Got my Keyword Research 90% Done but what about competition

[Sparetoolparts]

Hi All

I've been doing the Fresh banana course online and have been faithfully following the keyword research section. I'm at the point where I have search volumes and know what pages I'm targeting with each keyword group. But I'm now looking to checkout the competition for each keyword and see how competitive it is.

The course does give advice on it, but I feel it is more down to experience & intuition than simply following a step by step guide.

The keyword "Hitachi Parts" has the highest search volume but I assume it will be hard to rank for it.

So Far when I carryout a search for it on Google it is showing: 4,310,000 results

When looking at the Page Titles the keyword is being used Verbatim on position 5 all other titles are showing variations of this word.

When looking at the SERP, again Hitachi parts is being used Verbatim in description (same website as title) and the same score with the others Google is picking up Hitachi and parts separately in the SERP text.

None of the domains are targeting their home page for this keyword either, Its all going 1-2 levels down, which is the same as what I've planned to be honest.

So to surmise I'm struggling to decide if this keyword is ripe for plunder and if I carryout SEO optimization for my choosen page, what chances will I have on ranking for it. Once I have the technique down pat, I'll then need to look at all the other keywords in the my list approx 5-10,

Perhaps I should you a ranking system to see which one offers the least competition but has a good enough search volume to make it worth while.

Advice/comments welcome

 

[StephenSumner]

One of the best ways to validate a search term quickly is to run a few tests using Google Adwords and save yourself some trouble.

With a larger set of potential search terms, I can grab some data on keyword difficulty, Adwords CPC data and put together a nice pivot table to help me get some perspective and prioritisation on what to be going after.

 

[Farhan Saeed]

I use this method
Open google and write allintitle : keyword with out any space this tell the how many website use this keyword in title.

 

[Phil Sleet]

Moz keyword tool displays keyword difficulty, you will have to google it as i can't post links yet

 

[Tin]

So Far when I carryout a search for it on Google it is showing: 4,310,000 results

That's not your competition, that's just the number of urls in Google's index that have those words 'Hitachi Parts' either in their page in verbatim form, in non-verbatim form or in links pointing to the Hitachi page. It's not competition.

You can get an idea of 'on-page' competition by using allintitle:"hitachi parts" - the speech marks at each end of the hitachi parts words force Google to show how many pages it has got indexed with those words in verbatim form - here's a link to that result (35,400)

https://www.google.co.uk/search?biw=1745&bih=863&ei=8FgqWpDkOZr0gAa574KQBA&q=allintitle:"hitachi+parts"&oq=allintitle:"hitachi+parts"&gs_l=psy-ab.3...2617041.2620161.0.2630869.11.11.0.0.0.0.98.661.11.11.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.2.148...0i7i30k1j0i8i7i30k1.0.d4m24RyTv6E

If you look at the urls in that result you'll see that none of them on page 1 are actually the Hitachi site, they're all parts suppliers.

If you then search using allinurl:"hitachi parts" this will force Google to show all url's which are using those words in verbatim form and here's a link to that result (9,340). Note; if you're fed to a different Google database to me then you'll get different results.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?biw=1745&bih=863&ei=3WUqWtyZMqrNgAaqtZbYCQ&q=allinurl:"hitachi+parts"&oq=allinurl:"hitachi+parts"&gs_l=psy-ab.3...66501.69156.0.69672.8.8.0.0.0.0.4.20.8.8.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.37llJK6HqGM

From those two specific searches on Google the results show different domain names, they're generally not the same domains but in this latter result you'll see that as well as having Hitachi parts in verbatim form in the url, some of them have it in verbatim form in the page titles too but scroll down through the result pages in Google and it very quickly becomes a mixed bunch.

None of the domains are targeting their home page for this keyword either, Its all going 1-2 levels down, which is the same as what I've planned to be honest.

Because in almost all of the results, they're supplying parts for a large variety of manufacturers.

So to surmise I'm struggling to decide if this keyword is ripe for plunder and if I carryout SEO optimization for my choosen page, what chances will I have on ranking for it.

To me, it looks quite straightforward to target this keyword, there are third party tools online which will make best guesses at how difficult the competition is for 'Hitachi parts' but they are 'guesses' at the end of the day.

Essentially, I see five domain names on page 1 for the search term hitachi parts and all five of them have hitachi in the domain name. They're your most direct competition but don't forget that all of domains in the results are a step or more ahead of you and you'll be coming in cold.

I haven't looked at link backgrounds to see how much of a factor is at play there so it would make sense for you to check those out.

What I'd do if I wanted to get a good idea of how I'd rank for these keywords (assuming I was happy that there's enough search demand for the associated keywords) is to create the url, create a bare bones page of copy targeting the hitachi parts phrase and roll it out. Don't go to any more trouble than that, no images etc just copy. If it comes in within the top 50 then I'd create some contextual paragraphs on half a dozen existing pages and see what that does and if those internal links move the rankings up then I'd spend the time to create a fully finished page complete with images etc and work on it until it's on page 1.

For your info;

Moz Pro tool suggests the difficulty rating is 18 out of 100
SemRush suggests it's 58.73 out of 100

and here's an interesting link to a variety of keyword difficulty tools that you might find useful.

https://www.authorityhacker.com/keyword-difficulty-showdown/

Hope that helps.

Ray

 

[ukbf0001]

Rank Tracker will tell you how many competing site there are for a particular keyword. Competition being decided on what sites have the keyword optimised, page title, h1, word count, image alt desc, etc etc
Website Auditor will tell you how well your site is optimised compared to the sites that are listed on whatever search engine you are trying to rank in.
SpyGlass tells you where the links are that your competitors have - info that google wont tell you.

 

[StevePoster]

The course does give advice on it, but I feel it is more down to experience & intuition than simply following a step by step guide.

You feel it right because the course only guides the practitioner but this will depend on your learnings and self implementation according to your own strategy and belief.

The keyword "Hitachi Parts" has the highest search volume but I assume it will be hard to rank for it.

This keyword is really tough to be honest and I would suggest when it comes to targeting make it specific to your audience try long tail keyword so that the competition will be less. This will particularly target your users needs and expectations.

 

[websensejim]

I wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago. I believe most of the advice is still valid. Its main points are

• you're only competing with 10 pages (the ones in the top 10)
• so analyze those 10 for competitiveness (how does your site stack up against those 10 ?)
• And look out for the SERP monsters. When you see them, it might be better to choose another phrase.

link to blog post is here :
http://www.web-sense.co.uk/keyword-research/keyword-difficulty-assessment/

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I'll take a look, thanks at the minute I have done a little bit onpage work on my existing page:

https://www.sparetoolparts.co.uk/hitachi.html

I've ran the page through Ranks.nl to test keyword density and got:

Keywords Repeats Density Prominance
hitachi parts 2 T,D 1.23% 98

I asked Google to reindex this page

I then have been using serplab to keep tabs on it and a few other of my keywords, at present on the keyword appearing in the top 100 is: HITACHI POWERTOOLS SPARE PARTS at position 95

Back to the drawing board!

 

[websensejim]

I don't think Hitachi parts is the best phrase for you to target, its pretty broad (short tail), probably not a great convertor and with only 1 ad appearing on Page 1 this tells you there's not many going after it. Hitachi spare parts is a bit better - I see more ads for that phrase, and I see one of your product pages is ranked on Page 4.

 

[Harry73]

Perhaps I should you a ranking system to see which one offers the least competition but has a good enough search volume to make it worth while.

I would like to suggest Adwords Keyword planner. Its will give you a complete report on your targeted keywords along with average monthly searches, competition and suggested bid etc.

 

[fisicx]

I would like to suggest Adwords Keyword planner. Its will give you a complete report on your targeted keywords along with average monthly searches, competition and suggested bid etc.

No it won't. It's an adwords planner and of limited use for KW research.