How Competitive is a “Competitive” Search Term?

[greeneagle]

How Competitive is a “Competitive” Search Term?

I and several posters have been “guilty” of posting in threads referencing “highly competitive search term” SERP numbers using 2 and 3+ keyword phrases without parentheses as of late. Well, I was recently derided about that practice in another less known board by an ex-member (self admittedly banned from WPW) now.

Before going on let’s make the statement that; “Competitive is Subjective”, depending on many factors, including, the search method, the industry, the topic, the product, the service, industry resources and the resources in that industry.

It’s my belief that without knowing another industry or the “indigenous resource pool” therein, it is hard to judge just how competitive “competitive” really is in someone else’s domain.

Let’s take just a few minutes to examine different search methods.

Let’s start this off with a search term that comes up quite a bit around here: “Custom Website Design” (All SERP quantities from GOOGLE returns):

1) Custom Web Site Design; 17,600,000 3
2) Custom Website Design; 14,100,000 3
3) “Custom Web Site Design”; 294,000 1
4) “Custom Website Design”; 181,000 3

Using the different terms one contributing member at WPW lands the # 3 spot in 3 of the search methods above and the #1 position in the 3rd listing above. Is one method more “competitive” than the other? At first it might seem so, but there is a world of difference between the different search methods.

Searching without enclosing terms in quotations expands the search to encompass all phrase terms individually, no matter how relevant. While enclosing in quotations is more specifically determinate. Does this matter that much? Maybe just for personal ego inflation – LOL. It seems more dramatic saying “I am #3 out of 17,600,000 returns” as opposed to; "I am #3 out of 181,000 returns". Doesn’t it? Does it matter? Not a bit, unless one method is used more than the other. Do the Site Statistical packages indicate whether the terms were searched using which method for the term? Mine don’t!

We could ramble on here for a while talking about what “competitive search terms” are and associated ranking therein. But, there are many factors as mentioned above, and many not mentioned. I don’t believe there is a big difference in SERP ranking acclaim until other factors such as “plural vs singular” and other components are utilized.

We have 100s of top 10 ranked positions for clients and ourselves, many engaged in highly competitive niche product markets with scientific designations, some searches only reveal a total field of 1000-2000 returns. So What! – When you make the top of your Industry, Product, Service or whatever category you have targeted – THAT IS COMPETITIVE!, especially when the resource competition is strong in that limited competitive market!

What do you think? Does it matter that much how you search, in this light? What is a competitive search term? What are your thoughts?

Ken

[cbp]

Have you played with this tool at SEOmoz:
http://socengine.com/seo/tools/keywo...culty-tool.php

CBP

[janeth]

To me, custom wesite design is not a Competitive search term.

Website design is and there is a BIG difference between the two.

[canistotasoftware]

It's all in your perspective, any term that you are optimizing for is a competitive term if you are one of the competitors ;) Though honestly number of result returned doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't matter whether they are 17 or 17 million results for a particular term or phrase if no one ever searches for it. My oldest site is #1 out of 154,000 if you search for one term but noone ever searches for that term while it is off the radar right now for one of the terms I am optimizing for and unfortunately there are 30,800,000 results for that term. Why am I worried about this phrase? Because according to wordtracker it is searched for over 10,000 times a day and overture says it is searched for over 11,000 times a day. I am by no means expecting to be number 1 for that term but boy wouldn't it be nice. That would be a competitive search term in my book.

[greeneagle]

cbp,

That's quite a tool there. Unfortunately it takes some time to generate the reports. They are quite comprehensive though.

The question still remains though: Irreguardless of myself, Janeth and you being up against "stiffer" competitive Internet key terms due to the nature of the beast of our business, compared to most keyphrases and keywords, a win against all competition, is a "competitive" win, is it not".

Let's slide over in a paradigm shift for a certain client that beats everyone hands down in a strongly competitive product used in many Industries; "hydrocyclone". Sure this is one example, and given the competitive analysis results indicated, using the tool you suggested, it only had 17,400 searches in Google and 452 in Overture last month. However those top 2 positions he owns beat Sites with many times the pages, IBLs and Page Rank, while delivering inquiries and business. I don't think that there is any reason for him to concieve or care that "website design" had 10,900,000 in Google or 312,663 in Overture.

I just can't possibly fathom any reason he would not consider success achievement with his competitive lead for his products and services just as a web development company would with 1st and 2nd positions for any relative term, or any other business that outstrips competition for their industry, product or service terms, can you?

What is a "competitive" serch term? What is a competitive win? WHat is a competitive search term?

Ken

[greeneagle]

Janeth,

Generally speaking 1 word keyphrases are more competitive than 2, 2 more than 3 and so on...

That's part of the confusion here. Anyone doing a 4 word search is going to 4! mathematically as opposed to say 2! for a 2 word phrase. Anyone searching a 4 word phrase without quotations is going to see 4x4x4x4 results as opposed to 2x2 for example. 128/4=at least 32x the # of results. That's why visitors sometimes prefer to refine searches to more specific commands - total return relevancy. Whether positions really change much for the entire phrase is somewhat questionable when quotations are used or not, such as in the example given in the reply to cbp above.

Besides the fact that most "surfers" have the sense to be more specific than to use a single keyword when searching, single keywords are more expensive to earn top SERPS.

Of course a 2 word phrase is far more competitive than a 3, that's why some of us engaged in this thread rank well behind there, considering the "web design" phrases mentioned above.

If I have a 4 word keyphrase and 4 out of 4 words hit, kazam, I'm near the top. If 3 out of 4 (any three) hit when doing a search without parentheses, where approximately, should I expect to fall?

4-3rd/4! maybe? (4x4x4)/(4x4x4x4)=64/256. That's quite a drop. Don't quote and deride me here for this formula, obviously it's undeveloped, there are other factors (including algs), one of the largest being the likelihood of a an exact quoted phrase being used going down as the number of terms in a phrase goes up. But IMO, that or something close is the most important mathematical factor in that equation differentiating those search methods determining total # of Returns and distinction between search methods.

Subject Relevancy is a complete paradigm shift in "Competitive" terms though!

Expect to see a less definitive distinction between these search methods down the road with every module of LSI, integrated.

IMHO - That's a simple early warning, that deserves some thought, no more, no less.

Ken

[janeth]

It does not matter how many words long it is.

Janeth would be easer to get ranked for then online dating service.

[cbp]

Janeth would be easer to get ranked for then online dating service.

lol
Janeth - you are ranked ~15 for Janeth!!! (your WWS profile)

CBP

[angelpure]

I read in an issue of WPN some months ago that there has been a huge increase in the number of people using 3, 4 and even 5 words in there search requests. I seems that there is a huge upturn from the old one or two word search requests. Overture reports that 4 word search requests are very common now.

And as far as the average user using quoutes around a string to narrow down the results is unrelistic. I doubt that those of us that are not tech savvy even know about that attribute or in fact what the word boolean even means!

It is my humble and uninformed opinion that we need to approach the subject of "Average Users" doing searches and how informed they are. After all, unless you have a tech savvy or scientific website, the "Average User" barely knows how to launch thier brower. For those of us involved with e-commerce, those "Average Users" are our bread and butter.

My case in point was brought home today like a meteor hitting in my back yard. I stopped in at the local Pharmacy to pick up a script for my wife and I got into a conversation with the Pharmacist. He is a very knowledgeable guy, a big player in the stock market and we talk "Street Talk" all the time. I mentioned the recent decline in Yahoo and Google and to my utter amazement he had only seen Google once! He said, yeah, I missed out on that stock. My friend showed it to me the other day, we looked up Mitzy Gainer and I was amazed at the number of listings.

This is a guy that uses computers every minute of the day filling perscriptions for a major Pharmacy chain and he has only seen Google once! I was stunned. Further talk about the subject revealed that he has never in his life used a search engine to look for anything! He didn't even really know what the term meant!

He has heard of Yahoo and Google only from the standpoint of their stock standings!

What am I trying to say here? I think it's, "Are we forgetting how simple the average user approaches the Internet?" I remember when I was given my first technical writing assignment, I took a creative writing course. The instructor told us if we kept this one thing in mind, "No matter how simple or complicated the gizmo we were trying to explain was, write the manual as if it were going to be read by an eigth grade student."

I have carried this approach over into optimizing my sites, how would the average user look for my product.

Am I wrong in using this approach?

[janeth]

Originally Posted by cbp

lol
Janeth - you are ranked ~15 for Janeth!!! (your WWS profile)

CBP

And I did´nt even try. (-:

[greeneagle]

Janeth is a somewhat non-competitive term in the "field" of "names".

But we have wobbled off thread topic.

Ken

[28overpar]

Surely relevance and quality of clicks is a massive factor here.

There must be many instances where you are better off optimising for 3 or more words - make the search more specific. In a lot of cases/industries - 2 word keyword phrases are waaaaay too general.

What's the point of trying to get high in the SERPs for a keyword that is going to deliver no sales (or equivalent).

It has more value to me being #1 for a lower volume, 3 or 4 word phrase where the user clicking through will already be highly qualified, rather than #1 for a higher volume 2-word phrase where there is a "possibility" that the user will find what they are looking for.

For example, a company that has a website that compares cheap hotels in America, is going to get more sales on SERPs where they appear for the term "cheap hotels America", than they will for the term "cheap hotels" - as the service their site offers is missing a whole lot of world.

Surfers are becoming more adventurous and more demanding of their favourite trusty search engine. (Perhaps its due to bad exeperiences of being shown a page of naff results in the past) that users are quickly learning that targetting is the key - it also saves a whole lot of time.

[greeneagle]

28overpar:

"Surely relevance and quality of clicks is a massive factor here.

There must be many instances where you are better off optimising for 3 or more words - make the search more specific. In a lot of cases/industries - 2 word keyword phrases are waaaaay too general."

If you are really 28 overpar you have a worse handicap than my 69 year old POP!, but your hammer is right on, you hit it right square on the head and drove it in all the way!

IMO - 2 and 3 word keyphrases are more valuable when intelligently configured into the HTML Body CopyWrite these days - reguardless of metatags!

What does "intelligently" mean in that statement?:
1) repetitive use of 2 and 3 word keyphrases?
2) redundancy of "near term" 2 and 3 word keyphrases?

all within frequency specifications?

I hope so!

Let's don't forget that "near term" issue here with LSI peeking around the corner in the dark!: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=40250

Ken

[pdstein]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

We have 100s of top 10 ranked positions for clients and ourselves, many engaged in highly competitive niche product markets with scientific designations, some searches only reveal a total field of 1000-2000 returns. So What! – When you make the top of your Industry, Product, Service or whatever category you have targeted – THAT IS COMPETITIVE!, especially when the resource competition is strong in that limited competitive market!

This is why I don't think the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) is a very useful formula - because it uses the number of total matching results as its measure of competativeness. My observation is that there is only a modest correlation between the total number of matching results and real competativeness, which is how difficult it is to get to a certain position in SERPs for a particular term.

IMO, the tool at socengine.com is a marked improvement in measuring relative competativeness over the simple total maching results. I question how closely some of the factors weighted by the tool correlate with actual difficulty, but I definitely think Overture bids and average PR of the top 10 sites correlate better with real competativeness than total matches.

[Mel]

While the SEOs may have some legitimate concern about the "competitiveness" of a search term, the client will more than likely not care one bit about how competitive it is, he is only interested in the quantity and quality of traffic a good ranking on that term will drive to his site, and the client is who drives my business.

My philosopy is that there are only ten competitors for any search term I am targeting, those who are now ranking on the first page for the term.

Instead of worrying how competitive a term is I feel its better to measure the business potential for a term and look at the ROI potential for that word. If its going to take too much work (=cost)to get the rankings for such and such a search term versus the potential rewards to the client, then the ROI will be too low and you should look at other terms. On the other hand if the business potential is there then you should be able to justify the costs of achieving rankings for that term.

Granted that there is an interlinkage between competitiveness and business potential, why not use the same metric which your customer does?

[pollescu]

I usually compare a competitive term not with the amount of "other" links thrown by a search engine but against real, market competitors.

Let's say for example the keyword "truck". If I'm working for GM, I would consider it a competitive term if I was above Ford, Chrysler and other truck manufacturers, but I wouldn't care if a truck phtographer's site was in between.

I feel that the real comparison has to be made against real competitors, not only SER which by the way are usually full of crap (specially google lately)

What do you think?

[pdstein]

Originally Posted by Mel

Instead of worrying how competitive a term is I feel its better to measure the business potential for a term and look at the ROI potential for that word. If its going to take too much work (=cost)to get the rankings for such and such a search term versus the potential rewards to the client, then the ROI will be too low and you should look at other terms.

Sure, but how do you measure how much work/cost it takes to get the ranking?

competativeness = work/cost to get the ranking

[Mel]

You look at the top five or ten sites ranking for that term to see how much work its going to take. I know of no other way of determining how hard or easy it is to rank for a search term.

If you are looking for pushbutton answers you should IMO be prepared for some surprises when it comes time to do the work.

[greeneagle]

Good advice Mel,

Not only does it serve that purpose, but walk down that road in some detail thru the top three and you end up with a client's competitive analysis - That's a MUST for every client!

Ken

[pdstein]

Originally Posted by Mel

You look at the top five or ten sites ranking for that term to see how much work its going to take. I know of no other way of determining how hard or easy it is to rank for a search term.

If you are looking for pushbutton answers you should IMO be prepared for some surprises when it comes time to do the work.

That sounds good, but when you "look at the top five or ten sites ranking for that term" what specifically do you look for to determine how hard or easy it is to rank for a search term? How heavily optimized the pages are? IBLs? Size of the site? Even if you're making more of a gut-level determiation of how competative a term is, you've got to be looking at some more quantifiable factors.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by pdstein

That sounds good, but when you "look at the top five or ten sites ranking for that term" what specifically do you look for to determine how hard or easy it is to rank for a search term? How heavily optimized the pages are? IBLs? Size of the site? Even if you're making more of a gut-level determiation of how competative a term is, you've got to be looking at some more quantifiable factors.

The main thing is the number of links pointing at that site.

[greeneagle]

Janeth,

I may have missed it before, but I couldn't help but notice your signature term: "The main thing is the number of links pointing at that site."

I would appreciate some clarification there:

Would you care to substantially prove that in any SE?

Ken

[pdstein]

Originally Posted by janeth

The main thing is the number of links pointing at that site.

I would agree that is a factor, but...

Take a look at the number of links to the top 10 results for custom website design (since that seems to be everyone's favorite example). The quickest way is to punch it into the difficulty tool cited above:

http://socengine.com/seo/tools/keywo...culty-tool.php

According to Google, the top 10 sites range from 20 to 6460 links. A site with 199 links ranks #2 while the site with 6460 ranks #4. The site with 20 links outranks a site with 196.

[greeneagle]

Well noted pdstein,
IBLs aren't the only game in town, and haven't been for a while!
Ken

[canistotasoftware]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

Well noted pdstein,
IBLs aren't the only game in town, and haven't been for a while!
Ken

I am not saying one way or another whether IBL's mean everything or nothing but as was pointed out to me several times when discussing my high ranking in MSN, the number of general IBL's isn't as important as the number of IBL's with the search phrase in the anchor text so if this is the case if someone has 50 IBL's with the properly formatted anchor text they will outrank sites with many more IBL's that do not have the phrase in the anchor text. Never seen hard numbers to prove this but it seems to be the concensus of many here at WPW.