Competition Analysis
SEO Pro Analysis:
Keyword Generation + Keyword Appraisal + Online Competition + Offline Competition
Once you have determined the most valuable keyword phrases to optimize for and you have a handle on how to incorporate your keyword optimized pages into your site, you may be tempted to go full speed ahead with the highest value keyword phrases first. But don’t set yourself up for disappointment by overlooking your competition. Somebody else’s webpages are already populating the top 10 positions in the search engine results. You need find out exactly what you will have to do to replace their webpages with your own.
Most search engine traffic goes to the sites that show up on the first page of search results – the top 10 positions – so the competition is fierce. You need to take a close look at the quality of the competing sites for each of your top keyword phrases to see what your chances are of getting to the front page for that keyword phrase. The competing sites might be too well optimized for you to overtake their positions any time soon. You will probably get more traffic by showing up on the first page of results for a lower volume, less competitive keyword phrase than by appearing on the second or third page of search results for a higher volume but more competitive keyword phrase.
Your web page’s position in the search results for a particular keyword phrase is determined by a number of on-page and off-page factors. On-page factors relate to your placement and use of the keyword phrase in your page structure and your page content, indicators of your page’s relevance to the search. Off-page factors include your domain’s age, the number and quality of incoming links (backlinks) to your page from outside pages, its Google PageRank, the number of pages on the domain indexed by Google, and its presence in certain web directories. The search engines view these off-page factors as a general indication of your site’s quality and authority.
Earlier we looked at the number of potentially competing pages to help determine the value of a particular keyword phrase. Now we need to look at your real competition – the 10 pages that actually show up on the front page of the search engine results – to assess your chances of displacing one or more of them with your own pages.
For our Competition Analysis we run searches on each of your 10 most valuable keyword phrases. For each of those searches, we then analyze the pages that show on page one of the search results – your toughest online competition. We also take a look at how your closest “offline,” or real world competitors are ranking for the same keyword phrases, even though they may not show up on the front page of the results.
We use a proprietary tool that provides us with this information about your top 10 online competitors and your top 2 offline competitors, for each of your 10 most valuable keyword phrases:
On-page factors:
- Is the keyword phrase included in the page URL?
- Is the keyword phrase included in the page title?
- Is the keyword phrase included in the page description?
- Is the keyword phrase included in the page’s headline tags?
Off-page factors:
- What is the domain age?
- What is the Google Page Rank?
- How many pages on the domain are indexed by Google?
- How many backlinks to the page?
- How many backlinks to the domain?
- How many .gov and .edu backlinks to the domain?
- Is the domain listed in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)?
- Is the domain listed in the Yahoo! Directory?
We send you the data as a .xls file (MS Excel workbook). We color-code the results to give you a graphic view of your prospects to rank for each of your targeted keyword phrases.
We then spend some time helping you decide which keyword phrases to target first for immediate results, and which phrases to target over a longer time frame; which phrases will bring you organic traffic, and which phrases you may need to target with an AdWords campaign. You’ll end up knowing exactly what it will take to overcome your competition, so you can act strategically and cost-effectively to get the online results you are looking for.
