Which top 10 organic results are my competitors?

[eatyourveggies]

Hi all,

This is a question about whether the top 10 ORGANIC Google results for a broad match is your competition, or whether it's the top 10 for a phrase match, or an exact match.

I'm a newbie here but not a newbie to the world of SEO. I hope to be able answer just as many questions as I ask

QUESTION: If a customer comes to me and says, "hey, who's my (organic) competition for wedding present?" and I want to use Google to get the top 10 organic results, do I use a broad, phrase, or exact match?

It seems many people think an exact match is the way to go but I think they were more referring to Adwords results / competition. I'm not trying to determine search volume for Adwords or even the search volume for organic results... I'm only interested in the top 10 competitors in the organic results.

No one types in "wedding present" (with inverted commas" when doing a search in Google, so surely to see who ranks organically for wedding present I'd want to simply type in wedding present (no inverted commas, aka broad match).

I understand all the concepts about how Google results cary whether you're logged in, etc, etc so I don't want to get distracted by that. And I know there's a bunch of tools we can use like the SEOMoz Keyword Analysis Tool. But I just want to know specifically what people would use (broad, phrase or exact) to look at the top 10 organic competitors are when doing a manual search in Google.

[danatanseo]

Thanks Adam! (and thanks for reading my post too)

I would love to hear from SEOMoz about the reason for using [exact match]  - perhaps because that gives the more relevant results instead of broad match results, which as we all know, get progressively less relevant and sometimes completely irrelevant by the time you get to page 3. Since there's no sense in trying to compete with irrelevant results, it's probably better to know what the true results are for an exact match.

Just a thought. Perhaps someone from SEOMoz can chime in?

[eatyourveggies]

Hi Dana,

Very strange, I am just reading your blog post now and here you are answering my question. Thanks for the quick reply.

I agree the definition of "competitor" will vary. My question was asked with the definition of "competition" to be anyone taking up a position on the first page because if all 10 positions for shure microphones are taken up by major suppliers / manufacturers then the recommendation to my client would be "don't bother".

What I'm finding with varying tools (SEO Moz, SEM Rush, etc) is they all give search volumes in terms of phrase or exact matches. But when someone searches for wedding present in Google (as a broad match), the number of results is the number of results we care about.

I'm simply not confident in my own opinion because I would have thought all these tools would have put in enough research to decide that phrase or exact results are better. Using a phrase or exact match to provide "search volume" figures makes sense to me, but if you want:

• the top 10 organic / paid results for a keyphrase

• the number of organic / paid results for a keyphrase

Then broad match would be the obvious choice.

I'm not sure if anyone from SEOMoz wants to explain why the Keyword Analysis Tool shows results using exact match, but I'm sure there's a logical reason for it - I just can't see it!

[danatanseo]

Hi Adam,

This is a great question. My answer (which is my own and not endorsed by any committees or special interest groups, lol), is yes, broad match. You are correct that no one (unless they are librarians or grad students working on their dissertations) uses boolean search elements like "(" or quotes. One thing I will say, is to consult with your clients about your results because the companies who are in the top 10 results for a particular term may or may not be considered to be true "competitors." For example, I work for a company that sells "Shure" brand microphones. If you type in "Shure microphones," you will inevitable get results from the manufacturer in the top 10. While yes, they might be "competitors" in terms of top 10 results, but they aren't competitors in terms of doing business. Most likely, my company is never going to be able to outrank "Shure" for "shure microphones. So, the true "competitors" are the other resellers who are managing to make it into the top 10.

The other thing to consider is location. If your company only sells in the USA, but is being beat out by a company that sells internationally, well, are they really a competitor? I think what I'm trying to say is that there are "competitors" in terms of "who do you have to compete with in order to make it into the top ten of a given term." And there are "competitors" - "Companies that you directly compete with for real customers."  I'm absolutely certain that these two groups aren't identical.

Whew, that was a little longer than I intended, but I hope it's comprehensible!

Dana