Also- if my competition is a higher pr site like amazon I will also go for it because I think I can beat them with the right seo strategy