SEO Tycoon

**JDDunn9** · 08-31-2006, 11:39 PM

I was wondering what other webmasters look at to determine how competitive a term is. Do you look at the number of results in google, the pagerank of the top ten, how well optimized the top ten seem to be, etc.

Personally, I don't care at all about the number of results Google shows. I look at how well optimized the top ten sites are and their pagerank, the age of the sites, and how soon relevancy drops off in the deeper pages of the results.

**petertdavis** · 09-01-2006, 12:51 AM

I try to get a feel for how difficult I think it would be for me to get into the top three. If the amount of work outweights the potential rewards, then I say it's too competitive. If it will be a lot of hard work, but the rewards are justified, I say it's competitive, but will give it a try anyway. If it's just a matter of slapping up a page and throwing a couple of links at it, then I don't consider it very competitive.

**cooldesigner** · 09-01-2006, 02:14 AM

Page rank and back link count matter a lot for me...
Total number of pages found does not because sometimes even if there are over half a million pages, still there's a chance that the first page results are not very well optimized, or do not have too many inbound links.
A term which has sites listed where back link count is too high is competitive for me.
One can do the on-page optimization, but getting back links is difficult.
Additionally I also consider the relevancy of back links. If most of the links are from directory submission, few blogs, some article resource links, I might give it a try. But if they are mostly from other established similar sites, I might not touch it...

**Kching** · 09-01-2006, 05:34 AM

there're so many different factors to examen how competitive is a search term or phrase.
But if you want a really rough answer.. the more Adwords-advertisment, the more money is there to be made.. the more competitive the term is..

**imported_Michael** · 09-01-2006, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDDunn9

I look at how well optimized the top ten sites are...

I agree.

If the top ten sites are all well optimized then the search term is competitive.

It may or may not be worth going after but that is another calculation.

**A.N.Onym** · 09-01-2006, 10:31 AM

Just optimized top 10 is not competitive.
Optimized first several hundred, that's real competition.

Generally, apart from the amount and type of keywords in the phrase, you may as well look whether sites in the SERPs have:
- keywords in titles
- in descriptions
- in URLs
- also have AdWords running
- have a lot of links (check Yahoo)

As Peter said, if I need to work a lot for a single keyphrase, I am not rushing after it. I'd rather work on less competitive keyphrases.

By the way, whatever a competitive phrase is, you can always make it less competitive by adding one more keyword. Especially when you can create dozens of keyphrases with your competitive keyword, create a section on your site about it, and work away.

That way you may get targeted traffc for less competitive keyphrases and maybe even rank for a competitive one sooner or later.

**J.P** · 09-01-2006, 11:50 AM

I do think it can be hard to judge sometimes.

I've got my personal site top in google for the past year and a bit for the term "Hanging Monkey" , it produces 5.6 mil results but it's been top for over a year and to be honest the site is crap, same meta tags same titles all over the place just a mess really.

I tend to find the competitive search terms by looking on overture then check the results in google.

Once this is done I will have a look at the top 5 sites, age of sites, on page factors, PR, backlinks and take it from there.

If the top results are all old domains (4 years of older), PR6+, 1000+ BL's I doubt I would bother with it, I would normally go back to overture and look down the list for another search term and then repeat the above to find something not so well established.

**imported_Michael** · 09-01-2006, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.N.Onym

Just optimized top 10 is not competitive.
Optimized first several hundred, that's real competition.

What search term is optimized for the first several hundred?

**imported_Michael** · 09-01-2006, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by J.P

I've got my personal site top in google for the past year and a bit for the term "Hanging Monkey" , it produces 5.6 mil results but it's been top for over a year and to be honest the site is crap, same meta tags same titles all over the place just a mess really.

That's because the EF for the term hanging monkey is only 0.3%. Normally any term under 1.0% requires very little to rank first.

**J.P** · 09-01-2006, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael

That's because the EF for the term hanging monkey is only 0.3%. Normally any term under 1.0% requires very little to rank first.

sorry whats EF, never came across it?

**imported_Michael** · 09-01-2006, 04:11 PM

EF Ratio = (EXACT*100)/FINDALL

EXACT is a search for the exact term i.e. in quotes "keyword1 keyword2"
FINDALL is the normal search keyword1 AND keyword2

For example search engine optimization:

EF Ratio = (49,700,000*100)/65,100,000 = 76%

Hope that helps.

**gopher292** · 09-01-2006, 10:13 PM

EF sounds like a really good metric for gauging on-page competition. Do you know who came up with it?

A minor note on the math:
EF Ratio = (49,700,000*100)/65,100,000 = 76
EF Ratio = 49,700,000/65,100,000 = 76%

Since 1 is equal to 100%. (Not that it makes a huge difference) :tooth:

**imported_Michael** · 09-02-2006, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gopher292

EF sounds like a really good metric for gauging on-page competition. Do you know who came up with it?

It's useful but not infallible and has to be used in conjunction with some of the metrics mentioned by others including PPC data. I think it was proposed initially by Dr. Garcia.

**JDDunn9** · 09-02-2006, 11:20 AM

I've never heard of that before. However I tried it out on a few terms and it didn't seem to be very accurate. For instance, it shows the travel industry to be very easy to get into (e.g. "Travel Japan" is under 0.5%). Educational terms also seem to be easy. All in all, it may work for some instances, but in general, I'd be better off just examining the top ten.

**imported_Michael** · 09-02-2006, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDDunn9

I've never heard of that before. However I tried it out on a few terms and it didn't seem to be very accurate. For instance, it shows the travel industry to be very easy to get into (e.g. "Travel Japan" is under 0.5%). Educational terms also seem to be easy.

I don't think it tells you anything about the "industry" only the keywords. At 0.5% it would be very easy to come high for that keyphrase if you wanted to. Allinanchor:"travel japan" shows only 11,000 results so a few quality back links with the anchor "travel japan" would get you on the first page for the term quite easily.

Quote:

All in all, it may work for some instances, but in general, I'd be better off just examining the top ten.

I think that's right if you want a quick appraisal but if you need to go into some depth then using all the other metrics including EF will help a lot.

**kkibak00** · 09-06-2006, 07:34 PM

for a quick check, if allintitle and allinurl are above 5000, it's not an EASY term..

**thecashcow** · 09-08-2006, 08:28 AM

I look at a combination of the most searched keywords in my target market areas comparative to the competition for those keywords for the top optimised sites (how many quality backlinks those sites have, is their site offering quality content, what is the page rank of the site, what volume of traffic do they receive, etc).

**memo** · 09-11-2006, 11:02 AM

I'd just add that looking for people who have a keyword phrase you are chasing in their title is probably a better indicator of the "competitiveness" of a keyword eg allintitle:home based business

**sandanista** · 09-15-2006, 01:52 PM

I tend to look at "allintitle:keyword phrase" above 50,000 as competitive. If it is below 50,000 I'll then start to look at the top 30. Although some people limit themselves to the top 10 as that is where everyone wants to be, I think it is advisable to look at the top 30 because if it is a strong top 30 then a lot of sites have the potential to be in the top 10. If you are up against a strong top 30, and you manage to rank in the top 10, a couple of the 10th - 30th sites may do some optimization and push you out of the top 10. If the top 10 is strong but number 10 - 30 are weak then I am more likely to attack that keyword because if I do get into the top 10 the chances of easily being pushed out of there are lower (if any of that makes any sense).

**gopher292** · 09-15-2006, 02:26 PM

I don't think there is any one perfect way of determining keyword difficulty since search engine algorithms don't use just one way to determine ranking.

If search engine placement == offpage score * onpage score, then keyword difficulty == offpage competitveness * onpage competitiveness.

For determining offpage competitiveness:
- # of backlinks for the top ranking pages (average backlinks of 10,000 is probably going to be harder than average backlinks of 50)
- Pageranks of the top ranking pages

For determining onpage competitiveness:
- EF Ratio (mentioned earlier in thread)
- Title and/or body text keyword density and/or allintitle: queries
- Looking at the top ranking pages and asking yourself if they're targetting your keyword

Anything that anybody says (including me) concerning SEO is educated guesses. (Unless they work for Google/Yahoo/MSN/Ask, and even then they might just be lying to confuse you. :shuriken: :glare: )...