When you guys are considering creating a new site in a niche and you check to see how many sites are competing in Google results, at what number do you say, "I can't get a top 10 ranking"? Do you look at the top sites and make a determination off them, or is it purely a numbers decision. How do you decide which niches to tackle and which to pass on? Also...do you just look at total results for the keywords or do you also factor in the "allintitle:" search?
I own some major #1 and #2 keywords for: 4.000.000 6.000.000 8.000.000 and now targeting a 37.000.000 keyword. But i'll say everything is possible with resources.
a billion i guess or half of it. in seo there is no assurance of getting to the top because each and everyone is targeting to the top of a certain keyword it is just a matter of effort, prediction hard work and patience.
I don't know that their is such a thing as "too much competition". The question you have to consider is if it will take more wok and money then you have, or can expect to get back. I like to look at the top results for the keywords I intend to tackle. I look at the amount of content, the quality of content and the back links. I look at the quantity of back links, and the quality of back links. Then I determine how muck effort and expense I will have to expend to be competitive with them, and compare that to how much traffic I will get and a best guess to my conversion rate and that will allow me to guess its value. If the ROI is good, I will take the plunge, if it is not a likely good ROI i don't start and move on.
It`s rather about quality of competition, not the number of competitors. SEO can compete by relevancy, popularity, trust or best combination of them. It takes years to beat any aged site with perfectly relevant content + optimization and PR 5+
It is not how many there are, it's "are the top10" being supported by compentent SEO teams. If yes, then you don't have a chance until you get as good as they are. If the answer is no, it's "one". By competing against the best, you will get better. Always look at the "view source" of a page and see how they are programming the code. Then for the fun of it, look at the Google cache of the page and view it's source. Are there differences? And then find out why. Remember, its Traffic Links SEO How are they doing it. And don't fall for the "black hat" answer. Pick a keyword phrase (3 words) and go after the top 10. When you hit a road block, ask the forum. There are really good SEOer here. And remember, its just a game. So have fun.
That is true...it really is a game, and it's always fun to see if you can beat the current #1's. For one of my sites i rank #4 with 22 million pages showing, #3 for 18 million, and #1 for 12 million. I'd say all but the first 50 sites are just junk or bad search results.