Evaluating Competition of a Keyword
-
I'm curious about how others evaluate the competition of keywords when putting together an SEO program:
-
Do you place any faith in the competition listing in the Google Keyword Tool?
-
Do you find value in SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty tool?
-
What other tactics or processes do you perform?
-
-
I know that this is an old thread, but I must say that it's EXACTLY what I was looking for!!!
I too have been puzzled by the Competitiveness scores produced by different tools (Wordtracker, MOZ etc). Many of the keywords I've researched in my particular field (refurbished laptops and computers) show Low Competition in these tools, but when I perform a regular search on Google, the first two pages are often populated by big name brands (Amazon, Bestbuy, NewEgg,Walmart, Sears, Overstock etc.)... which I assume would be difficult to rank above.
The interesting thing here is that these big brand pages don't often score high on backlinks, In-Anchor-and-Title or other Competitiveness indicators, but yet, they rank high on the SERPs.
I'm definitely a newbie at this, but this article puts the missing pieces together for me.
THANKS!
-
In order to identify true competition, I always add "allintitle" to my query to exclude 'less focused' competitors. Do you agree?
-
Hey, I agree, none of these scores are a truly reliable indicator. What I try to do is aggregate lots of different values.
- Competition from adwords to get an idea of quality
- keyword difficult from Moz tool to get some metrics on competition
- exact match search volume to get an idea of traffic
Then, the real work is built on top of this with a manual review of the results for each term. If the results are garbage - be that the content or the competition then you can read into this. If the results are dominated by big brands with well optimised pages then you are going to struggle.
If the manual review you do (loads of big brands) ties up with a high difficult from the moz keyword tool then this should scare you off!
If the moz tool comes back with 30% and the content returned is a bit ropey and you know you can do better then... you should go after it.
As I say, it's a science more than an art and you have to manually review each keyword to really know what it's worth chasing.
If your keyword was 'seo software' and you had a keyword difficult of 79% and quality sites like SEOMoz.org at the bottom of page 2 - I would leave that one well alone. :
-
I don't think that the number of sites competitng or their pagerank or keyword tool scores are 100% reliable.
Instead look at WHO is competing and the content that they have on their pages.
If you can beat their content then you have a really good chance of defeating them.... but if you are going up against the manufacturer on their branded products they will be hard to beat... but then you can put a discount price in your title tag and steal their sales.
-
This is an art rather than an exact science but there are certainly things you can do to help decide which terms to go for.
1. Google Keyword Tool is for Adwords traffic & not organic search. This is not to say that it is not useful and the competitor information here can be used to gauge the quality of the keyword. That is, if there is a lot of paid search competition for this keyword, then it must convert well so it is usually worth pursuing.
2. The keyword difficulty tool is useful as it looks at the metrics involved in ranking for the search term. There is a post on SEOMoz that explains the values returned and what is needed to do to rank for a term scoring X% - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-difficulty-tool-upgrade
3. Other tactics
I tend to do it like this:
- Set up a table with the keywords in for each page
- Get the advertiser competition as a quality score
- Get the seomoz difficulty score
- Get the exact match search volume from google adwords
Then I search for the keyword and check out the competition to look for two things
- Quality of results in terms of content & relevance
- Who ranks & how optimised are the first ten results
I am generally looking for cracks. Are there a lack of quality results? Great, it's an opportunity to make something better and get it rank - compare the organic & paid content as these guys are paying for the clicks so these pages are more likely to be finely tuned. Is there a lack of well optimised pages? Groovy, that's a crack and we can likely fight our way up the ranks.
Obviously, there is so much too this. What is the standing of the site you are looking to optimise? Can you or the client create great content to help better fill the requirements of the search terms. Are there are opportunities with little competition, poorly optimised pages, bad landing page content etc.
By building a spreadsheet of keywords like this, I then highlight them as I go. Red is no good, orange is possible or a future term, green is worth a crack.
Then... if they are difficult keywords, you can further assess the quality of the keywords and content you are planning to land them on with a brief adwords campaign & some conversion tracking in Google Analytics.
After all of that, you have some intelligence on which to base your search campaign and organic optimisation efforts.
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
I hold VERY little faith that the numbers in Google's keyword tool are accurate. I think it is a good indicator of traffic levels, especially if you compare it against other sources, like WordTracker, but I try to normalize the numbers and look at them as relative values. I dont believe the actual search volumes.
The SEOmoz tool used to be difficult to use but I find it to be much improved. It is a good snapshot of what types of site/pages are ranking for a keyword and saves me a lot of legwork.
I really like Rands post here. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-steps-to-advanced-keyword-research
The process is pretty labor intensive, but I think well worth it if your client is willing to pay for it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Minor languages keyword research
Hello, I am in charge of doing a keyword research for several small countries in Europe, namely Hungary, Estonia and Latvia.
Keyword Research | | Lvet
I normally use the Keyword planner for Google Ads, but for Hungarian, Estonian and Latvian this tools seems to find no results for the keywords related to my websites. For example, in Hungarian the keyword "ajak toltoanyagok" ("lip fillers" in English) doesn't give any results (and yes, I am targeting my searches to Hungary and Hungarian). I have the same problems with Latvian and Estonian. Is there another tool that I could use and that could give me better results? Help! Cheers Luca rONwtZt0 -
Any keyword tools to do this?
Hi, I'm looking for a tool which can pull keyword idea data from Google Keyword Planner at landing page level for multiple URLs at once. Right now with Google Keyword Planner you can only manually do one URL at once. Which will give you 800 keywords. I'm looking to pull landing page keyword ideas for about 10 URLs at once, so in total i should get about 8,000 keywords. Any tools which can automate this with Google Keyword Planner? Cheers.
Keyword Research | | jayoliverwright0 -
Replacing Metas and Keywords
How often we need to replace our meta titles, meta descriptions and keywords so that we are able to find which one works and which does not. Can we make some schedule like on monthly or quarterly basis. What are the best practices in this regard?
Keyword Research | | Sequelmed0 -
Keyword Conundrum...
I have 3 keywords that I am targeting. Assume for the time being that they are all equally competitive. Includes local exact match monthly searches: Managed IT Services - 3600 IT Managed Services - 720 Managed IT Support - 170 They are all exactly synonymous, not to mention other keywords such as IT Managed Support, Managed IT Service, IT Managed Service, Managed IT Service Provider, etc.. My current strategy is to target the top 3 all on one page. The problem then is the title tag: Managed IT Services | IT Managed Services | Managed IT Support Pretty spammy. I could build pages for all 3, but how would I incorporate them into the website since they are all synonyms. Can I get some recommendations on how to handle this? What would you use for a title tag? How would handle separate pages with synonymous content?
Keyword Research | | CsmBill0 -
Keyword In Page Title
Broad Keyword Usage in Page Title Easyfix <dl> <dt>Page title</dt> <dd>"The Sea Trout Inn in South Devon, Near Totnes - Luxury Bed and Breakfast and Restaurant - Contact Us"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Search engines consider the title element to be the most important place to identify keywords and associate the page with a topic and/or set of terms. SEOmoz's correlation research has also shown that rankings are heavily influenced by keyword usage in the title tag.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Employ the keyword in the page title, preferrably as the first words in the element.</dd> <dd>The keyword is Hotels Totnes, how can I put this in a page title without it looking stupid ?</dd> </dl>
Keyword Research | | Stoz0 -
E-Commerce keyword question
We sell ItemA. One of the phrases that brings people to our site is "ItemA for sale". Should I just try to target "ItemA" or should I try to get "for sale" in there? I have seen a few other variations such as "on clearance" or "to purchase" as well. Can I just focus on "ItemA" or do I need all of those variants as well?
Keyword Research | | EcommerceSite0 -
SeoMoz Keyword Tool
Hello All, Ive been using the SeoMoz Keyword tool but have a quick question. Im working on a newer site with a DA according to OSE of 35. Im combing through keywords to rank. Although competition is very high I have found a few holes. According to the Keyword tool in SeoMoz a few keywords Im looking at are roughly 50%. Would it be to difficult to rank for this type of term? Ive been using a combination of Google Trends, Adwords keyword tool, and ubersuggest, to try and see whats available. Does anyone use different tools? Thank you
Keyword Research | | TP_Marketing0 -
What is the ideal keyword difficulty percentage?
I am trying to establish my best keywords using the keyword difficulty tool. So if I want to come up with the best keywords, should I use the ones that come in at 50%??
Keyword Research | | mmookie0