How to Evaluate SEO Keyword Competition And Opportunities?

Competitors SEO Analysis

35 SEO specialists or experts were asked for quick advice or suggestions on the subject:

How to evaluate SEO keyword competition or on the basis of which to assess whether the competition is low or high.

At the end of the post, I will also highlight some SEO observations from my own experience.

What tricks do different SEO experts use to evaluate keyword competition?

I do not have the opinion of 35 experts here, but these are the main factors that often came up in the answers.

So good news;).

First, focus on the content page you want to optimize, not the size of the keyword competition

It may not make sense to focus only on a specific keyword. Make sure the keyword or phrase is relevant to your audience and answers all your burning questions.

The occurrence of the phrase in the title and the number of links

Does the headline of Google’s TOP 5 results include the search phrase and how many links to specific content pages come from outside the site. The more links there are, the stronger the competition.

Search volume per month and click price

If you use Google KeyWord Planner , you’ll know how many times a month people search for your phrase. The more you search, the better. Now see what the recommended average cost-per-click is per keyword.

The higher the cost per click, the higher the competition, but that’s a good sign.

Adwords also shows the competitive strength per keyword as a number.

How much advertising is done?

Google your phrase and see how many people advertise on it. If you see 3-4 ads at the beginning and there are 2-4 ads after the tenth organic result, the competition for that phrase is obviously strong.

Competition will certainly be stronger if all ads and organic results are fully relevant and speak well to the target audience.

What is the quality of links to the TOP 5 content pages?

Do the links to this content page come from trusted pages or pages with suspicious value (meaningless)? Is there content that interests visitors, does it create value for your target audience?

What is the authority of the page?

What is the score on a 100-point scale, for example, for Moz’s domain or Domain Authorothy?

What score does Moz give to a specific content page or Page Authorothy?

The higher they are, the harder it is to outperform them in search results. There is a 50p page out of Estonia with a very strong authority.

How well are TOP 5-10 content pages optimized?

If all content pages have a phrase in the titles, H1 titles, introduction, meta description, and synonyms are used, it can be considered a competitive phrase.

And while most titles and descriptions are formulated with the client’s benefit in mind, SEO work is particularly well done in this area.

What is the quality of content on Google’s first page results?

Do search engineers also get meaningful and comprehensive answers to the questions in their head on these pages?

What are they doing so well that Google has put them so high?

Have they also contributed to convenient content consumption and diverse presentation options?

How many matches does Google find for a search term?

In some areas, people are actively looking for answers to many of their questions. In this case, you can see that Google will also find millions of results for the search term.

Type a phrase in quotation marks in the search box and you’ll see how many pages come out with that phrase.

How many pages are found by Google optimized for a particular phrase

While you see that Google only returns tens or hundreds of thousands of results, you can often assume that there’s less competition for that phrase. In this example, it is Estonia and here it must be acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of results mean higher competition.

Some examples for comparison:

Website Creation – about 244,000 results (0.37 seconds)

Website Training – about 4,990 results (0.38 seconds)

How old is the domain and specific content page?

Some SEO professionals think that the older a domain is, the more authoritative it is in Google’s eyes.

If Google has placed content pages for domains older than 5 years in the TOP 5 results, it will be harder to outperform those results.

You can use the whois.net website to check the age of your domain  .

As for the specific age of the content page, as a rule, in the case of stronger competition, older pages with higher quality content will be given priority.

How many homepages or community pages appear in the results?

These two nuances are often overlooked. The more home pages or topic forums that come out of a search, the harder it is to capture them.

Are there strong brands in the results?

If the name of one brand is often seen at the end of the title and it often appears in searches in this field, it can be concluded that it is a strong brand.

By the way, for Google, it is also an indicator if your brand name is represented outside your site and in other channels.

How many content pages have a domain in the Google TOP 5?

The more different content pages a competitor’s website has, the more likely they are to have been on the market for longer and to gain popularity. What matters here is the more high-quality content pages.

If you are a start-up website with 10-20 content pages, it will be difficult for you to go for a website with hundreds or thousands of content pages.

The presence of keywords in domain names

If a keyword appears in the search results of many competitors’ domain names, there is reason to believe that the competition is high.

What is the CTR of a keyword or phrase in search results?

Not all keywords actively click on search results. Some keywords have a significantly higher clickthrough rate (CTR) than others.

This CTR is reported by both Ahrefs and actually Google Keyword Planner

For example, in search results, the clickthrough rate for the following phrases will vary widely

website price – 9.6%

website ordering – 7.3%

website creation – 3.5%

The higher the click-through rate, the more often (not always) the competition.

However, I’ve experienced situations where advertisers focus more on words with high search volume, but keywords with lower volume but higher CTRs lag behind.

Anyway, words with higher CTRs are potential keywords that can be highly competitive.

Feeling hungry and knowing your competitors

Once you’ve gotten to know your main competitors (their webs) more closely, tracked them on your local Google search engine, you can also decide with guts whether or not you can easily match them in the search results.

This assessment of the feeling of stomach comes from experience, and many people later cultivate this method the most.

Compare your page to the Google TOP 5 page

Make your own checklist to compare specific facts with competing pages. As a hint, I must say that it must include:

• technical points of the page;
• on-page SEO points;
• off-page SEO points.

And don’t forget to evaluate the relevance of your content to a particular keyword or topic.

How much content has been produced by competitors in this field and how their content is featured on Google

It is not always a question of a specific keyword or phrase competition, but of a strategy for how to stand out to your target audience with a specific topic.

The more and more consistently you produce worthwhile content in one narrow field, the harder it is for competitors to capture your positions.

My SEO recommendations for you are as follows

I only have 2 tips for you.

Find out in Google Analytics which keywords are getting the most traffic for you

Find out what other topics people are still looking for and write about more specific topics. Group your relevant and important keywords and longer phrases.

Start producing and distributing content worthwhile on these topics right away.

For example, a post like “ Website Optimization or SEO. How to do? ”And based on that I have written on topics such as:

• What does an SEO specialist do?
• What are the prices of the services of Estonian SEO companies?
• SEO and SEM, or how to make Google more visible?
• etc.

I have produced this kind of content consistently and more than my competitors.

Don’t chase after one phrase or keyword

Write a business post on the so-called sleeve and see where Google puts you.

If you get to the Google homepage or TOP 5 results right away, good luck. If the results are not good, optimize and make the post or content page even better and see how effective it is.

If the results are still poor, start rewriting more specific positions around the main topic and watch how you start. It will take you 6-12 months, but the results will be sweet.

SEO competition evaluation is an art

Each has their own experience and their own techniques for evaluating the SEO competition. In addition to experience, data and a systemic approach are needed here.

In my opinion, it is important when dealing with SEO that you experiment and be able to experience the results of your hypotheses yourself, you can experience for yourself what works in your field and what does not.