Keyword research - how to find additional competitors and links
-
Hello,
We need 100 strong linking root domains to rank at all in our industry (probably more). But all our competitors are using internal pages.
I only found one competitor that is using their home page, and I found 12 good backlink possibilities through it.
How do I go about finding other competitors? I know this is a general question, but what strategies do you guys use, and could you give examples?
-
yeah i prob should have read the title......................... Can I ask what industry cause in the lawyer sector There is 100+ article/blog sites 100+ LOCAL directory sites 100+ Other Related Sites
a good place to get some backlinks is patch they use sub domains for each town so every area you market to you get a listing (and i think there blogs have follow links)
-
At the most basic level, your competitors for any given keyword are the sites that rank for that keyword - but if you Google not only your keyword, but also related keywords (not just SEO but SEO services, SEO consulting, etc.) you will start to see a few sites that come up for a variety of semantically related searches. I'd start by mining their backlinks.
There are lots of ways to find link targets beyond mining your competitors' backlinks, though. Try searching "(your keyword) blog" to find relevant blogs on your topic/in your industry. Use a service like FriendOrFollow to look at your competitors' followers and the people they follow on Twitter - some of them will have useful sites as well. Once you find a site that you'd like to target for a link, look at that site's backlinks to find more related sites to target.
Don't forget that you can use the "pages on this root domain" option in Open Site Explorer and pull out all of the links to a domain, whether to the home page or internal pages.
-
Oh I see. You misinterpreted my question
We need 100 strong backlinks for our site to rank at all in our industry (probably more). But all our competitors are using internal pages so they don't have much to sort through in OSE.
-
search "asbestos attorney" A very competitive term that I have not yet tried to target (over $100per click in adwords)
The First 3 are big sites (aka:sokolove) than it goes to domain targeted sites. Sokolove Targets some 300 or more keywords and his domain alone helps outrank most of his comp
as well a not so comp keyword "pradaxa lawyer" that we just started targeting by just creating a page without much seo gets #5 rank
I can see creating a domain for 1 keyword in an area a seoing it crazy and getting it in the top 3 but doing that 100 times seems like years of work... if you could get it to rank in a month
-
So even if there's hundreds of people building one big page authority in my industry, I could target my internal pages towards niches that are smaller or different than my competitors and do well?
That seems to be what everyone else is doing in our competitive niche. Is there a way to do this when it's pretty competitive?
-
why wouldn't you be using internal pages as well only have to build 1 page authority unless you have 100 people that can each work with an individual domain and get it authoritative
I just google search the term I want to rank for than see who comes up than through them into places like ose and see what they are doing & if I can beat them
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
-
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Google News sitemap keywords
My company is a Theater news and reviews site. We're building a google news sitemap and Google suggests some recommended keywords we can use with their <keywords>tag: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/116037</keywords> Our writers also tag their stories with relevant keywords. What should we populate the <keywords>tag with?</keywords> We were thinking we'd automatically populate it with author-added tags, in addition to one or more of the recommended ones suggested by Google, such as Theater, Arts, and Culture (all of our articles are related to these topics). Finally, many of our articles are about say, celebrities. An author may tag an article with 'Bryan Cranston,' and when this is the case we're considering also tagging it with the 'Celebrities' tag. Are all or any of these worthwhile?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Page URL keywords
Hello everybody, I've read that it's important to put your keywords at the front of your page title, meta tag etc, but my question is about the page url. Say my target keywords are exotic, soap, natural, and organic. Will placing the keywords further behind the URL address affect the SEO ranking? If that's the case what's the first n number of words Google considers? For example, www.splendidshop.com/gift-set-organic-soap vs www.splendidshop.com/organic-soap-gift-set Will the first be any less effective than the second one simply because the keywords are placed behind?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReferralCandy0 -
What to do with my keyword rich domainnames?
Hi, We have a holiday home rental business in Italy (Umbria). At this moment the language of the site is dutch and we targeting at the dutch and belgium market. We now in the fase of developing/adding 2 more languages, german and english. The url structure is going to is/be. dutch version (live)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remcozwaan
domainname.com/nl
domeinname.com/nl/vakantiehuizen English (en) version (dev)
domainname.com/en
domeinname.com/en/villas
domeinname.com/en/villas/name-of-the-villa
domeinname.com/en/apartments
ect German (de) version (dev)
domainname.com/de
domeinname.com/de/ferienwohnung
domeinname.com/de/erienwohnung/name-of-the-ferienwohnung
domeinname.com/de/ferienhauser
domeinname.com/de/ferienhauser/name-of-the-ferienhauser
ect I have some registred some keyword rich domainnames like vakantiehuizeninumbrie.com (nl)
ferienwohnungumbrien.de (de)
ect question: Is it a good approach (seo wise) to point the keyword rich domainname to the specified landingpage. By example: point ferienwohnungumbrien.de to the page domeinname.com/de/ferienwohnung ? mille grazie! remco0 -
2 Year Old Keyword Focused Site Will Not Rank for Keyword
Hi All, I need your help. This site is confounding me. The site is turnstilefactory.com It's a few years old. Strong domain name and seo focused on the term 'turnstile'. In bound links are not abundant, but certainly not absent either. Considering the subject matter, content and competition in the space, I would expect this site by now to at least be in the top 10 pages for the search 'turnstile', but it's not. I've tried everything I can think of with this, but it just won't rank for anything other than it's domain name. Can anyone please take a look and let me know if they see something I'm missing? It would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomozpaul0 -
Planning a Link Building Campaign: Which keywords to focus on?
Okay, so looking at my ranking tab for my campaign. It shows the increase in traffic from my keywords, ranks, etc. My goal is to increase traffic, thereby sales. I am trying to plan a link building campaign (aside from the onpage optimization) and get as many keywords within the top 10 as possible: Do I start focusing on a certain number of keywords that are on page 2 (lets say 10) and try to build links to get them within the top 10. Then pick another 10 keywords? Do I pick a variety of keywords from various pages? What is the smartest way of trying to optimize campaign keywords as far as linkbuilding?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Measurement of Link Value
Over the past few months I have encountered webmasters who claim to be using instruments far better than open site explorer but they will not disclose what they are. Are there better ways of determining the value of a link than OSE? Is "link juice" more important than page/domain authority where the link resides? Or vice-vesa. Any help understanding this would be appreciated. I do not want to offend other webmasters but I also do not want to be fooled by them either while negotiating a link exchange with them
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340