Search Engine Keyword Analysis Pitfalls - Misreading the Competition
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At one time a good SEO could make any page rank for any keyword. Those days are sadly gone. If you don’t factor competition into your keyword selection, you may end up choosing keywords that you just can’t win.
Today’s keyword tools offer limited insight into competition. WordTracker and a few other tools offer something called a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), which assigns a single value rating to each keyword based on its search popularity and degree of competition.
Unfortunately KEI is a broad metric that offers little insight into real competition. KEI is based on the raw number of results returned for a search query. The theory is that the larger the number of pages containing your keyword, the stiffer the competition will be. Run a query for the term “internet marketing” on Google and you’ll get 27,100,000 results. That’s a lot, so this keyword will have a low KEI, indicating that competition is tough.
A little reflection should tell you this is a flawed assumption. If you run a Google query for “search engine optimization” and you’ll get only 7,400,000 results, which means it will have a better KEI than “internet marketing.” Yet “search engine optimization” is perhaps the most hotly competed keyword on the Web. It’s not how many pages include your keyword, but how many of those pages have been optimized.
WordTracker is a great keyword analysis tool, but we need a better way to assess competition.
Consider using PageRank as your guide for judging competition. With the search engines making more and better use of off-the-page factors to determine ranking, a site’s PageRank determines the bracket in which it can compete.
A well-optimized web site can still beat un-optimized sites with a higher PageRank, but this is true only up to a point. Before selecting a keyword, consider the competition and make sure you can beat them.
Conclusion
Keyword analysis tools are incredibly useful, but ultimately they’re just tools. They provide insight that helps you make good decisions, but you need to understand how they generate their numbers and keep in mind that numbers don’t always tell the whole story. Good keyword analysis ultimately depends on your judgment.
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