A Good Source to Check the Competition for Keywords and Phrases

Sorry for the basic question but I'm just starting out and having learned a little about keywords and phrases I understand it's also important to find out how many other are competing for the same.

I'm looking for a place to find that information.

Thanx,

 

To get an idea about your competition level, go to google.com, click 'advanced search', enter your keyphrase and select occurrences - in the title of the page. You will get the number of web pages you compete with.

 

Niche' Bot is a whole lot easier...

 

Slava - Thanx... I tried Google as you suggeted but I couldn't find the place to choose "occurrences."

Will.Spencer - Niche Bot is much simpler thank you.

Now that I have some parameters... What can be safely infered from the numbers? I mean I understand that the lower the ratio the better, but what would be a bench mark to look for, if at all?

 

Well.... now things get sticky...

We're moving from basic to advanced SEO.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. The benchmark depends entirely on how much "authority" (for lack of a better term) your web site has. If you have more authority, you can chase more competitive terms.

2. The number of competitors is really a bad way to judge how difficult the competition is. There might be ten thousand weak competitors, and you can win easily. Or, there might be only fifty competitors -- but you will end up on page six if they are all strong competitors. One way to judge this is to look at the PR and inbound links of a few of the pages on page one of the SERPS for your desired keyphrase.

 

Will - Sounds logical. I would assume that to gain "authority" takes time and diligence. Also it's probably safe to assume that starting out, a website won't have enough authority to compete well. So does that mean starting off on an 'easier' market (keywords etc) is wise? Questions I most likely need to answer for myself:

1) Do I want to start off with highly competative terms and work it up or start smaller and change with time?
2) What kind of content will be most effective for building business?
3) Work on what I have a passion for and build it up (which is what I leaning towards), or focus on the $$ and find a niche of whatever is out there?

Learning is so much fun

 

Will - by the way, your Internet Search Engine FAQ is a great help.
Lots of questions are answered there.
Of course it also raises more questions... at least in my head. LOL

 

Thanks, I know I have uses for this.

 

Thanks! That's what it's designed for!

 

thank its good

 

If your focus is google try this:

http://www.algotech.dk/googlesearches.asp#links

 

AcornDomains - ThanX! I'll check that out too... I can use all the help I can get.
Now the fun comes. Trying to decifer (sp?) what all this information I'll be getting really means.

 

I use this tool, built by Randfish http://www.seomoz.org/tratool/kwtool.php

Very helpful and insightful.

Dave

 

EarlPearl - Thanx for the link... I'll check it out