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Quick & Dirty Competitive Research for Keywords

There are so many competitive research tools on the market. We reviewed some of the larger ones here but there are quite a few more on the market today.

The truth is that you can really get a lot of good, usable data to give you an idea of what the competition is likely to be by using free tools or the free version of paid tools.

Some of the competitive research tools out there (the paid ones) really are useful if you are going to scale way up with some of your SEO or PPC plans but many of the paid versions are overkill for a lot of webmasters.

Choosing Your Tools

Most tools come with the promises of “UNCOVERING YOUR COMPETITORS BEST _____”.

That blank can be links, keywords, traffic sources, and so on. As we know, most competitive research tools are rough estimates at best and almost useless estimates at worst. Unless you get your hands on your competition’s analytics reports, you are still kind of best-guessing. In this example we are looking for the competitiveness of a core keyword.

Best-guessing really isn’t a bad thing so long as you realize that what you are doing is really triangulating data points and looking for patterns across different tools. Keep in mind many tools use Google’s data so you’ll want to try to reach beyond Google’s data points a bit and hit up places like:

The lure of competitive research is to get it done quickly and accurately. However, gauging the competition of a keyword or market can’t really be done with a push of the button as there are factors that come into play which a push-button tool cannot account for, such as:

  • how hard is the market to link build for?
  • is the vertical dominated by brands and thick EMD’s?
  • what is your available capital?
  • are the ranking sites knowledgeable about SEO or are they mostly ranking on brand authority/domain authority? (how tight is their site structure, how targeted is their content, etc)
  • is Google giving the competing sites a brand boost?
  • is Google integrating products, images, videos, local results, etc?

Other questions might be stuff like “how is Google Instant skewing this keyword marketplace” or “is Google firing a vertical search engine for these results (like local” or “is Google placing 3 AdWords ads at the top of the search results” or “is Google making inroads into the market” like they are with mortgage rates.

People don’t search in an abstract mathematical world, but by using their fingers and eyes. Looking at the search results matters. Quite a bit of variables come into play which require some human intuition and common sense. A research tool is only as good as the person using it, you have to know what you are looking at & what to be aware of.

Getting the Job Done

In this example I decided to use the following tools:

Yep, just 2 free tools…. 🙂

So we are stipulating that you’ve already selected a keyword. In this case I picked a generic keyword for the purposes of going through how to use the tools. Plug your keyword into Google, flip on SEO for Firefox and off you go!

This is actually a good example of where a push button tool might bite the dust. You’ve got Related Search breadcrumbs at the top, Images in the #1 spot, Shopping in the #3 spot, and News (not pictured) in the #5 spot.

So wherever you thought you might rank, just move yourself down a 1-3 spots depending on where you would be in the SERPS. This can have a large effect on potential traffic and revenue so you’ll want to evaluate the SERP prior to jumping in.

You might decide that you need to shoot for 1 or 2 rather than top 3 or top 5 given all the other stuff Google is integrating into this results page. Or you might decide that the top spot is locked up and the #2 position is your only opportunity, making the risk to reward ratio much less appealing.

With SEO for Firefox you can quickly see important metrics like:

  • Yahoo! links to domain/page
  • domain age
  • Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO link data
  • presence in strong directories
  • potential, estimated traffic value from SEM Rush

Close up of SEO for Firefox data:

Basically by looking at the results page you can see what other pieces of universal search you’ll be competing with, whether the home page or a sub-page is ranking, and whether you are competing with brands and/or strong EMD’s.

With SEO for Firefox you’ll see all of the above plus the domain age, domain links, page links, listings in major directories, position in other search engines, and so on. This will give you a good idea of potential competitiveness of this keyword for free and in about 5 seconds.

It is typically better & easier to measure the few smaller sites that managed to rank rather than measuring the larger authoritative domains. Why? Well…

Checking Links

So now that you know how many links are pointing to that domain/page you’ll want to check how many unique domains are pointing in and what the anchor text looks like, in addition to what the quality of those links might be.

Due to its ease of use (in addition to the data being good) I like to use Open Site Explorer from SeoMoz in these cases of quick research. I will use their free service for this example, which requires no log in, and they are even more generous with data when you register for a free account.

The first thing I do is head over to the anchor text distribution of the site or page to see if the site/page is attracting links specific to the keyword I am researching:

What’s great here is you can see the top 5 instances of anchor text usage, how many total links are using that term, and how many unique domains are supplying those total links.

You can also see data relative to the potential quality of the entire link profile in addition to the ratio of total/unique domains linking in.

You probably won’t want or need to do this for every single keyword you decide to pursue. However, when looking at a new market, a potential core keyword, or if you are considering buying an exact match domain for a specific keyword you can accomplish a really good amount of competitive research on that keyword by using a couple free tools.

Types of Competitive Research

Competitive research is a broad term and can go in a bunch of different directions. As an example, when first entering a market you would likely start with some keyword research and move into analyzing the competition of those keywords before you decide to enter or fully enter the market.

As you move into bigger markets and start to do more enterprise-level competitive research specific to a domain, link profiles, or a broader market you might move into some paid tools.

Analysis paralysis is a major issue in SEO. Many times you might find that those enterprise-level tools really are overkill for what you might be trying to do initially. Gauging the competitiveness of a huge keyword or a lower volume keyword really doesn’t change based on the money you throw at a tool. The data is the data especially when you narrow down the research to a keyword, keywords, or domains.

Get the Data, Make a Decision

So with the tools we used here you are getting many of the key data points you need to decide whether pursuing the keyword or keywords you have chosen is right for you.

Some things the tools cannot tell you are questions we talked about before:

  • how much captial can you allocate to the project?
  • how hard are you willing to work?
  • do you have a network of contacts you can lean on for advice and assistance?
  • do you have enough patience to see the project through, especially if ranking will take a bit..can you wait on the revenue?
  • is creativity lacking in the market and can you fill that void or at least be better than what’s out there?

Only you can answer those questions 🙂

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What Keywords Do I Rank For?

Posted by Dr. Pete

As you start tracking your rankings and taking SEO more seriously, you’re bound to ask the question (and we hear it a lot) – “What are ALL of the keywords that my site ranks for?” Sounds simple enough, but it turns out this question isn’t just complicated – it’s probably unanswerable.

I’m going to walk you through why it’s such a tough question, discussing two myths that lead us to ask it in the first place. Then, I’m going to try to at least give you a partial answer – maybe not all, but enough to keep you busy for a long time.

Myth #1 – The Ranking Table

If you have any experience with programming, databases, or even just Excel, it’s pretty easy to envision Google as some kind of giant ranking table. It might look something like this:

Keyword Site Rank
unicorns  www.unicorns.com  #1
unicorns  www.bobsunicornshack.com  #2
unicorns  www.unicornwrestling.org  #3
pretty unicorns  www.ohsoprettyunicorns.com  #1
pretty unicorns  www.sexymalibuunicorns.com  #2
pretty pretty unicorns  www.examplesgonetoofar.com  #1

While this approach might work for a very basic, closed system (like an internal knowledge base), it’s not remotely practical on the scale of something like Google. The sheer scope of data, the blinding speed it gets updated, and the way that data has to be distributed across server farms (made up of thousands of servers), means that modern search is essentially a real-time calculation. There is no master table.

Myth #2 – Google Won’t Tell Us

Ok, so it’s not a table, but Google still knows what we rank for or they could figure it out, right? While Google definitely has plenty of data they won’t let us see, some things are mysteries even to them. Back in 2007, Google’s VP of Engineer, Udi Manber, shocked the search community by suggesting that as many as 20-25% of all Google queries were queries they had never seen before. Let’s say that again – as many as 1/4 of all Google searches are new. Google later clarified that this is within a time window (not all of search history), but the number is still staggeringly high.

Much of this has to do with the fact that queries are naturally getting longer and more specific, with over half of search queries in 2010 being 4 words or longer. As people get more comfortable with asking detailed, natural-language questions, this trend is only going to continue. One way or another, your site is ranking for new keywords every day, and some of them are a surprise even to Google.

Tactic #1 – Mine Your Analytics

So, is figuring out what you rank for as elusive as the unicorns in my table? Fortunately, no. While you’ll never know ALL of the keywords you rank for, you can definitely find a solid pile of data. Your best, first destination is your own analytics – here’s an example from Google Analytics (go to “Traffic Sources” > “Keywords > “Non-paid”):

Google Analytics keyword list

Of course, these are only keywords that drove clicks, but for my own site this represents 1,435 keyword phrases in just 1 month. My blog is hardly exceptional – it gets just over 200 visitors per day. So before you dismiss your analytics because they don’t show you EVERYTHING, ask yourself if you’ve even come close to using the data they do provide.

Tactic #2 – Review GWT Keywords

The second place to look for keywords you’re ranking for is Google Webmaster Tools, which is one of the only places to see data for keywords that drive search impressions but NOT clicks. Within GWT, go to “Your site on the web” > “Search queries”, and you’ll see something like this:

GWT keyword list

The “Clicks” column actually only goes down to “<10”, so it’s difficult to tell exactly which keywords drove no clicks, but comparing this data to your analytics data can help fill in some of the holes, if you really want to see the big picture.

Tactic #3 – Analyze Inbound Anchor Text

So, what if you want to find keywords that people aren’t currently searching for but for which you could potentially rank? One place you might look is the anchor text that external sites use to link to your site, especially the longer tail phrases. For example, in our own Open Site Explorer, click on the “Anchor Text Distribution” tab and you’ll get a full list of the phrases or terms external sites use to link to you (export to excel for up to 10,000 results):

OSE anchor text report

For example, I would rank #1 for “muppet intern yoozer”, if anyone actually ever typed that phrase (before I did today). I’m not sure how that helps me, but at least conceptually, seeing what phrases people are using to link to you can give you a sense of what you have the capacity to rank for, even if those phrases don’t currently drive searches.

Stop Obsessing & Get to Work

So, maybe you can’t find ALL the keywords you’d ever rank for, but so what? Using these techniques and extrapolating a bit (put in some quality time with Excel), you can easily generate a list of hundreds or thousands of keywords that you either currently or could potentially rank for. That ought to keep you busy for a while.


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Google Maps Adds Twitter & Hotpot Functionality

Here’s what we know about Google Hotpot: It’s a lot more visual and functional than the previous Places setup; it’s getting more promotions than any other Google product right now; it’s integrated with all of Google’s other local featuers; It’s so “full-service” that data providers, such as Yelp, are getting upset; and it’s surprisingly social. Some of that social functionality can be seen through Hotpot itself, where users are able to set up expanded Google profiles, include pictures, connect with friends, share information, and more. However, we’re also seeing some strong social functionality in other elements of Hotpot.

Specifically, I’m talking about the most recent update to the Google Maps for Mobile application. Maps, which has previously come bundled with a Hotpot widget for quickly finding and rating businesses while on the go, now also features a Twitter-integrated sharing mechanism. Once you’ve gone to and rated a location, you can tweet all about it with a single click (you just enable “Post review to Twitter” from the “Optional” panel of your review), directly from the Apps interface.

It’s important that Hotpot is showing as an even more outgoing socialite, but it’s even more important that this is happening via Twitter. Google has shown a strong partnership with Twitter in recent months. Most prominently, Google users can now connect their Google and Twitter accounts. This allows for the recent social search element of Google, which sites that have been “tweeted” by friends higher up on the SERP, displaying the avatar of the friend who shared the page. All these Twitterificfeatures simply fuel the rumors that Google may just end up buying the micro-blogging service that Buzz failed to beat (or even, if we’re honest, really compete with).

[via Tech Crunch]

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Maps Adds Twitter & Hotpot Functionality

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