Hi all. I have a new blog just started in January. I am just starting to get into reading and learning more about SEO. I have a few questions about keywords as this topic seems quite baffling to me when I read the threads here. I know what keywords I would like to rank for. How do I determine if a KW is competitive or not? For example, when I use Google's keyword tool, for one of my phrases the search was 165,000. Others were 49,500 and 550,000. What do I do with these numbers? I've read that you don't want to go after too small of a niche or too competitive KWs. So can someone provide an example of where your numbers should fall for just right search request? I hope this made sense and thanks in advance.
Do not base competitiveness on the number of results. That simply tells you how many websites use those keywords somewhere in their content or links. Regardless of how many websites show up, it only matters how strong the top 10 websites are. I recommend you install the seo for firefox addon. It will tell you many valuable stats right in your search results. You will want to analyze the top 10 websites for things like: 1) whether it is a homepage or internal page...it's easier to outrank a internal page in most cases 2) whether they use those keywords in their url, title, meta description, headers, etc 3) how many links that website has to its homepage and to that particular page 4) the PR of all of those backlinks 5) whether they used that keyword as link anchor text in their backlinks much There are other things to look at, but that will give you a pretty good idea of how competitive a keyword is. For a rookie seo, it is best to target several low volume keywords instead of going after high volume. The high volume keywords are usually the more competitive.
Thank you for your reply. I thought those numbers were the result of how many searches for that keyword was performed, no? I realize that I'm going to have to take a mini e-course on this stuff. I would really just like to focus mainly on my content and not spread myself too thin. I really had no desire to get too deep into SEO, but it seems that if I want to optimize my site, I really have no choice. Thanks again.
Sorry yeah those numbers are search volume. I guess I read your post wrong. If you don't want to do keyword research yourself, I offer that service through my first signature link.
No worries. Thank you for taking the time out to answer my questions. If I decide to outsource my SEO, I will be looking for a more complete solution, not just one aspect of SEO. Thanks again.
To see if the KW is competitive or not compute for the KEI of the keywords. greater than 1 KEI means better to target.