How to target and rank high for low competion keywords
It is very important to do the proper keyword research. People have different methods and tools for achieving this research. To start, optimize your website for ‘Low competition keywords’ that are specific to your audience.
‘Low competition Keywords’ are those keywords that have a good monthly search volume but relatively low competition. Anything over 1,000 searches per month and preferably 3,000 searches.
Good monthly search volume + Low competition = SEO success.
High monthly search volume + High competition = SEO failure.
Start with understanding, that the goal of proper seo keyword research is uncover keywords that have a good monthly search volume and relatively low competition.
First Decide upon a niche or business category that I might want to get into, this could be something like ‘NY commercial Insurance’ or ‘home renovation’.
Second Use keyword research tools to ascertain the interest in the niche or category and look at keywords and search volumes. Then I look at the bigger picture, i.e.: how competitive is the niche overall for certain keywords?
Finally Look at the top 10 websites and ascertain what your chances of out ranking them. After all ultimately your goal is to be no.1 on search engines, or at least on 1st page. So in reality the only real competition are the 10 websites that occupy the position on the first page.
Let’s look at each stage in more detail.
Start Ranking Better Now
Stage 1 – Deciding What keyword Category To Get Into
Really this is a decision that you have to make on your own. You might be really passionate about a particular business sector or subject. You’d be really surprised at what interests other people share as well. One tip is to check out Google Trends. You can see what is popular at the moment and you can also see a chart of topics popularity. Initially it doesn’t matter what niche or category you choose because you’ll soon find out whether there is any market for it.
Stage 2 – Determining if there is a market for the category.
Once you have decided on the business category that you want-ascertain whether there is a market for it. There are many different ways to do this, but the easiest way is to use the Google Keyword Tool or the free wordtracker keyword tool. Use the tool to analyze monthly search volumes. As mentioned, if the monthly search volume is over 1,000 then it might be something that you want to get into. You want to get a list of keywords related to your business ready for stage 3.
Stage 3 – Looking at the ‘bigger picture’ for certain keywords.
Once you have your list of keywords, you now need to have a look at the bigger picture. This will help you get an idea of the chances for ranking. This does take quite a lot of time and effort but believe me it is well worth it. Take your chosen keywords and type it into Google and do the following:
Step 1 – General Search
Type the keyword into Google and make a note of the results. There are no hard and fast rules, use your own judgment. If the search results return over 100,000,000 pages then the chances are that the keyword is quite competitive. Conversely if the results are less than 1,000,000 then it is possible that the competition is not so bad. Use a general search to get a feel for the size of the competition.
Step 2 – Perform “inanchor” search ** very important**
The next step is to perform the following search into Google.
inanchor:”keyword”
The inanchor search command shows us how many websites have the keyword as anchor text pointing back to their website. We may assume if they have the exact anchor text pointing back to their website that they have done some sort of linking building campaign for that keyword. Generally a result of under 1,000 is good and definitely under 100,000 search results.
Step 3 – Perform “intitle” search
The next step is to perform the following search into Google: intitle: “keyword”
This will used to search websites only within the <title></title> tags, or the actual page title as defined by the website developer.