This reader Quick Tip was submitted by Moshe Morris from SEM Basics.
Ultimately speaking, what determines if a keyword is difficult or hard to ran in the major search engiens is the quality of your competition. You can compete against every site in the internet, but if none of them are well optimized for that keyword then you can (most likely) easily outrank them. As such, it is important to know how to analyze the quality of competition for any particular keyword.
In order to determine the quality of competition for a particular keyword you will first need to do a search for that keyword on Google, Yahoo or MSN. You will then want to analyze the top 5 – 10 results in the search engines for the following factors such as:
- The quantity and quality of backlinks
- PageRank
- The age of the site
- The number of times the site is listed on del.icio.us, technorati, DMOZ, Bloglines, Wikipedia, and the Yahoo Directory
Three helpful tools for keyword research:
- SEO For Firefox by SEOBook
- PageStrength Tool by SEOMoz.org
- SEO Elite
great article.
Hi Darren:
I have been reading your blog for a while but this’s my first comment. I downloaded and installed the SEO for Firefox plugin and it works great. Thanks.
Will any of the tools tell you were you rank in the search results?
Say I’ve got an article or site that I’ve tried to optimize for keyword “kangaroo karate”. I can check out the search results to see who else is there… but I get tired of going through pages. I just want to see where Google, MSN, etc… stick me… how far down would people go to get to my site.
Graydon
http://marlincreek.com
Thanks for the tip, I’m in the process of optimizing for several keywords and found this helpful.
Hello everyone,
I’m glad that you all have found my “quick tip” useful. As to checking the search engines for your position for a particular keyword, SEO Elite does that. However, there are also free tools which do the same thing. For instance, you can check out digital points free Search Engine Positioning Tool. Here is another tool I just found: http://rankcomparison.di.unipi.it. It’s interesting, I’m not sure if I like it or not, but it certainly is worth checking out. Finally, here is a search I did for search engine ranking tool on Top Online Marketing Blog’s SEO Blog search engine. You should be able to find some other links to tools which help you check your ranking on the major search engines. Best of luck.
All the best,
Moshe Morris
SEMBasics.com
P.S. By the way, Top Online Marketing Blog is a blog worth knowing about, the url is http://www.toprankblog.com.
Hope that
This tool can be of great help, too – http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/
Yeah, I forgot about that tool. It’s good, although a bit slow. Still it provides some nice information. It is also just one of numerous great tools that We Build Pages provides. Here is there SEO Tools page: http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/default.htm. Also, while you are at it, Jim Boykin (CEO of We Build Pages) has an excellent blog (although he is currently on vacation, but he’ll be back soon). Here is the url: http://www.jimboykin.com.
All the best,
Moshe
[…] Who is competing against you for your keywords […]