The SEO Keyword Research Series - Part Four: 'Keyword Competition'

The SEO Keyword Research Series - Part Four: 'Keyword Competition'

In Part three of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at 'Relevant Keywords'. To ensure that you are driving the right traffic to your site, providing you with the sales and income you want. This time around we are looking at the second of the important 'Key 'elements. This is 'Keyword Competition'.

It goes without saying that one of the easiest ways to get a steady source of traffic is to get your website onto page one of the Google Keyword Search. The issue here is this is prime online real estate. There are only ten spots on the front page and far more than this competing for these positions.

There are two important things to consider when thinking about competition. These are:

The amount of competition- Put simply, the number of websites competing for the page one ranking using a particular keyword or phrase. This varies considerably depending on the keyword or phrase used. Some have high competition i.e. lots of websites targeting a keyword. Others have low competition i.e. few websites targeting a keyword.

The strength of the competition- Some websites are highly optimised. They have been around for a long time and therefore have a large number of back links into their site. Others are relatively new and only have a few back links to them. Both of these websites may still obtain a page one ranking on a Google keyword search depending on the keyword or phrase they target. I.e. they both target different keywords.

Clearly, you would want your keyword or phrase to put your business up against others in an area with very few weak, competitors. This is obviously better than using a keyword or phrase that puts you up against many, strong competitors.

Remember, in part one I said that one of the key areas for people failing in online businesses is because they fail to do their market research. This is especially relevant to their 'Competition'. The company will start to produce content for their site. They will fail to evaluate the competition. The competition is too strong. They never reach a good ranking with the search engines and fail to get the traffic they require.

This is sad as some of these businesses have worked extremely hard to build an often very good website.

For this reason, it is imperative that a business picks it battles wisely and only chooses keywords or phrases that give it a good chance of obtaining a front page ranking. This will lead to a healthy flow of traffic, hopefully a good return on sales and healthy bottom line.

Thanks for reading and see you in Part five: 'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?'

Take care,

Jon-Marc

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