can you quantify "competitive niche"

pmp613

pmp613

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fine - total noob question. but i am trying to gauge what is easy to hit; what will take 6 months to make it to page 1; and what is a waste of time.

how do you seo-gods quantify what is a "competitive" niche, and how do you quantify your ROI (including your time waiting for them to come).

use g's terms, use Market Sam terms... just help me understand.


i am looking at most Amazon aff sites, but that's not a limiting factor.
 


I don't bother using any tools other than Yahoo! Site Explorer to check out the backlinks of the sites on the 1st page for whatever the term is. Also look at their domains and titles. If you're going up against an exact match domain with the keyword right there in the title and an ass-ton of quality backlinks, well, you can file that under very competitive.

Also, make no mistake, the amount of results for the keyword upon searching it on Google means nothing.
 
What the hell. I'm feeling generous and you actually posted in the noob section so I'll give you a straight and honest answer.

There are a shit ton of things you have to look at when trying to determine whether or not the keyphrase you're trying to rank for is competitive. First of all, type in the exact keyphrase you want to rank for and put it in quotes. For example "cheap basketball shoes" and record the number of results. If the number of results is over 500,000 then it's likely going to be a tough niche to crack. But now it's time to delve deeper into more specific factors.

First off, look at the PR of the top sites. PR doesn't really matter very these days, but it's easy to check and should be a part of your linking profile. If you have any PR6 or PR7 sites in there, this is likely going to be pretty tough (as most sites with high PR like that have a good number of backlinks that were gathered through whitehat methods). Next go buy SEO Spyglass. Seriously. Check out all their backlinks and pay attention to their anchor text and the PR of the page that's giving the link as well as the number of OBL on the page. Then start manually looking at the pages linking to your competitors. Are they shitty directory links? Links on the homepage of legitimate sites? Web 2.0 properties? Blog comments? If their links are shitty, you can take them down if you build enough links. If they're super high quality links, you might end up spending $xx,xxx trying to rank for that particular keyphrase.

Some other things you should do is check for the existence of an exact match domain for that keyphrase. Use SEO Spyglass to check and see if that exact match is within the first 10 pages. If it has some solid links and is on page 4+ then the niche is likely very competitive. I know it sucks ass, but if you want you can throw $50-$100 worth of Xrumer profiles at the exact match that you don't own and see what happens. If it hits page 1 after a few months then the niche likely isn't very competitive. If not, well it's probably going to cost a pretty penny to get your site up there.
 
sapphirescales said:
What the hell. I'm feeling generous and you actually posted in the noob section so I'll give you a straight and honest answer.

There are a shit ton of things you have to look at when trying to determine whether or not the keyphrase you're trying to rank for is competitive. First of all, type in the exact keyphrase you want to rank for and put it in quotes. For example "cheap basketball shoes" and record the number of results. If the number of results is over 500,000 then it's likely going to be a tough niche to crack. But now it's time to delve deeper into more specific factors.
Click to expand...

On this one, if i look in Market Samurai i can make a distinction between global and local results. So is your 500K global or local? i am just focussing on the US market.

Also, using MS, there is the point of in title. How do *you* weigh that parameter?

sapphirescales said:
First off, look at the PR of the top sites. PR doesn't really matter very these days, but it's easy to check and should be a part of your linking profile. If you have any PR6 or PR7 sites in there, this is likely going to be pretty tough (as most sites with high PR like that have a good number of backlinks that were gathered through whitehat methods). Next go buy SEO Spyglass. Seriously. Check out all their backlinks and pay attention to their anchor text and the PR of the page that's giving the link as well as the number of OBL on the page. Then start manually looking at the pages linking to your competitors. Are they shitty directory links? Links on the homepage of legitimate sites? Web 2.0 properties? Blog comments? If their links are shitty, you can take them down if you build enough links. If they're super high quality links, you might end up spending $xx,xxx trying to rank for that particular keyphrase.
Click to expand...
How much do you weigh the anchor text factor? Like if they don't have any exact anchor text links, and i can get good ones.... even if they have like a few PR 5 links....


sapphirescales said:
Some other things you should do is check for the existence of an exact match domain for that keyphrase. Use SEO Spyglass to check and see if that exact match is within the first 10 pages. If it has some solid links and is on page 4+ then the niche is likely very competitive.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting idea I hadn't considered. Thanks.
 
Solid info in this thread. Also I look at the first few pages of the serps. Is everyone have the phrase in their title and also maybe in the same order as I want to do?

If so it will not be easy.

Might then go start looking at backlinks and see if I can find out where I can get to. Is the top 3 impossible but the rest of page 1 is average?
 
pmp613 said:
how do you seo-gods quantify what is a "competitive" niche,
Click to expand...

A better question would be how to quantify a long tail niche, imo.


I search "the keyword here" with the quotes

and intitle:the keyword here

I look for a huge drop from the first to the second.

And if the intitle: has less than 5,000 results it's good.

Bompa
 
Bompa said:
I search "the keyword here" with the quotes

and intitle:the keyword here

I look for a huge drop from the first to the second.
Click to expand...
I have essentially started doing this, except using Market Samurai to find the less competitive keywords. I have just started testing, but anything with more than 30,000 phrase match results coupled with over 150% SEOTCR in the tool I am crossing off the list of potential keywords to start with as too competitive.

For those not using MS, SEOTCR simply is the percentage of title competition (pages using the exact phrase in their title tag) compared to the total phrase match results.
For example, a keyword showing with 25,000 phrase match results ("keywordkeyword") with 50,000 intitle would be 200%. Keyphrases below 50% with under 5,000 results as Bompa mentioned should be the low hanging fruit.

Easy confidence builder and noob tip for adsense monies and affiliate sales:
1.Use the above tips to find good longtail phrases to target.
2.Pick out the ones meeting the criteria (<5,000 intitle and <50% title comp ratio)
3.Discard everything under $1.50 CPC (for adsense)
4.Have articles written and put on Hubpages
5.Interlink them and send some backlinks (nothing crazy since HP is getting strict on mass backlinking like rumers-x and boxxyscraper)
6.Forget about them for six months
7.?????
8.Profit
 
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DanWesson said:
I have essentially started doing this, except using Market Samurai to find the less competitive keywords. I have just started testing, but anything with more than 30,000 phrase match results coupled with over 150% SEOTCR in the tool I am crossing off the list of potential keywords to start with as too competitive.
Click to expand...

Dan-
30K phrase match with any kind of search volume is very hard to find. i think you would be fortunate to find much with more than 200 exact match local (USA) kw matches.

i know that the market sam guys call it the golden rule, but i think it's really there to give someone who is starting the confidence that he can achieve something, instead of starting w/some insane kw like "weight loss program" or whatever.


Why are you saying that over 30K is too competitive? (a low SEOTCR is easy to find...)
 
pmp613 said:
Dan-
30K phrase match with any kind of search volume is very hard to find. i think you would be fortunate to find much with more than 200 exact match local (USA) kw matches.

i know that the market sam guys call it the golden rule, but i think it's really there to give someone who is starting the confidence that he can achieve something, instead of starting w/some insane kw like "weight loss program" or whatever.


Why are you saying that over 30K is too competitive? (a low SEOTCR is easy to find...)
Click to expand...
I'm definitely not married to it, but he 30k is just a rule of thumb that I like. I have gotten away from really concerning myself too much with the number of results either broad or phrase matched. It varies too much to really be of much value when picking keywords to target. I only use that number to eliminate phrases that will likely take too much time...mostly because I'm a lazy link builder. Ultimately the first 20 results in a niche decide if I bother registering a domain and getting content for a site targeting a certain keyword.

If someone goes for something with a much higher number of results, it's surely doable, but will take more time and focus. Since I work on a different site every few days and continue to build new ones, it's more feasible at this point to find the open doors. I have domains targeting much more competitive phrases that I periodically add content to that are aging. Every now and again, these sites get a link from some of my other sites ranking 1st page for a certain easier long tail. I am hoping with patience, this strategy will eventually push those sites up while I make money from the smaller phrases in the meantime.

The thing about SEOTCR is the higher you move up the ladder in quantity of results, the easier it gets to find lower SEOTCR phrases. It doesn't mean that those phrases are much less competitive. Using this logic, the phrases with lower matches along with lower title competition are often easy peasy.

EDIT: I just re-read your OP, and I do not have enough experience yet to qualify as even SEO turd, much less SEO god. This is simply a strategy that has worked for me somewhat in the short term. That is all.
 
How much do you weigh the anchor text factor? Like if they don't have any exact anchor text links, and i can get good ones.... even if they have like a few PR 5 links....
Click to expand...

To be perfectly honest I'm still testing this out. But everything I've seen so far points to the idea that anchor text is the #1 thing that helps to rank you (at least in blackhat). Now if you got a nice backlink from the homepage of an aged related website without your desired anchor text that would definitely still help you. But if you're doing blog commenting on high PR blogs and don't use your desired anchor text, you're just wasting your time. Same with pretty much everything else that's not totally whitehat (Xrumer, web 2.0 properties, article submissions, etc.).

A better question would be how to quantify a long tail niche, imo.


I search "the keyword here" with the quotes

and intitle:the keyword here

I look for a huge drop from the first to the second.

And if the intitle: has less than 5,000 results it's good.

Bompa
Click to expand...

Ah, I forgot about that one. In my experience, if the intitle: result displays less then ~10k results, I can usually get to the top of that with on-page SEO only. Maybe I've just been lucky and have picked really easy niche's. You can't rely on this information alone when judging competition.
 
I think it's also important to mess up the competition on page1. A searchterm can have a lot of competing websites which are easy to be dominated, on the other an even less competitive term can have 'opponents' who are high PR and authority sites against which you will have a hard time to 'fight' against.

Generally I think the more money about a niche the more competition of course, just take the gold services for online games or the little blue pills for men :)
 
DanWesson said:
I have gotten away from really concerning myself too much with the number of results either broad or phrase matched. It varies too much to really be of much value when picking keywords to target. I only use that number to eliminate phrases that will likely take too much time...mostly because I'm a lazy link builder. Ultimately the first 20 results in a niche decide if I bother registering a domain and getting content for a site targeting a certain keyword.
Click to expand...

This gets to the crux of my question: from what i understand about your're approach, you are going for easy competition, building some links (but not investing much), then going on to the next site... so eventually, after seeding the sites with links, you see what ranking you get to, what kind of business there is, and then decide to invest more and perhaps expand the KW pool you are trying to rank for.

so, you don't really have a good idea of volume and profit potential going into a niche - but rather you limit your exposure and hope for the best?
 
pmp613 said:
This gets to the crux of my question: from what i understand about your're approach, you are going for easy competition, building some links (but not investing much), then going on to the next site... so eventually, after seeding the sites with links, you see what ranking you get to, what kind of business there is, and then decide to invest more and perhaps expand the KW pool you are trying to rank for.

so, you don't really have a good idea of volume and profit potential going into a niche - but rather you limit your exposure and hope for the best?
Click to expand...

Yes, the shotgun method was the essence of my original strategy and produced a number of sites. I have since refined things after being inspired by Eli's SEO Empire posts.

Using a popular web 2.0 site, though, I've gotten some data on some decently easy niches with good traffic and profit potential. It's still fun to build one-off sites when I can find a good EMD, but the focus recently has been more on networks of sites in a couple of more competitive niches that I want dig into.
 
So, you guys are advocating focussing on the longtail.

Tactically - what does that mean? Note that I am working w/WP sites, so it's stupid easy for me to clone sites.

Does it make more sense to build additional pages for each longtail?
Or - is it better to make more small sites that are dedicated to the longtail (with only a few pages of new content). And then build a network to the "mother" site?
 
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