SEO Competition Strategy Advice ……….?
To be honest, when I read the title of this blog post at SEO.com in my reader, I was expecting more. However, it raises a great point we don’t often hear about.
The idea of using averages to measure out the competition level of a niche/vertical/industry.
Anyone doing it this way?
Or are you mostly relying on data provided from SEO Elite, Market Samurai, TT, and manual indicators right now?
SEO.com hasn’t been known as the best SEO resource site on the web, but they revamped a few months ago and have been doing a much better job from what I have seen.
Great question!
I think there is a happy medium between relying solely on the tools you mentioned and using the averages he mentions in his post. I don’t know any good SEO who would JUST use those tools without ever looking at their competitors websites. Likewise, I know Kevin Phelps and I am pretty sure even he is not spending all that time averaging his clients competition.
Instead, I believe the point of his post is that we need to do a better job of looking to see what our competitors are doing and knowing before we start a campaign whether we have the resources to take them head on or whether we need to focus on a niche in order to get traffic.
By using the tools you mention and really getting our hands dirty on our competitors websites, we will be much better informed on how best to use our clients resources.
March 26th, 2011 at 11:47 am
The competition level of my niche? That doesn’t really concern me.
What I care about is the competition level of my keyword(s).
To figure this out I check the balance between the broad search, phrase search, and all in title search results.
Broad Search: KEYWORD
Phrase Search: "KEYWORD"
All in title Search: allintitle: KEYWORD
The only person I have to beat is the guy at the top – I use SEO Spyglass to see what their site has going on as far as backlinks go. I try to get the same backlinks they have on top of the ones I’m already getting.
References :
March 26th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Great question!
I think there is a happy medium between relying solely on the tools you mentioned and using the averages he mentions in his post. I don’t know any good SEO who would JUST use those tools without ever looking at their competitors websites. Likewise, I know Kevin Phelps and I am pretty sure even he is not spending all that time averaging his clients competition.
Instead, I believe the point of his post is that we need to do a better job of looking to see what our competitors are doing and knowing before we start a campaign whether we have the resources to take them head on or whether we need to focus on a niche in order to get traffic.
By using the tools you mention and really getting our hands dirty on our competitors websites, we will be much better informed on how best to use our clients resources.
References :
Senior SEO Specialist at SEO.com
March 26th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
What I care about is keyword competition not niche competition. Keywords are what people are searching.
References :