Adsense Focused Niche Site : Search Engine Competition

Keyword research is one of the most crucial phases in setting up a new blog, it is the point in which you can make the biggest mistakes and choose the wrong niche. However if you have paid enough attention to it you should now have a set of keywords to which we are going to look the search engine competition levels. Search engine competition will determine whether or not pursuing the niche would be viable.

Understand that, what we are going to do now is an assessment of the competition within the niche keywords you have chosen so far, whether its for a existing blog or a new Adsense or affiliate targeted blog, this is where we decide how hard getting onto the first page of the search engine results are going to be.

What is our target? To get ranked first position on the first page of the Google search results for the keywords in question. Remember what we are going to decide by looking at this is not whether it is possible, because it is, nothing is impossible, merely how long it is going to take us and whether we are willing to put that much effort into it.

For this phase we are going to need two tools, both are extensions to Firefox, one is called SEO for Firefox and the other is called Google Global. Google Global is an experimental add-on so it requires registration to download. It allows the user to change the location of the search (Google US, UK etc). SEO for Firefox gives us the information we need for the analysis.

Once you have both plugins installed, we will need to make a few changes to the options on SEO for Firefox. You will need to go to Tools > SEO for Firefox > Options to open out the options screen for the plugin. In it you need to set it up such that the Pagerank, Google Cache Date, Age, Yahoo Backlinks, DMOZ, Yahoo Dir are set to Automatic and 0 Sec delay. This means that when the plugin is enabled (you can enable/disable by clicking in the SEO icon in the bottom right hand corner of the browser), you will see the information we need as part of the search results.

For this example, I will once again use my Antique Coins niche. Here is what the results screen looks like:

Now you see the search engine results with the positions and the rest of the information. Time for a step by step analysis:

Pagerank: The Pagerank figures for the top 5 results are 3,4,0,4 and 2. The key thing to notice here is that in the number three spot with a Pagerank of zero, anytime I see a PR0 site listed in the top ten serps I realize that I’m in with a chance.

Keywords in the domain: Only the second placed site has both words in the domain, from experience I can tell you that keywords in the domain make a big difference to your ability to rank and as such if you find that like this, the majority of the sites are not optimized specifically for your keywords, your in with a chance. In this case, our chances of getting to the third spot just got much better.

Keywords in the URL: What I mean by keywords in the URL are keywords present in the URL other than the domain. To show you how important it is, look at the first and second results. The second has both in the domain only, while the first has one in the domain and one in the URL. This would hint at how important it is to have keywords in your URL as well.

Backlinks: Why do we look at the Yahoo backlinks instead of the Google ones? Because Google never show all backlinks and Yahoo does and is more relevant for our uses. Backlinks are something that you can work on easily, link exchanges with other blogs, forum posts and commenting will all give you backlinks and that is what will make the difference between ranked first or second.

DMOZ/Yahoo Dir: Sites gain extra authority if they are listed in these directories, but they are not absolutely essential. Just remember to submit your site as well and in the three or so months it takes to get listed, you will nullify that advantage or gain one if they haven’t.

There is no exact science to this, but based on what I have told you so far you should have a good understanding of some of the factors in ranking well on Google. On page SEO is crucial but we will come to that in a later article. As for using Google Global, if you looking at targeting a country specific or locale specific niche this is what you need to get more targeted information.

Looking at my example, I could hope to take number three within a month simply by doing the following:

Setup a blog and an article and end up with the following URL:
http://www.antique-coins.info/antique-coins/antique-coins

This will have domain relevancy and URL relevancy twice. The first part of the URL is the category and the second is the page. Build enough backlinks and you will find that taking the top spot in the rankings will not be a problem.

So apply this to your list of keywords and pick the keyword niche that represents your best chance of top spot first page ranking. Then we can start the actual process of getting the site up. The hardest part has now been done.

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