How to search for keyword competitiveness

[Marc]

hi everyone,
Can anyone help me how to find keyword competitiveness?Which keyword to consider and which one not to?..

thank u
Marc

[St0n3y]

You might want to check out wordtracker.com.

[pleeker]

And it would also be a good idea to read Concerned about the validity of Overture and WordTracker numbers (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=4580).

:)

[Mel]

When selecting keywords to target for optimization, you should first of all make sure that the keywords are both relevant to the page and that there is sufficient traffic using that term.

Then to determine the level of difficulty of optimizing for that keyword just evaluate the first five results for that search term in Google for:

Number of inbound links.

Number of results returned for an allintitle:"searchphrase" search, the fewer the better.

Number of results returned for an allinanchor:"searchphrase" search, the fewer the better.

This will give you an overview of the competitiveness of the search term, but if it is a diffucult search term you might want to analyze more carefully the onpage optimization of the top five pages.

[Marc]

Thank you very much Mel and others.

I have one more problem with my new site(with total of 32 pages). It is online for past 20 days. Google indexed all the pages, Yahoo only 10 pgs( on March 14 - 2005) and MSN 12 (March 14). Last week, the site was ranking well in first 10, in Yahoo , Google 384, MSN nowhere.

Today, It disappeared from Google and Yahoo, but around 84 in MSN.

My pages are well optimized for users and SEs. No spamming techniques have been used.

1)Is it now in Sandbox?
or

2)Nothing related to sandbox

plz help me.. :confused:

[pleeker]

Marc, how new is "new"? It's quite normal for new sites to bounce in and out of the indexes for a while as databases update and changes propagate across the servers, etc. (I'm sure there's a more accurate tech way to describe that, but hopefully you get the point.)

[gadvisor]

Marc,

It is quite possible that your site is now in the sandbox (some info here: googleadvisor.org
but it is just as likely that your site is going in and out of the index as the different engines are trying to sort and properly place the different pages of your website into their indexes. The sandbox effect does not seem to be as wide-spread as it used to be, so I'm tending to lean towards the later possibility. Let us know in a few days or a week if your pages have found their way back into the index.

Also, I have a few links that might help you decide on keywords.. you can find them and other relevant info. here:googleadvisor.org/googlearticles.php/2005/03/20/google_adwords_5_simple_strategies_to_su
Good luck

[AussieWebmaster]

Marc, how new is "new"? It's quite normal for new sites to bounce in and out of the indexes for a while as databases update and changes propagate across the servers, etc. (I'm sure there's a more accurate tech way to describe that, but hopefully you get the point.)
It's what I call the "Welcome To Google" short-term ranking... they seem to give new sites a short stint at a good spot and then they are shuffled into the pot... a taste of what can be attained through work...

[PhilC]

It just occured to me....

They record clicks on search results. I wonder if they put new pages near the top for a while to find out what people think of them. I.e. stick a page in the top 10, watch clicks and time how long it takes for the person to come back to the serps. Then give the page a value for future ranking purposes based on that. Like DirectHit used to do.

Just a thought.

[Robert_Charlton]

Marc - I highly recommend this recent thread, What is Keyword Competitiveness? (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4374), which split into two simultenous discussions, one from theoretical perspective and one from the practical perspective. I think the practical posts might be very helpful to you.

For what it's worth, I feel the Wordtracker, while a very pretty tool, has some major limitations. Its sample is taken from a very small database; its demographics are probably way different from, say, Google's; and its KEI is way oversimplified. Some excellent discussion on the range of considerations to look at in the "What is... Competitiveness" thread, and there's no point repeating that here.

To find suggestions for the words and phrases in the first place... do a lot of searches in your market area, look at the language used, and talk to people in the field and likely customers. Sometimes, but not always, clients don't have a clue. They're often oriented to trade or company terms... not to what people actually look for... but in B-to-B and technical areas, or in hobby areas, eg, they do know the trade terms and sales figures.

Then use the various keyword suggestion tools. I myself tend to use Overture as a starting point, starting with just general words to get suggestions, and then getting more specific if I have to. Keep in mind that the Overture tool is going to be extremely skewed by OV's matching features, its blending of singular and plural, its alphabetization of returned terms, and especially by automated searches.

I sometimes also look at Wordtracker, and I compare Wordtracker and Overture with the Digital Point Keywords suggestion tool.

For the most "granular" info, I look at the Google Adwords suggestion tool, and I use the Broad Match suggestions to get additional ideas. The Google tool has no numbers, but the phrases are generally listed in order with the most-searched first.

All the tools together should help you develop a list of words in the correct relative order of searches. There's nothing I know that will give you good absolute numbers. Even test PPC programs (which can be very useful) have their own kinds of skewing (position, types of match, landing pages and titles, as well as what you targeted in the first place), but they can be very helpful to give you a sense of what converts and is worth targeting.