What Are The Most Competitive Industries For SEO?

[islandmaan]

Sorry I am new to this Forum and cannot find out how to start a new thread, so I apologize for being off topic. I just had a quick question?

What do you find to be the top 5 most competitive/difficult industries for SEO? You always hear about Porn and Gambling being so difficult but I would like to here from you professionals what you thing the top 5 are (including porn and gambling if in fact they are in the top 5).

Wave I apologize for the hijacking i really could not find the new thread link.

Thanks,
Brian

[gamblingsem]

I have found that the travel, gambling and games industries are very competitive. I have also heard that pharmaceuticals and porn are in pretty much the same league.

Any specific reason for asking?

[David Wallace]

Well my compamy doesn't market porn or gambling/gaming sites so besides those 2 industries I would say the following:

1. Real Estate (individial agent sites)

2. Mortgages

3. Travel

4. Web Site Design (in general)

5. Any specific product or service that allows hundreds and hundreds of affiliate sites promoting the same thing.

[CaseyC]

insurance would fall into that highly competitive category

[mcanerin]

Also - gifts and gift baskets - spam-o-rama!

I have a pharma client doing very well - total white hat, etc. It's not a cake walk, but I don't think it's hyper competitive as a whole. It costs about 30k per month to market the site, which is a fair amount but not outrageous, given the profits.

There are sites that spend 10 times that in other areas just to keep up.

Certain types of pharma are though, especially pseudo pharma stuff like "herbal" remedies, etc where the regulations are not as clear as when you are selling prescription heart medicine to people.

Changing my mind..

Thinking about it, I suppose that if you didn't *have* 30k, then it would be extremely competive - depends on your definition of competition. I define it by the skill necessary to succeed, not the money spent. Others may have a different definition.

I guess it comes down to - ANY area can be too competitive if the normal budget for top sites is out of your price reach. If you want to be a millionaire without spending anything, then I imagine almost everything is "too competitive".

I only define areas as "competitive" if the top players all have roughly the same budget and time, and the rankings are due only to the skill of the marketers involved.

But that's just me today. I didn't think that way when I first started out doing small business sites (back then almost everything was competitive because my clients never wanted to pay for anything...)

Ian

[randfish]

Good Topic.

These are in no particular order (but are very tough):

1. Real Estate
2. Financial Services (mortgages in particular)
3. Travel
4. Medical/Pharma
5. Retail Computer Hardware
6. WebDev and Hosting
7. Retail Apparel

[Jill Whalen]

What do you find to be the top 5 most competitive/difficult industries for SEO?

If you find that you get email spam for it, it would be in one of those most difficult industries.

[badz]

porn, sex, butt plugs and beer. Not all at the same time of course

[islandmaan]

The reason I asked the question is I am looking for an SEO expert who is not in the gaming business but has had success in other highly competitive markets.

Since the US has made online gaming a grey area many have avoided direct involvment so I was looking someone who would be interested in a consulting role. Please PM me if interested.

Brian

[seobook]

Originally Posted by badz

porn, sex, butt plugs and beer. Not all at the same time of course

adult toys really is not that competitive IMHO...my second client ever a few years back was one of those stores and although it has been years since I have been near it the site is still rocking in Google.

[dannysullivan]

Put up a poll with some of the most popular suggestions.

[obuwebco]

Real Estate is the worst IMO.

We have had great success with seo for our business (web design)

Real Estate is bad cause you have SO much junk to weed through. Arizona alone has over 25,000 licensed agents..

[MrMackin]

EDUCATION - college degrees

[critter]

Gaming?

That gets my vote!

Critter

[shor]

What Randfish said.

Most of those industries (specifically the top 3) have hundreds/thousands of competitors per region/city willing to invest in SEO.

I'd have to say inkjet cartridges...then 2nd most difficult, a real estate site for foreclosures. Done both - had great success. All are still at the top on all major engines.

...however, never again.


# # #

[simons1321]

I would say Travel is definitely one of the biggest. Many of our clients are in the travel business, especially all inclusive vacations and cruises. The words "vacation package(s)" gets about 2,000 hits/day on wordtracker and about 7,500 hits/day on overture... thats per day!

[AussieWebmaster]

Real Estate is the top for organic...

Financial services tops for PPC...

[adgooroobizdev]

My experience has been that the following verticals are all very competitive (not listed in any particular order):

Singles/Dating
Floral/Flower Delivery
Financial Services/Mortgages
Gaming/Game Cheats
Real Estate
Pharmaceutical/Medical
Wellness/Nutrition
Travel
Online Education/E-Learning

[PerformanceSEO]

It depends on how you measure "competitiveness"??

Is it the amount of results the search engines turn up?

Is it the amount of money the clients are spending in the sector? (i.e. pharm)

Or is it the amount of websites that are being optimized?

If we are talking about the latter, then the Search Engine Optimization industry is THE MOST competitive industry on the web. It is the only industry where EVERY SINGLE website has been optimized (or so we would hope).