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.
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 List stuck on "Gathering Metrics"
Hello! I set up a keyword list over a week ago and the majority of the keywords still say "Gathering Metrics." Any advice on how to get this data to populate? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
How many keywords do you recommend tracking?
I am working through thousands of organic keywords and would like to create a list of core keywords. I want the list to be small enough that we can really go after these keywords and track progress. I work for a B2B software company. I am thinking between 20-30 but I would love to hear any tips, opinions and recommendations! Thank you!
Keyword Research | | NikCall0 -
YouTube Keyword Research
MOZ has some really powerful tools available to us, but I was wondering if there are any tools for conducting keyword research for YouTube? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | Alaeddin1 -
Are Keywords treated as Case Sensitive?
We found that keywords are not case sensitive, but MOZ show same keyword in different case under "Top National Keywords" tab. Eg: 1) Wobble Wedge 2) wobble wedge
Keyword Research | | torbett0 -
National keyword results v local keyword results
If the keyword contains the location term like "SEO company London" is it better to use the wider results over local? Additionally, some best practice examples of national v local result tracking would be great 🙂 Darren
Keyword Research | | SEODarren0 -
Keyword research for new website
Hi guys, I'm pretty new to all this so please bare with me if I sound like a total noob. I've been tasked with doing keyword research for our new website to work out what we want to rank for. We are a b2b outsource provider of telecommunication services, contact centres etc. I'm looking for advice on how best to start the keyword research, what I should be looking for etc. At the moment I'm using a list of keywords provided by the sales team, running these through uber suggest for other variations and then putting them through Google's keyword planner. Once I've done that I'm looking at ones with higher volumes of searches with low competition. Is there anything that I'm missing? I'm trying to cross reference this with intent, looking for searches linked to people wanting help, a provider, to buy etc. Thanks in advance for any help guys, I really appreciate it. Leo
Keyword Research | | Leo_Woodhead0 -
Check competitors keywords
Hello I not too old to use seomoz, i am looking for a feature please let me know if i can see this kinda feature in seomoz pro account. I am looking for a keywords for my competitors like i enter my competitors domain name and i get the list of keywords my competitors are ranking in top 50. I searched a lot but i am unable to find the automatic fetching of keywords of my competitor. The same is available in other website www.seoprofiler.com In seomoz i have to manually enter the keywords and than it shows ranking of my competitors, i want to fetch the keywords for my competitor directly.
Keyword Research | | DanishWadhwa0 -
Any thoughts as to the best keyword tool about today?
I have found similar questions on the forum but is there a best keyword tool to use or is it a case of using a few and cross referecing them?
Keyword Research | | bunac10