Beating the Big Boys: help analyzing keywords in a very competitive space

[SuiteLifeBarcelona]

Hi all!

Long time Pro member first time question asker!

We are in real estate in Barcleona and, although we create tons of content (daily blogs, free ebooks, videos) we have never properly optimized our root domain page for any keywords that might bring us specifically real estate related traffic from Google.

Our website is www DOT SuiteLife DOT com.

My question is about keyword analysis. We've had this sort of paralysis whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords. The problem we have is that most all keywords in our space are VERY competitive. So far the two tools we've used are:

• Google Keyword tool: About the top 20-40 keywords we'd like to go after are rated as HIGH competition.

• SEOmoz Keyword tool: Only the really too-obscure or long tailed keywords related to our business fall under a 50 rating.

We were wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to further analyze keyword possibilities for our homepage when it seems like anything with any decent search traffic is super competitive.

Please let me know if there's any important info that I've left out!

Thank you SO much in advance for any advice/help. The SEOmoz community is so amazing! Rock on guys and gals!

~ Benny

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Benny,

First, I love your domain name... that is awesome!

I hear you in being in an industry with highly competitive keywords. Our main keywords we are targeting are in the 75-80 range according SEOmoz tools.

It looks like casamona.com may be a competitor in your space as they are ranking high for MANY keywords that I tried. One bit of advice I can give is analyze their website using OpenSiteExplorer.org to see if you could potential get links in the same areas that they are getting links. You can also check out their anchor text as well - giving you further insight into what is working for them.

Maybe try playing around with your homepage text. You only mention the phrase, "Barcelona Real Estate" in your meta title and description - having some text on your homepage using those keywords and variations will probably help. Also, if I were you, I would maybe play around the the title tag. It looks like just one long string of text. Maybe try breaking it up a little to something like: Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy Real Estate in Barcelona or Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy in Barcelona Today | Suite Life.

And don't worry about how competitive your keywords are. Just keep at it and/or go after long-tail variations and you will see some great returns.

Good luck.

Mike

[EvolveCreative]

Note, competition in the Google Keyword tool is the competition of advertisers on AdWords. Not the competition of organic search.

The SEOmoz keyword tool isn't perfect, but you're off to a good start. Anything under 50% is generally "good to go after."

by "whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords." do you mean anchor text to use in the backlinks you build? Because you SHOULD NOT control the anchor text of the backlinks you build. If you have two, just two, backlinks with the same keyword stuffed anchor text you're setting yourself up for a penalty.

There are 1000s of tools out there that will help you judge competition. As well as thousands of SEOs that will tell you to look at 15 different metrics to make a competition assessment. But, I'm just going to give you one that has never steered me wrong.

Type:

allintitle: "keyword"

in Google. If there are under 2000 results you have a REALLY good chance of pulling on the first page if you simply have the keyword in your title tag. Nothing in SEO is a perfect science, but the "under 2000 rule" has been tried and true for the last 10 years.

Good luck!