ok here is the situation, and i've had this a few times so if anyone can clear this up for me that would be good! Right, so I come across a keyword that has 8,000 local searches and 145,000 global searches. The keyword im using has approx 100,000 for that exact phrase. Ok the first question - If i'm targetting with a view of google adwords hopefully generating a (would be my first!) sale, then should i look at the global searches? My second question is the one that is confusing me. Such a keyword with competition of so much (100,000+) seems like something I shouldnt be competing against. But when I use SEO for firefox, it seems that the top 4 pages have PR 0 and PR 1 - suggesting that this would be a fairly easy list to top? Any thoughts here are appreciated, Many thanks, Alan
Don't rely heavily on PR. There are many factors to SEO besides PR. You should focus on exact phrase if your exact phrase are buyers.
If you're targeting globally - then look at the globel figures. If you're targeting in your own country - then look at the local figures. If you're targeting to a different country, change the "local" results in the drop down where it says 'Results are tailored to' Always take the results for exact match - remember it's an adwords tool, so it means "exact" match in the way that adwords uses the term.
If you're just starting out with adwords be careful and try not to compete for the keywords with too much competition or it will more than likely cost you an arm and a leg, try to focus on 3 or 4 keywords in your niche that don't have too much competition, Place your keywords in your Page title and wrap them in a <H1> header tag also use them as alt image tags and sprinkle your keywords through your copy this will help with your on-page SEO. As for your ad itself try to use the keywords in the title and in the text. If you want unlimited free targeted traffic you can use Google alerts find out here free-web-traffic.net I hope this helps
SEOBook Toolbar (I assume that's the one you have) for Firefox is a great tool. Don't forget to check the backlinks on the first 3 to 10 results. If the top pages have a lot of backlinks, it will be very difficult to beat them. With SEO toolbar, the links are shown beside the 2n Y! logo from the left, I think. Or you can click the big red X (Xray button) and it will tell you how many incoming links that page has. Thousands of incoming links or if the page is on a really established, authoritative site (like eBay, Microsoft.com, etc.) you probably shouldn't waste your time. If all the above looks okay, I would then do this search in Google to determine how many pages are actually competing for the exact same keywords phrase as you: inurl:"keywordphrasehere" intitle:"keywordphrasehere" <that all goes in the search box, even the quote marks. Of couse, remove keywordphrasehere and replace it with your actual keyword phrase. That will help you determine how many pages you are ultimatel competing with. I would then check those pages' backlinks and authority to see if you stand a chance. Exhaustive work! That's why I stopped with this niche site marketing stuff!
You really only have 10 competitors, the first ten in the results. As pr does not matter is does give an indication whether to look deeper into the competition. If they are pr 0 that usually means they have very few backlinks. Now a pr 7 would hint at them having considerable backlinks or some heavy hitting backlinks So yes it would be worth checking into deeper. And if you can easily make top serps with the phrase you wouldn't really need adwords to target the same phrase.
Top 4 = PR0 and 1? Seems like you can pass them if you can get good backlinks + good keywords on the page - eg. bolding and alt text on images etc.