I had a list of about 25,000 keywords and I limited it to about 6,500 by running it through AdWords keyword tool, and then to about 1,500 by chosing the ones that are most interesting and stay, for the most part, in the range of 1,000 to 5,000 Local Monthly Searches (on [Exact], USA only). I have that list in a spreadsheet and I am wondering what would be the best way to determine which keywords are the best candidates for SEO websites from the perspective of competitive research. Somebody told me that I can enter keywords and add all the Page Rank numbers on the first page, and if the number is less than 20, I should be able to beat the competition, but from what I've been looking I am not sure how good this method really is... I also have SEOquake installed on Chrome and it shows all the information like PR, Google Index (number of indexed pages), Bing Index, LD (SEMrush linkdomain), and some other info like Alexa Rank, domain age etc. I also have 3 SEO plugins for Firefox that show similar information. Having all that info I am wondering what would be the best way to find good candidates for website building out of these 1,500 keywords. Would I be looking at backlings number only, or Page Rank method etc... If the number of backlinks is what matters most, what would be the best source of that info and what would be a number that I would be looking at etc (I know there more to it than this <like link anchor text, reputation of sites when the links are coming from etc> but I am just wondering about the best and fairly quick way to get some good keywords out of the list that I have) Thank you in advance for any info.
i'd recommend looking at both page rank and backlinks. to see how stable the webpage's optimization is. be sure to check individual pages rather than just the domain, because individual pages usually have their own pagerank. you seem to be heading in the right direction, so best of luck!
I use the SEO Powersuite and Market Samurai. You can get a lot of information with both of these tools.
Alexa.com has a free service that lists all of the inbound links to any/every URL you tell it to look up. Alexa will also tell you their top 10 or so keywords, and whether the site is gaining or losing juice for any particular keyword. As for evaluating which keywords you should focus on, I know of a different formula than what you mentioned. It's an equation that I read about in a free ebook by Mequoda.com. You would probably get a lot of value out of reading it. Unfortunately, I don't get as scientific as you do (although I probably should). I do the Google Keyword Tool thing you mentioned; I look at how much competition Google shows on the keyword search results page. I also look a Google Webmaster Tools, which has one tab that tells your position in the index for numerous search terms. This is very helpful: -- When I see that I'm ranked high for a particular term, I implement a strategy to protect and keep it high. -- When I see that I'm in 'almost good' position for a term, I implement a strategy to support its growth. -- When I see that I'm at the bottom of the barrel for a keyword I want, I put it on the back burner (for now). I do the above, which I learned from some SEO clients I write for. Pick the low-hanging fruit and run with it, to get immediate leads and conversions. When your site becomes stronger, months down the line, that's a better time to take on the "tough" keywords. Don't spin your wheels right now with keywords you can get good traffic on yet.