What if you waste your time and money on a keyword? What if you never rank at all?
Gauging the competition in the SERPs can be hard. Before attempting to rank for any keyword you’ll need to understand the important metrics for ranking. More specifically, you’ll want to know exactly how your potential competitors are ranking for YOUR keyword.
This a competitive keyword research guide for analyzing and outranking your competition.
# of Results Doesn’t Matter
Yup, you see it over and over again.
“Check out the number of results to check the competitiveness.”
It’s not important.
The number of results that appear is simply the number of pages containing all or some of the keywords in the search query. Most of these pages are not actually competing for your keyword phrase. Rather, they just have some or all of the words in them. Here’s another one…
“Check the number of “phrase” results and use the intitle: search operator.”
The phrase search finds all on-page instances of the keyword and the intitle: search operator will find all pages with the keyword in their title. This means they are competing for the keyword. However, all of these sites are not your competitors.
Some of these sites might coincidentally contain your keyword. Some of them might be competing, but are poorly optimized. Who cares about your competitors on page 5?
Your only competition is on the first page. More specifically, the top 3 sites getting the traffic are your competition.
Looking Closer at keyword research
Now that you are only worried about 3-10 sites instead of thousands, you can get in-depth. It’s time to study them and find out how a site ranks for your chosen keyword.
The Quick and Dirty Analysis
This is a short analysis you can do for the top 10 sites for a keyword. This is only the beginning of any serious research.
(I recommend SEO Quake for your quick analysis)
- PageRank
What’s the average PageRank in the first page of results? PR is often over-emphasized, but it is a decent indicator of authority.
- Title Tag
Is the keyword in the title tag? If there are results on the first page that don’t have the keyword in the title tag then there is probably opportunity for an easy ranking.
- Number of pages
How many pages do the first page sites have on average? If it’s mostly large authority sites then ranking could be tough. Small niche sites are often a good sign.
- Domain Name
Are there any or a lot of exact match domain sites? EMDs can be a pain to outrank, but I am usually glad to see them in the results. They’re often small sites with spammy links, and they likely haven’t hired a search firm to do serious SEO for them.
Backlink Analysis
After a fast evaluation of the top 10 if things look good, it’s time to get more intensive. Backlinks are the most critical ranking asset of any site.
Overall Quality of Links
The number of backlinks a site has doesn’t tell you much. You need to look at where the actual links are coming from.
IMO the best tool for backlink analysis is SEO Spyglass. You can use it to find virtually every aspect of a backlink you would need to know. This includes link statistics such as:
- DoFollow
How many DoFollow links do they have? Are these links blog comments or in more trusted places like inside the actual content?
- PageRank
Does the page the link is on have PR? How many other links (inbound & outbound) are on the page?
Here are a few important metrics to understand when looking at the link juice passed from a link on a page with PR
- The PR sent through the link is divided by the total number of links on the page
- Nofollow links DO NOT pass any PR
- Each point of PR is actually 8.5x more authoritative than the last because of the log scale it’s calculated on. PR 4 is 8.5x more than PR 3 etc.
- Anchor Text
Are they consistently targeting their anchor text? How much variation is there in their anchor text?
- IP/Domain Diversity
How many different sites link to them?
- Backlink Age
How old are their backlinks? The age of the site and page isn’t relatively important, but the age of the backlinks is. Long-term backlinks are a sign of trust.
Observing your competitor’s link profiles will give you a good idea of what it takes for you to rank. You can mimic their anchor text variation and backlinking strategies.
You can even copy their backlinks after analyzing them.
Isolate the “Power” Links
When you look at your competitors’ links you can only assume which ones are helping them rank the most. The above metrics will give you a good idea of what their “good” links are. But what if you could know exactly which links were helping?
Here’s a way to isolate backlinks that have a lot of ranking power for YOUR keyword:
Look through every page in the SERPs until you get to a result that does not have your keyword in the title. In other words, find results that show up without being optimized for the term.
Run that page through SEO Quake, SEO Spyglass, and/or Open Site Explorer and find the links that are giving them that position.
Since the page is not optimized, we know that these links are giving them their ranking. Sometimes you will find a page with only a handful of links which makes it very evident which links are giving them their ranking.
The site's internal linking to that page or it's overall authority will also be a factor to consider when analyzing these sites backlinks.
You can find more pages in the SERPs that aren’t optimized and ranking to find more of these backlinks. The next step is to mimic these backlinks by either getting links on the same pages or obtaining very similar links.
Forward Thinking: Where’s the Competition Headed?
One last metric to consider…
Has your competition been stagnant or are they growing rapidly?
You might be fighting an uphill battle if one or more of your competitors are just taking off. Likewise, pages that haven’t received links in months could be ripe for the picking.
Every keyword is different. You won’t know exactly how tough it will be to rank until you try, but these competitive analysis and keyword research tips should help you get a good feel for the difficulty.
Do you have any important metrics to add? Do you try to rank for competitive terms?
I love it. This is truly a great “mini-guide” to conduct a proper keyword research. I actually also use SEOSpyGlass and BackLinkProfitMonster for analyzing the top competitors for any given keywords. They work well and help a great deal. Thumbs up!
Actually I can’t really say if BLPM finds different links form that of SPYGlass. I think that SPYGlass is more thorough but you can only search for links per domain. BLPM is pretty good to search for “blogs” only, so that we can head over there and perhaps leave a comment that is dofollow. I like them both 🙂
Very detailed guide Ben. I was one of those who started without keyword research and after a few months into it and learning about SEO, I realized what a competitive keyword I was targeting. However, I am kind of happy it want this way. It really helped me to learn a lot and also helped me push through and do rank for those keywords I was targeting.
So, from personal experience, I would say, you can rank for any keyword you like, as long as you do whats required to rank for that specific keyword. Of course, doing your research first hand, makes things a whole a lot easier and quicker. Thanks.
Nice article! Like DiTesco said before good “mini guide” for keyword research.
Recently I make my own DoFollow list of high PR blogs and include basicblogtips in list.
You can take a look on:
http://interestingwebs.blogspot.com/2011/09/high-pr-dofollow-backlins-blogs-list.html
and leave a comment on my article if you are not satisfied with description of your site.
I like it very impressive and detailed post Ben.I use SeoSpyGlass,SeoLinkEdge and SubmitEaze for SERP compaign.Market Samurai is also detailed but i don’t rely on it.
Hey Ben!
Your research on the topic is very profound,i think its a complete guide for keyword ranking strategies.Your intense discussion shows that you have mastered it.And i am very lucky to found you here,i have learned it a lot.From now onwards i am gonna try your these valuable tips for my keyword research and if i come across with any new problem then i will definitely inform you.Now You are in the list of my best teachers.Thank you for sharing such a great,valuable,informative and considerable content with us.Its just like a treasure for me…..:-)
Good Luck and God Bless!!
With Regards!
Samuel Joshua
That’s a great guide that you’ve produced there. I especially like the tip about finding a site that is ranking without good optimisation and examining their “power” links. I will certainly be trying that out in the near future.
As a rule, ranking is easier than most people think. It can certainly be daunting to find 19,945,954 sites relating to your target search query – but as you say, you are only really competing with the 10 sites on page 1.
Nice Guide, Doing keyword analysis is really important. I have found that it is little easier to rank if your blog is themed for a specific niche or keywords. SEO’s give preference if you have other related contents also on your blog.
Thanks for very information tips. I didn’t know there is a tool seo spyglass to check backlinks, I only use yahoo site explorer.
SEO Spyglass is great, it’s a bit more organized and easier to work with than YSE. Also, I’m just about to purchase the full version so I can save and export reports, but I’ve been using the free version for a loong time and it’s sufficient.
This post is good for people who are just starting out. Great post. You are using Market Samurai, right? I am using that too.
Hi, Ben!
I have no other important metrics to add, as you obviously said it all! Very useful post, I like the analysis you did here and the warning that we should not spend our time and money on a keyword…there are other ways to get ranked.
I am sure the newbies will appreciate your post a lot!
Really awesome post Ben. Do you know where SEO Spyglass gets its backlink data from? Do they collect their own backlink data or do they use data from another source like Yahoo Site Explorer?
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Hi Ben. That’s a great post there you’ve done. It’s a very detailed, yet still simple and easy to understand article. Love it! Thanks a lot for sharing this.
Ben,
You make some great points here. This is the way you HAVE TO analyze competition if you want to succeed. The only way this is different from the way I do it is that I use market samurai since i can get the info all in one tool.
But of course your way has the huge advantage of being FREE.
-Steve
Hey thanks for the feedback Steve! I’ve always tried to do everything for free and take the hard way. The way I see it, using a minimal amount of tools and free resources forces you to learn more and be more creative. And after all, I think the most worthwhile investments are the ones we make in ourselves 🙂
Very interesting article indeed and as well very informtive. Thanks for sharing your experience and I do believe a low average PR on page 1 for the particular keyword followed by indepth analysis of the backlinks can give you an idea whether you can outrank the heavy sites for that particular keyword. Thanks for sharing the tools as well.
It is interesting how reading your blog makes me realize how differently have I learned things about SEO. The number of SERP results always seemed very important, as well as the PR of a page… I am not a total dilettante in SEO but your posts really help a lot.
best post for newbies to learn about SEO. all the points are described and clear with nice details. thanks for taking time to write this guiding post for all of us. i also acquired some new points from here.
Simple and easy to use Guide. Nice post.
Having quality backlinks will definitely help out and those tools that you mentioned in fact help a lot of bloggers as well.
Very sophisticated approach to understanding keywords. And all this time I assumed millions were competing for my desired keywords. Have installed SEOQuake and it’s a real eye-opener.
Great tips to page ranking Ben, Google webmaster tool is worth mention too. It’s can help track and progress of any keywords we are optimizing.
Thanks Rammesh, good tip too. I like to use both Google Analytics and their Webmaster tools to find which search terms are sending me traffic and which ones have potential for more search traffic.
You have produced a great guide here on SEO keyword research. It is very important to choose the right keywords for the domain. Researching and promoting. i have Google Analytics to monitor my traffic.
Thanks for very information tips. I didn’t know there is a tool namned seo spyglass to check backlinks, I only use yahoo site explorer but thats only because its free.
I also have opensiteexplorer (trial) 🙂
seo can be tricky. But what is most important is the realization (true) and your confidence about keyword ranking.
As of example, ‘make money online’ is a very tough path in google SERP… millions of websites are already fighting for this keyboard, hence I will never go for it because I don’t have enough resource to fight this keyboard war. Instead i will chose something where there is a less competition and will try to do good on those keywords.
That’s very true. It’s much better to go for low comp phrases first so that you can get the satisfaction of ranking. I think it’s the experience and practice from ranking for less competitive terms that gives you the confidence to go for a big money keyword like “make money online”.
SEO Quake is a very nice tool to find out. thanks for the post.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the detailed guide. I must admit I love SEO Spyglass and even the free version gives you more than enough details to figure out your competitors and what is needed to rank higher than them!
Also if you have Market Samurai there is a competition feature with that software too
Craig
Hey Ben,
Glad to see someone finally telling people that overall competition doesn’t matter one bit. I can’t tell you how many so called SEO guides I have read where people brag about ranking against 10 million others or whatever the number is.
You are competing against the people who are optimizing and going for the keyword phrase, not every page on the internet that mentions the phrase.
Good tip about narrowing down the good links that are likely giving off the ranking power as well.
Yea it’s often used to trick newbs into thinking you’re some sort of expert. If you want a good laugh, Google “crazy zebra princess”. (This page will probably rank now that I said it here lol…)
This is a great guide pointing out the important parts of getting ranked in the search engines, and dispelling some of the myths. Looking to see if the keyword is in the title tag of your competitors is something I never considered, but it makes perfect sense.
This is one of the best miniguides I have ever seen for SEO. I will put this to work on my site.
Great guide.
Sadly sometimes Google just doesn’t make sense. (of course they have to because it is all algorythm, but we don’t known it exactly)
There is one site that is small, weak, ugly and I would like to add stupid. That was ranking number 1 for a keyword that I was ranking number 2 for.
I researched them, got around the same amount of content, got the same links then added 400 strong links extra. Optimized the pages for it. Got on the number 1 spot for a while and then dropped to the second place again. This has frustrated me for a long time.
Lol I’m having a somewhat similar experience right now. Would I be wrong to assume it’s an EMD? Lousy non-Panda appropriate content, MFA, no branding, 5 indexed pages etc.
I keep seeing very authoritative pages being outranked for the #1 spot by much smaller and less authoritative sites. The trend I’m seeing is that they have a large number of dofollow, anchor text backlinks. In fact, they have terribly unnatural link profiles, but my opinion is that they are simply appearing as more relevant despite their lack of trust with Google and that’s why they’re ranking higher.
Great, Informative and Effective sharing.
You have shared a perfect tips on which I personally working last many years and it works for me lot. The only thing is needed is to have complete knowledge about how to do it and in what effective ways.
Anyway thanks a lot for this.
What a wonderful article described all the points perfectly… It is very much important to make a research on the selection of your keywords as keyword is a thing that helps you achieve high rankings on the front page of Google search engines.
Great article! This is a great guide for doing keyword research! Beginners must read this.
cool guide…….ben could u explain in detail abt keywords………my blog lacks keywords…i got 2 organic search in google,that too on different category……if you find time ,please help me in optimizing my blog…..
Thanks…..
Happy Blogging………
Sure, this guide was specifically about understanding competition levels, but I’ve got another guide on my site that explains how to choose your keywords here: http://www.seodiscovery.org/how-to-do-keyword-research
Really great post! Thanks for not only providing a great list of blogs, but also giving a little summary so you know what kind of blog you’re heading to. This post is a great asset to anyone in Search Engine Optimization Services and can help a lot of people achieve higher page rank. Thanks again!
Thanks for this handy-guide.
Hi Ben, your post here is so real. In the world of SEO, quality comes first than quantity. If you are serious to rank well, then you must formulate an advance SEO techniques that will help you to boost web presence. While we can help you, your DIY keyword research guide is of highly applicable. Keep it up.
Points noted. I’ve discussed it to my friend but he refuses to believe in PRs. He said that even if you have N/A on PR but #1 in keyword search it the most important. Any suggestions?
Hi Ben, thanks for the great tips, I have just started blogging and found the tips you have posted here could definately help me going forward. I’ve got SEO Quake as you suggested and I’m going to start implementing your tips this weekend.
Thanks, Elaine.
Hi Ben,It’s really a nice topics to discuss and your post is so informative that any new comer will be helpful by reading it.The basis of starting any website is doing good keyword research. There are still many webmasters out there that start a website without doing proper keyword research. If you don’t do this accurate it will be very hard to rank for your keywords. Your goal is to have as many visitors that convert, right? We will discuss the subject keyword research in another post.Nice topics and keep it up.Thanks.
A very nice guide for keyword research!
It is important to do effective research on these kinds of SEO tactics.
Thanks Ben.
I agree that Back links are still the main factor. The more ‘niche’ related the better. Even if the PR is lower. Thanks for the informative article