Earn Money With SEO Competition Research
I have been writing a how to earn money with keyword research series and left off with an example of how to choose a keyword that will be potentially profitable (and marketable). Most people when performing keyword research do three things:
1. View what the monthly search amount was for that keyword using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool
2. Check the average cost per click
3. Check to see the total amount of results for that keyword in Google
I agree that this is an acceptable way to get a VERY simple overview of whether the keyword is worth ranking for. However, you will need to perform additional steps to ensure that you are not wasting your time when starting your campaign to earn money from your chosen keyword.
One of the most crucial steps in keyword research is reviewing the search engine optimization competition for the keyword you’re trying to earn money on.
Let’s say you found a GREAT keyword that had a high cost per click, lots of daily searches and a million search results. A million results is not too hard to compete against (note: the term “make money” has over 226,000,000 page results). BUT, if the top 10 pages in Google have a lot of relevant anchored back links, have the keyword in their domain title, page title and have proper SEO on every post of their website, you will have a hell of a time ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword. When you’re new to earning money online, it’s better to start off with something a little less competitive.
So let’s start today’s lesson!
How to Check SEO Competition for Your Potential Keyword
Last week I wrote about how to choose a profitable keyword and was using the keyword “organic shampoo” as my example. I choose organic shampoo as my example keyword because I know that I can rank well for this keyword with proper search engine optimization, a strong back linking strategy and some time. The last time I checked my data center, the keyword “organic shampoo” had approximately 1,700 daily searches, a cost per click of $2.46 and a click through rate of 11%. This keyword has around 500,000 results in Google.
Once people have found out this information, their keyword research would be over. HOWEVER, a smart Internet Marketer would take it a step further and research the top 5 results on the first pages and determine the REAL competition.
Remember, the only way that you’ll ever earn money is ranking on the first page of Google. You will earn the most money if you rank number 1 for your keyword.
Here are the top 5 results for “organic shampoo” in Google.
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,333248,00.html
shopping.yahoo.com/s:Shampoo:4575-Shampoo%20Type=Organic%20&%20Natural%20Shampoos
womenshair.about.com/…/product-review-can-organic-shampoo-measure-up.htm –
www.thecrunchychicken.com/…/shampoo-dilemma-solved.html –
www.pristineplanet.com/…organic/shampoo/8421_a_0.html
Here are the steps in order to determine how hard or easy it will be to earn money with Adsense with the keyword “organic shampoo”.
1. Check to see if the URL has the keyword within the web address (i.e. www.organicshampoo.com) – Write Yes or No
2. Check to see if the keyword is within the title of the website
3. Check to see if the keyword is within the description
4. Check to see if the header tag or h1 tag has the keyword in it
5. Check to see if the images within their website have the keyword within the alt img tag.
All of this can be done reviewing the home page and the page source of the website.
Record all of the resutls in a spreadsheet and write a yes or a no to each of the criteria listed above.
So what does all of this mean?
If you are seeing a pattern of “NO” to each criteria, then this indicates that the top 5 pages are not search engine optimized and that some other criteria is pushing these up to the top of the first page for that keyword.
In my case, the majority of the websites have at least a couple of “Yes” next to the criteria. If you click on the Fox News article, you will see that the page title has the keyword, the description includes the keyword and the article has many words that relate to the word organic shampoo. This shows me that this page is well optimized, which is one of the reasons why it’s #1 for this search.
Now let’s focus on the most important portion of SEO competition research…Backlinks! Backlinks are the life blood of any website. Someone can have the best article in the world and be the most amazing writer, however, the writer will never receive search traffic from Google if the writer does not have relevant anchored backlinks to his website.
Back links or “In-links” are links from another website that point to your website. So let’s say I have an “apples” website and I link to a “bananas” website. The bananas website will have one link from the apples website. The more links that the bananas website gets from other websites, the higher the website will rank in Google.
Back links are like a vote to a website. The more links (votes) that I get to my bananas website from other related websites, the more Google thinks that my website is relevant to bananas. Once all the votes are counted up, they will rank me higher than other banana websites with less votes.
This is only partially true…the only portion of back links is what’s called “anchored text”. Anchored text is a text link to a website. For example, this website is:
http://earnmoneyonlineprodigy.com
an anchored text link would be:
Going back to the banana example.
Both are links but the second link is more relevant (and stronger) when trying to rank a website. A anchored link from another person’s website to your website is telling Google that “Hey, this person’s website is pretty cool and should be ranked higher for the word bananas”.
This is what we need to look at next when determine SEO competition. We need to look at the number of back links to a page and how many of those back links have the word “organic shampoo” or a derivative of that keyword within a link.
This post is getting too long so I will go into detail about how to review competitors back links the free way and then I’ll show you an easier way to review SEO competition using the Market Samurai software. So next time we will review how to look at a competitors back links and the reason why it’s important when learning how to earn money online.
In: Search Engine Optimization, how to earn money online · Tagged with: how to earn money online
on July 10, 2009 at 9:15 am
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Only a professional SEO will know how to gain that extra advantage to ensure your website can maintain a constant high ranking. Get Backlinks
on July 10, 2009 at 1:01 pm
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I agree…but it’s also good for newbies to learn about back links so that professionals can’t walk all over them