Who Are You Up Against?

To search for your top keyword competitors, you need to know where you’re looking and how to analyze the information you gather. Immediately assuming a low competition rating is a good thing is not always the best course of action; nor is counting out a keyword with high competition.

Gathering Data

Once you have gathered your keyword data, you need to gather data about your competitors. The simplest way to start doing this is to simply type the keywords into a search engine such as Google and see what comes up. Here are things to look for:

High vs. Low Competition

It may seem simple that if competition is high, you don’t want to use that keyword and vice versa if it is low, but an important factor is also the number and quality of searches received for the keyword in question.

If a keyword has more than 1 million websites using it and there are only 90,000 searches by volume, you have heady competition. However if those same 1 million websites have 280,000 searches, you may actually stand a better chance as the bid to capture those searches (and their derivative searches) is less intense.

In the opposite case, if you find a keyword with only 6500 websites using the keyword, consider why there only so many using it. A search volume of only 190 will make this keyword less valuable than if you had 12,000 competitors and there were 2,000 searches. Don’t forget to take the search volume of a keyword into account when making these decisions.

April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Basic Keyword Research 

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