A good rule of thumb for competition and local searches when selecting keywords
-
I'm doing keyword research in the Google Keyword Tool and was looking and spending a lot of time looking at keyword competition and local searches. I'm trying to determine what is a good rule of thumb for what level of competition and local searches people have used when selecting the keywords they will optimize for. I've currently been trying to find ones that have less than 50% (moderate) competition and less than 1,000 monthly searches.
Also, which do you put more weight on the competition or the number of searches.
-
I don't know if you saw this. Its very good timing that Rand wrote a blog post about this very subject!
Check it out, as always its a worthwhile read.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-places-citations-5-tactics-to-earn-links-for-your-local-business
-
Eric,
Let me add that the keyword difficulty tool doesn't necessaraly apply to local search. A LOT of other stuff is looked at as far as local SEO.
You should check out David Mihm's bolg. It is one of the BEST resources available in local search.
-
That helps. thanks.
-
Citations are the "link" equivalent for local search. If you go to your places page, there is a section that says "more about this place" That is info google has scraped from other local sources that mention your businesses. They may or may not contain a link.
Looking at your citations and your competitors is a good area to work on improving your listing in Google Places.
Heres an image of a citation section.
-
Hi Roger,
What is a citation? What constitutes a strong or a weak constitute citation?
-
Oh and a strong listing you would be more focused on number of searches if you feel it's realistic you could rank for it.
-
Oh and a strong listing you would be more focused on number of searches if you feel it's realistic you could rank for it.
-
It depends how strong your citations are. If your new or ave a weak listing I'd pay more attention to competition?
-
Hi Pashmina,
For the total results, do you put each term into Google individually to find this result, or is there a tool where you can run multiple keywords at a time?
Eric
-
I would use more than the above two factors for selecting keywords. I think of the various research tools and metrics I pull from them as varying sieves to filter and boil down a list.
I'll start with hundreds, if not thousands of words and then narrow my list by adjusting the thresholds for each factor until I get a nice list. Along with monthly searches and competition, I'd immediately add the total number of search results for that keyword. For example maybe you start with a threshold of less than 5,000 monthly, 80% competition and less than 600K total results. And if you still have too many keywords you adjust your thresholds and tweak according to what makes sense for your market/audience and goals.
And go deeper and add more factor, like estimated CPC, SEO Moz difficulty score, or # of competitors and factors you can pull from other keyword research tools.
-
Don't fear competition because where there is competition there is also (usually) a lot of search volume and a lot of money changing hands. Instead attack with long, diverse copy to pull in the long tail queries.
-
I try not to take that into account when choosing keywords to optimize for organic. The competition may correlate to organic efforts but you can't let that dictate your optimization. You have to optimize for what your audience/clients are searching for. IMO.
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
-
Is there a tool that can alert me whenever the first page of search results change for a certain search term in a specific region?
Is there a tool that can alert me whenever the first page of search results change for a certain search term in a specific region?
Keyword Research | | Amanda_Palmary0 -
Potential Keyword Cannibalisation
Hi, I am concerned that our website's rankings are currently being affected by KW cannibalisation. We don't rank too badly for our target keywords but they could, of course, be better, especially as the niche is very competitive! One thing that is bothering me is that our internal pages do not rank well for these KWs and instead it is the homepage appearing in the rankings. This is despite the fact that the internal pages are optimised for the different keywords. Basically the HP is also targeting these same keywords and I was wondering if this is affecting our rankings overall? I am not keen to risk changing the homepage in case our rankings suffer massively and we drop out of Google completely. If anyone could offer some advice then that would be great. Is it simply a case of trying to get external links pointing to these internal pages? Would internal linking to them prove effective as well? Cheers Tom
Keyword Research | | National-Homebuyers1 -
Keyword Over-usage?
I have a photography page, where there are a number of galleries. In the galleries and thumbnails of each photo I'm selling. These also include the title. It's built dynamically. However, I've noticed when I do an on-page grade check, that one of the places I'm failing is over-using the keyword on the page. This is mainly due to the titles of each photo containing that keyword. For example, there might be a photo gallery for images of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and 30 of the 40 images on the page have a title with "Golden Gate Bridge" in them. So naturally, the title is displaying this on the page and showing up 30+ times (after the term is used in the page text as well). Is this a really big problem, or is the benefit on each individual photo page outweighing any hit on the gallery page? Any thoughts? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | shannmg10 -
Where are the Google Search Volumes in Keyword Analysis
I just joined and started by doing some keyword analysis, For some reason although I select "On Google", the tool only reports Bing Search Volume (Exact match). I am not that interested in Bing - not sure how to display the Google search stats
Keyword Research | | jbendiner0 -
Keywords + Country?
Hey guys, Let's say that I'm doing on-site SEO for a website that sells football shirts. This website targets 5 different countries. We only have a .com domain and no other country specific domains will be added at this point. When I choose the keywords, do I opt for product name + country or only product name? football shirts france or football shirts? Some info: Countries have been added in the title of the pages. Countries appear in the footer. Thank You.
Keyword Research | | BruLee0 -
Keywords besides what is in Google Analytics
Hello, For our site thewealthymind(dot)com what keywords do you think I should be targeting, I assume it is not enough just to get keywords from Google Analytics history. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | BobGW0 -
What is the maximum lenght in url for keyword ?
Howdy, I was looking at the maximum lenght of url for ntfs and they told me it was 255 character for url and/or folder ect. Does that mean that i could use the full lenght of 255 filled whit keyword for the url on my site ? Thx.
Keyword Research | | Promoteam0