Determine Keyword Competition

[a389951l]

What are people using to determine keyword competitiveness? I use mcdar's tool but would like another tool to cross-check.

Any suggestions?

[T0PS3O]

Wordtracker.

Google Search.

[a389951l]

Yeah. I tried wordtracker using kei as a factor for competitiveness but it was not that great IMHO.

[digitalpoint]

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

[a389951l]

I thought the suggestion tool was used more to understand the potential number of searches for a keyword. I suppose that is also an indication of competitiveness also.

[mhdoc]

I find myself with many windows open when I am researching a term. The key word suggestion tool to get a feel for how many searches there might be, Amazon to see if there are related products, overture to see if bids are high enough to make it worth while, enom to see if there are matching domain(s) available, Google/msn/Yahoo searches to check out the compatition, etc.

I am sure there are more, but the combination builds a picture that works for me.

[magiana]

There is also a tool called Search It (http://searchit.sitesell.com/recommended4.html). It´s free and can be used for different kinds of searches.

[randfish]

Hate to plug my own stuff, but I've actually been using it and been very pleased - Keyword Difficulty Calculator - http://www.socengine.com/c/seo/keyword-score-tool.html

It's a little more manual than I'd like and will certainly receive some upgrades in the future, but it still is efficient and informative.

[mhdoc]

RANDFISH

That's a nice tool! Just having the direct links to the places to get the numbers was really convenient.

I tried it for my established website and it said moderate difficulty with 2-6 months to be in the top ten. That sounds reasonable to me because there are really only two of us who seriously do this niche so it would not be that hard for a newcomer to get in.

Now to try it out for some ideas I have...

[randfish]

mhdoc - I'm very pleased you like it. If you use it several times and have some suggestions or feedback, don't hesitate to post it here or PM. Best of luck with your projects!

[mhdoc]

Would you mind sharing a little more of your methodology?

I tried it with a phrase I have been researching and came up with a 47% score indicating some significant difficulty. I have looked at the sites in the top ten for this phrase and except for the top two they seem to be vendor sites focused on the products they sell. Page rank on the 8-9-10 sites is below 4.

My thought has been that a content focused site that went into broad detail about the technology, applications, uses and product selection would move ahead of vendor sites fairly quickly.

Is any of that factored into your estimate?

[randfish]

mhdoc - The tool is definitely not perfect, and it doesn't take into account the top 10 competitors, which is something I'm going to do in the future.

For right now though, rather than looking at the score by itself, I would use it more as a comparison tool - to compare several keyword phrases and see which one might be the best to target based on # of searches vs. competition, etc.

I'd also like to note that in the future, it will be much more automated so the only piece that will be necessary for users to enter will be the phrase and the overture # of searches info (as screen-scraping in that section is prohibited).

Thanks for your comments, I hope it can still help. Don't forget to look at the top 10 competition though - they're a good way to tell just what you'll need to rank...

[ferret77]

Keyword Difficulty: 83.54% - Nearly Impossible

muhah