Keyword Competition - Research and Analysis

Once you have completed your analysis and gathered the required data, you must duplicate the efforts that made these pages successful; plus, you may need to do a little more in order to outrank them.

The tool I use most often for competitor keyword analysis is called SEO Toolbar. You will find more information about this free tool in the resources listing below.

Just keep in mind, the whole purpose of this exercise is to see if and how you can strategically add your well-optimized pages in a top ten spot. The closer to the top you can get listed, the better.

Here are some things to watch for when you are conducting your competitor analysis and research.

Wikipedia - These pages are very strong and will be hard to beat. The good news is, Wikipedia usually only occupies one spot - usually within the top three results.

Authority/Shopping Site Pages - These are general shopping and authority sites (ie; Wikipedia, Amazon, Craigslist, EzineArticles, eBay, etc.).

The internal pages of these sites that match your target keyword are generally weaker than a well optimized "keyword domain". A "keyword domain" is where your domain name is your primary keyword. PR3 and higher ranked pages generally signal high competition.

Forum, Ezine Directory URLs - These are low competition pages. If you see these type URLs in the first five positions, it generally signals weak competitive environment.

Listings that do not have the targeted keywords in the title, H1/H2 headers, URL, or description represent weak competition. Whenever you find a strong keyword phrase, you also want to see if you can register the "keyword name" domain.

Even if a SERP listing has 4 or 5 strong competitors, you still have an opportunity to outrank the 5 or 6 weaker entries. Ultimately your goal is to identify, then "eat" (outrank) the weakest fish in the pond.

Here a some handy tools that can help with your competition research and analysis. They are all free tools, so you can get started with as little as the cost of domain registration.

SEOBook offers several free tools that will help you accomplish this task. The one you will want to grab immediately is the SEO Toolbar. Once installed, it will display competitive data in your search results listings. One limitation - you will need to install Firefox browser to use this tool.

You can use Yahoo Site Explorer to discover the approximate number of backlinks for a particular site.

SEMRush lets you measure the size and authority of a website. You can use it to uncover the keywords for which a site is ranking. Generally, if a site is ranking well for several high traffic keyword phrases, they will usually have some very strong pages in the SERPs.

Next step, take action and start studying the ten pages that result from a search on your targeted keyword phrase. Get this part right and the rest of the marketing and promotion process gets a whole lot easier.