Golden Rule #3: How to Assess Market Competition
Video Transcript
In this video we’ll be taking a look at the third Golden Rule of Keyword Research which is Competition.
Of all the Golden Rules this one is perhaps the most important. In fact the number one reason why people fail online is because they break this rule. So please take the time to watch this video carefully.
Specifically we’ll be covering:
(1) The nature of competition
(2) The two most important aspects of competition
(3) How to evaluate the competition in your niche using Market Samurai
The nature of competition
As you know by now, one of the best ways to obtain a steady stream of traffic to your website is to obtain a front page ranking in Google for particular keyword phrases.
The big problem is that there are only 10 listings on the front page of Google for each keyword phrase and there are often many websites competing for these 10 positions.
An Internet marketing fable
A good way to understand the nature of competition in the world of Internet business is the story of the lion and the two Internet Marketers.
The story goes that there were two Internet marketers traveling through the African savannah when they unexpectedly turned a corner and came face to face with a hungry lion.
As the lion began to circle them, the first Internet marketer sat down on a nearby rock, took off his hiking boots and started putting on a pair of sneakers which he had been carrying in his backpack.
The second Internet marketer looked puzzled and said, “What are you doing, you’ll never be able to outrun a lion”
The first Internet marketer looked up and replied, “I don’t need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you!”
The moral of this story is that in order to obtain a front page ranking in Google, you don’t need a perfect website, you just need to be a little bit better than your competition.
Amount of competition
There are two important aspects of competition that you need to consider.
The first is the amount of Competition. This gives us an indication of how many people are competing for a particular keyword phrase.
As illustrated in this diagram, some keywords have high levels of competition with a lot of people competing for the top 10 spots in Google.
Other keywords have low levels of competition with a smaller number of people competing for the top spots in Google.
Strength of competition
The second aspect of competition that we need to consider is the strength of the competition.
Imagine for a moment that you are standing in front of two boxing rings side by side.
You’ve decided that you are going to enter the boxing competition and you have to choose which boxing ring you are going to step into.
Luckily before you make your decision you have the chance to assess your potential competition.
As you investigate the first boxing ring you discover that if you enter this ring your competition will be a 270 lb professional fighter.
As you investigate the second boxing ring you discover that if you enter this ring, your competition this time will be a 120lb novice with no prior experience.
The question is - Which ring would you decide to climb into?
In this analogy it is quite obvious that you’d have to be crazy to climb into the first ring.
Internet marketing example
However, let’s now look at this in terms of Internet Marketing.
The two boxing rings, become two different target keywords.
For the first keyword, the top ten spots in Google are dominated by professional, highly optimized websites that have been around for over 10 years and have hundreds of pages of high quality content and thousands of backlinks.
For the second keyword phrase, the top ten spots in Google include simple websites that have not been optimized, are relatively new and only have one or two backlinks.
Clearly you should target the keyword phrase that is less competitive because you will have a much better chance to obtain a front page listing in Google which will lead to a steady stream of traffic and hopefully a steady stream of sales.
The #1 reason why people fail online
In our experience, the number one reason why people fail online is that they never take the time to assess the level and strength of the competition associated with the keywords they are targeting.
Instead, they just climb into a niche market blindly and start creating content. They then hope that Google will somehow find their site and magically give them a front page ranking. Unfortunately, this rarely happens.
The really sad part is that many people work extremely hard to build a great website but still receive little or no traffic because they’ve entered a very competitive niche and the competition is simply too strong.
The real secret to success online is to learn to pick your battles carefully and only target keywords for which you have a good chance of achieving a front page ranking.
If you take this on board and assess the competition associated with your target keywords before you create your online business, you can save yourself months and even years of hard work and frustration.
Now let’s cross over to Market Samurai and take a look at how to assess the amount and strength of the competition in the real world.
Click SEO Competition checkbox
In this example I’m exploring the dog training niche and as you can see I currently have my SEO traffic, PBR and Trends information showing.
In order to assess the amount of competition in this niche, all I have to do is go up to the Competition area and click the SEO competition checkbox.
Click the Analyze Keywords button
Market Samurai then displays an empty column with the title SEOC.
In order to retrieve my SEO competition data, all I need to do is just come up here and click the ‘Analyze Keywords’ button.
Market Samurai then goes out to the Internet and gathers the data I need to assess the competition that exists for each of my keyword phrases.
Definition of SEO Competition (SEOC)
The SEOC values that come back show me the total number of webpages that mention the associated keyword phrase in the same word order.
Apply a competition filter of 30000
Now that I have my SEOC data, I can apply a competition filter. This allows me to filter out the high competition phrases and zero-in on the more accessible keywords.
At Noble Samurai, we recommend that if you are just starting out you should use a competition filter of 30000 to identify phrases that have acceptable levels of competition.
So I’ll just come up here and click the plus sign next to the SEOC field, and enter a value of 30000 and click the Refresh Filters button.
By using a competition filter I have now identified keyword phrases that have less than 30000 competing webpages.
But we are not done yet.
Investigate strength of competition
You’ll remember that there were two important aspects of competition. The first was the amount of competition, and the second was the strength of competition.
These SEOC values describe the amount of competition but they do not say anything about the strength of the competition that exists for each keyword phrase.
In order to assess the strength of my competition, I need to make use of one of Market Samurai’s most powerful modules - The SEO Competition Module.
Let’s take a look at an example.
Looking through my list of keywords, let’s say that I’d like to assess the strength of the competition that exists for the phrase ‘puppy obedience training’.
To do this, what I can do is come across here and click this key icon. This will create a new tab at the top of the screen with puppy obedience training as my new seed keyword. To change focus, I’ll just click on this tab.
Access the SEO Competition module
Now to access the SEO Competition module, I’ll just come down here and click the SEO Competition button.
Click the Generate Results button
Then to generate my SEO competition matrix, all I have to do is come across here and click the ‘Generate Results’ button.
Examine SEO Matrix
Market Samurai then conducts a real time SEO analysis of the top 10 websites in Google for the phrase ‘puppy obedience training’.
Don’t worry if this matrix seems a little confusing at first. In a future video I’ll be explaining each column in detail.
For now, I’ll just describe the simplest way to use the matrix.
What we’ve done is to color code the SEO matrix to give you an easy way to conduct a quick visual assessment of the strength of the competition associated with a keyword phrase.
The more green squares there are in the matrix, the weaker the competition and the more accessible the keyword.
Orange squares indicate a higher strength of competition and red squares indicate a strong level of competition.
Matrix comparison
Here’s an example that will show you what I mean.
This first SEO Matrix relates to the keyword ‘dogs’ and as you can see by the large number of red cells, the top 10 websites listed in Google for this keyword are all very strong competitors.
The second SEO Matrix relates to the keyword phrase ‘puppy obedience training’. This Matrix is a lot less red and a lot more orange and green.
This means that the competition for the top 10 spots in Google associated with this keyword is not as strong.
I would therefore have a much better chance of gaining a front page ranking if I targeted the phrase ‘puppy obedience training’ than if I targeted the keyword ‘dogs’.
As I mentioned, I’ll be discussing the SEO Matrix in a lot more detail in a future video.
Summary
In this video, we discussed the nature of competition in Internet Marketing. We saw that the number 1 reason why people fail online is that they do not take the time to assess the level of competition associated with their target keywords.
Next we identified that it is important to assess both the amount of competition and the strength of competition before deciding on which keyword phrases to target.
And finally we looked at how to assess the amount of competition and the strength of that competition using Market Samurai.
Search
More Keyword Research Lessons
- Introduction to Keyword Research
- Golden Rule #1: How to Find Relevant Keywords
- Golden Rule #2: How to Find High Traffic Keywords
- Golden Rule #3: How to Assess Market Competition
- Golden Rule #4: How to Assess Commerciality
- Golden Rules Case Study
- Finding Long Tail Keywords
- Understanding Match Type Data
- How to Avoid Targeting the Wrong Keywords
Excellent video! Thank you for providing this additional training to help us better understand how to use Market Samurai.
Thanks Anthony for another great teaching video. To some degree Samurai has been somewhat intimidating to me. But... your videos are concise and and easy to comprehend. I just wish these videos keep on coming faster.
Many Thanks.
Thank you once again, Anthony. Your step-by-step videos are excellent. Very clear, to-the-point. I wish that other Internet Marketers explained things as well as you do.
Great lesson, Anthony! Your teaching style rocks!
Question about the lesson: What if you have an SEO matrix that paints a very weak picture of the competition BUT an SEOC that's in the stratosphere?
Is the SEOC really just an initial filter to weed out keywords that are probably (but not definitely) too tough?
Or does the SEOC overrule the SEO Matrix, i.e. even if the first page looks weak, the sheer number of competitors makes the keyword too competitive?
Thanks,
Pierre
This is awesome information. They guys that are sharing this are nothing less than brilliant and the product itself (Market Samurai) is unreal.
It literally eliminates headache after headache associated with gathering information to be competitive in a niche.
When I first started promoting my site for guitar instruction (LearnGuitarFastAndEasy.com), I had to do all of this research manually and indeed - it can be done.
But please tell me why in the world anybody would choose to crawl along when they can have the equivalent of a jet engine strapped to their efforts?
Frankly, I don't understand why anybody would even think about moving ahead in their online marketing efforts without MS.
To me, it's a no brainer and I couldn't live without it.
Needles to say, the training that comes with the product is nothing less than brilliant and without question - a model by which all training should be followed.
That's exactly what I've modeled my training after and the results speak for themselves.
Thanks to everybody on the MS team. And yes, you can quote me on this.
Sincerely,
Jerry
LearnGuitarFastAndEasy.com
Awesome analogy of the internet marketers encountering the lion- love it!
Are we notified VIA email about the next video that deals with the SEO Competition matrix?
This video showed me a shortcut on how I was using the SEO Competition module. I look forward to more training. I especially like the written content so I can review before and after the video.
Love your videos btw.. have you guys considered a percentage ratio of SEOTC vs. SEOV ? might help narrow down an ordered list of risk reward.
Greetings!
Thomas here saying thank you for the updates!
http://www.prosperitymarketingsystem.com/go/?s=879
Hi guys, great training. Seeing real world examples helps no end.
I was just wondering about local search. One or two other folk have asked about this too. If for example I sell home theatre equipment, competition for this is really high so one method is to add my city or region name to the keyword phrase. This is often a good idea any way because people who are looking to buy my products will probably be coming from fairly close by and might use the city name in their search.
However, using MS or some of Google's other keyword tools, I've noticed lots and lots of zeros in any results matrix. i.e no data or too few searches. How can I progress from here? Am I simply targeting the wrong phrase?
Hi Anthony,
Just a thought around assessing the competition for a particular key word or keyword phrase.
Many of us have an offline investment of experience which we bring to our online business. Do you think that this should be taken into account when determining the SEOC filter.
i.e. If someone has years of experience offline in a market could that mean they could use an SEOC filter that's higher?
http://www.onesherpa.com
This is awesome information. They guys that are sharing this are nothing less than brilliant and the product itself (Market Samurai) is unreal.
It literally eliminates headache after headache associated with gathering information to be competitive in a niche.
When I first started promoting my site for guitar instruction (LearnGuitarFastAndEasy.com), I had to do all of this research manually and indeed - it can be done.
But please tell me why in the world anybody would choose to crawl along when they can have the equivalent of a jet engine strapped to their efforts?
Frankly, I don't understand why anybody would even think about moving ahead in their online marketing efforts without MS.
To me, it's a no brainer and I couldn't live without it.
Needles to say, the training that comes with the product is nothing less than brilliant and without question - a model by which all training should be followed.
That's exactly what I've modeled my training after and the results speak for themselves.
Thanks to everybody on the MS team. And yes, you can quote me on this.
Sincerely,
Jerry
LearnGuitarFastAndEasy.com
I'm confused.
Do you recommend using BROAD to search for a niche like "puppy obedience training" ?
Shouldn't I use "Phrase Match" ???
Fantastic training, it's clear and concise. Easy to understand and follow even for a newbie like me.
Looking forward to more of your tutorials.
http://perfecttrafficstorm.com/links/4445
Another great video.
I have been using this tool for a year and it rocks
This new guy (Dr A.) is a great trainer.
http://www.learning-spanish-for-beginners.info
Oh Noble One... your wisdom and clarity are just what the doctor ordered. Thank you! Keep 'em coming.
Several people have asked about whether keywords with high SEOC figures are OK if you have experience (or websites) in the niche, or if the SEO Competition Matrix shows weak competitors.
For the answer, Rob "@GuruBob" Somerville from the Thirty Day Challenge had this to say on Twitter:
"Initially, SEOC guides you away from overly competitive niches. With greater experience, 'quality of competition' takes precedence."
I'm really enjoying the training you are providing about keyword research. I have a question about the SEO Competition section. I find it very hard to find any new keywords that don't have high competition for my niche. I have however, found a handful of decent ones but the BLP and BLD sections are almost all red but the other sections are green or yellow. Mostly green. Does this mean that even though there are a very high number of backlinks, my keywords may still be very possible to break into the top 10 of Google?
finally, a clearer view of how to use market samurai for me to follow. Thanks for the clarity!
Merci pour ces videos, même pour un français je comprend vos explications.
Very useful video explaining competition and the use of Market Samurai
Thanks to you all , I really do appreciate all your efforts for making these wonderful instructional videos. I feel more confident to use the tool and get the best out of this amazing tool , just like its name Noble Samurai.
All the Best,
KD
Hi.
Great stuff...
I have a question though. I've built a few sites albeit they are actually just optimised landing pages with around 200 words their on page SEO is very good. I've slowly been building relevant backlinks and everything looks fine. O the face of it they should be
rking on P1 however they are still nowhere after 4-6 weeks of first being indexed.
I know that this is not a long time and I need to be patient. I've been adding more pages and creating backlinks for them also.
In your opinion, is there anything else I should be doing in order to get decent rankings and long does this process normally take?
Thanks.
Peter.
Thanks for these training videos Anthony. They really are good.
Please can I make request that you caover regarding the local / country keyword option in MS, how Google compiles them and how they relate to comeptition matrix.
Thanks
Michael
I have been following along with the tutorials having created a new keyword research project ...however got stumped at this lesson as hitting the key button for a less competitive keyword didnot create a new tab for me to conduct SEO competition research. What am I missing ?
Thanks, Joyce
Brilliant imagery!
Hi:
Fantastic tutorials. Most professional.
I'm at roughly the 6 minute point of Golden Rule #3, and the feed has stopped. It's at 59 percent of "Fetching SEO Competition Data" and just sitting there. Any other mention of this?
Cheers and thanks, from Canada, of course!
@Andee
RE: using higher SEOC when you have more experience.
Yes, with more experience you can increase the SEOC filter to around 100,000 SEOC or even higher provided you still check the SEO Competition matrix to make sure the direct competition of the top 10 results are not too strong.
The results are a little difficult to interpret as each result probably needs some weighting. Is it possible to have a column that gives a grading to the overall results?
a must read!
Another brilliant teaching. I am gaining a solid path in air or on water. I will soon reach a flying hat stage.
Eugene, I\'m having the same problem: when I get to 6:37 in the video, it stops, and I can\'t get it to re-start, even if I refresh the page and start the streaming process all over again.
RE: problems with the video
We have tested the video from a number of computers and we aren't seeing any problems.
If you are having difficulty watching the video try clicking 'pause' to allow the video to fully download before viewing or alternatively, click 'Download This Video' to download a .mov version of the tutorial.
I had the same problem with the video...with Internet Explorer it stops at 6:37 and won\'t go any further no matter what. I then tried it in Firefox and it worked fine.
Could you go into more detail on how much competition you should be looking for in the final step "The Color Code Part" What is a healthy amount of Green Squares when analyzing competition?
I\'m having the same problem as Joyce #26 had in November 09 - \"stumped at this lesson as hitting the key button for a less competitive keyword didnot create a new tab for me to conduct SEO competition research. What am I missing ?\" Please help!!