keyword competition

How do i find out how competitive a keyword is? I have a keyword that i know roughly how many times it gets searched per day. I want to know how tough it will be to take the top spot of the keyword.

 

Just study the competition to the top for that particular keyword. Check backlinks and how well they are SEOed. That sort of stuff, you know....

 

Analyse the following in the top ranking domains for that particular keyword :

No. of backlinks of each domain
Presence of these domains in DMOZ / Yahoo dir
Relevance of keyword with URL
Domains particularly using the keyword in title, meta tages, etc

 

I wrote this article on how to research a niche, which covers basically what you are asking.

 

Ok... here we go... huff-puff... deeeeep breath

Researching KW/Phrases comes down to a few potential paths for data

Search Operators (used to guage competition)
Overture data (potential search data)
NicheBot, Wordtracker,KW Discovery (provide various metrics)
Manual (looking at top competitors of potential KW targets)
PPC (run actual PPC campaigns to guage traffic)

Here is some more on Keyword targeting strategies

SNIPPET
Quote:

It is certainly a daunting tasks to identify the true competitiveness of a term and we created a basic formula to set a base line prior to approaching a term. Being ‘in the business’, it is all about ROI for me and my clients. As such, establishing a potential ROI on a given term is crucial in the greater scheme of things. Target the wrong terms, and regardless of ones rankings, the resulting traffic takes far too long to break even.
In the end having the competitive data, link profiles ( of top competitors), which are .govs/edu can only get one so far. I still find I have to get dirty and closely look at the top 10-20 for ‘holes’ that can be capitalized upon. Some times the top 10 are just not there (available) for some ‘money terms’ (especially for NEW sites in the game)

This is where the concept of LSI and Phrase based stuff can come in. It is more along the lines of ‘long tail’ approaches through constructed (via phrase extensions) or organic phrasings. The core of both areas is relevance. The theories apply to more than KW/P research though. It is inclusive of on-page factors and even link text.



Then there is ; http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=187120

SNIPPET

And finally.... huff puff.. KW Research Tools

Keyword/Phrase Research;

Keyword Verification; http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm
Keyword difficulty tool; http://www.seomoz.org/tools/kwtool.php
Nichebot; http://www.nichebot.com/
Keyword Density and Prominence; http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
Top KW Analysis; http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html
Keyword Density Analysis; http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
Spy Fu KW Analysis; http://www.spyfu.com/
Keyword Analysis Tool - http://www.mcdar.net/
Keyword Difficulty Checker - http://www.searchguild.com/cgi-bin/difficulty.pl



Keyword Suggestion

Overture Suggestion tool; http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Google AdWords Keyword tool; https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Miva Suggest; https://account.uk.miva.com/advertiser/Account/Popups/KeywordGenBox.asp
Digital Point KW suggestion tool; http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/



HOW'S THAT!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

I find google trends more reliable then anything else.

Relied on wordtracker for a term which it showed more thden 3000 searches per day and pumped in a lot of money to get to the top and guess what? I get 20-30 visitors for being at no 1 on google for that term

As far as google trends is concerned you can do it this way:

Take a term which you already rank at no1 on google or no2 or 3 and compare the search volume graph with that to get a good idea of what you be looking at once you are at no1

Works for me but IT IS NOT 100% RELIABLE you will still find a lot of lies in there

 

thanks gypsyguy,
it was the most informative post.