Beating the Big Boys: help analyzing keywords in a very competitive space
-
Hi all!
Long time Pro member first time question asker!
We are in real estate in Barcleona and, although we create tons of content (daily blogs, free ebooks, videos) we have never properly optimized our root domain page for any keywords that might bring us specifically real estate related traffic from Google.
Our website is www DOT SuiteLife DOT com.
My question is about keyword analysis. We've had this sort of paralysis whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords. The problem we have is that most all keywords in our space are VERY competitive. So far the two tools we've used are:
-
Google Keyword tool: About the top 20-40 keywords we'd like to go after are rated as HIGH competition.
-
SEOmoz Keyword tool: Only the really too-obscure or long tailed keywords related to our business fall under a 50 rating.
We were wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to further analyze keyword possibilities for our homepage when it seems like anything with any decent search traffic is super competitive.
Please let me know if there's any important info that I've left out!
Thank you SO much in advance for any advice/help. The SEOmoz community is so amazing! Rock on guys and gals!
~ Benny
-
-
Hi Benny,
First, I love your domain name... that is awesome!
I hear you in being in an industry with highly competitive keywords. Our main keywords we are targeting are in the 75-80 range according SEOmoz tools.
It looks like casamona.com may be a competitor in your space as they are ranking high for MANY keywords that I tried. One bit of advice I can give is analyze their website using OpenSiteExplorer.org to see if you could potential get links in the same areas that they are getting links. You can also check out their anchor text as well - giving you further insight into what is working for them.
Maybe try playing around with your homepage text. You only mention the phrase, "Barcelona Real Estate" in your meta title and description - having some text on your homepage using those keywords and variations will probably help. Also, if I were you, I would maybe play around the the title tag. It looks like just one long string of text. Maybe try breaking it up a little to something like: Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy Real Estate in Barcelona or Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy in Barcelona Today | Suite Life.
And don't worry about how competitive your keywords are. Just keep at it and/or go after long-tail variations and you will see some great returns.
Good luck.
Mike
-
Note, competition in the Google Keyword tool is the competition of advertisers on AdWords. Not the competition of organic search.
The SEOmoz keyword tool isn't perfect, but you're off to a good start. Anything under 50% is generally "good to go after."
by "whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords." do you mean anchor text to use in the backlinks you build? Because you SHOULD NOT control the anchor text of the backlinks you build. If you have two, just two, backlinks with the same keyword stuffed anchor text you're setting yourself up for a penalty.
There are 1000s of tools out there that will help you judge competition. As well as thousands of SEOs that will tell you to look at 15 different metrics to make a competition assessment. But, I'm just going to give you one that has never steered me wrong.
Type:
allintitle: "keyword"
in Google. If there are under 2000 results you have a REALLY good chance of pulling on the first page if you simply have the keyword in your title tag. Nothing in SEO is a perfect science, but the "under 2000 rule" has been tried and true for the last 10 years.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
(Need helps here!) Can homepage and other internal pages (services) rank high together on Google?
Hi Moz community, Recently I am working on our website's SEO. Our company is a marketing agency. We provide general marketing services and also web design. Here is the content of our homepage and internal pages (specific services). Homepage (marketing agency) Internal page #1 (XXX marketing service) Internal page #2 (YYY marketing service) Internal page #3 (web design) I suggest to my supervisor that we could make some improvement and optimize different keywords for these 4 pages, respectively (homepage, internal page #1 #2 #3). However, my supervisor holds a different point of view that homepage and internal page#3 cannot rank both high for their own keywords because web design is not as related to marketing. So I did some research and look for some top-ranking marketing agency guys who also offer web design. I found their internal pages about web design service rank pretty bad for their own web-design-related keywords. Here are my thoughts and guess (please correct me if I am wrong): Google takes everything into account and deems web design to be kind of irrelevant content to the website, so the internal page for web design will not rank high. The internal page has so much lower power than the homepage so it got outranked by the guys whose homepages are all about web design and development. My question is: In above case, can homepage and other internal pages (our services) all rank high together for their own keywords? I know what I wrote is kind of confusing...But I really need help here and want to solve this problem badly. Really appreciate any help!! Thank you in advance! Best, Raymond
Competitive Research | | Raymondlee0 -
Site Ranking for keywords that they haven't targeted in content
There is a site that I am constantly battling for the #1 spot for a particular keyword and I can't see that they are doing any link building, they are not using any anchor text for the keyword "at all" just their company name (not exact match) and their content doesn't even contain the keyword. I used Open site explorer to analyze their activity, but they are doing something I can't figure out from that data. Any other tools to use? I have higher quality links than them, post content nearly 5 times per week to my blog and their blog hasn't been updated in ages, I kill them in social media, there isn't one instance that they are better than my site and I only build quality driven links, no blog comment crap and get featured on lots of industry blogs for our work. I distribute my content very effectively, I just can't figure it out. They were no where about 5 months ago now they are tearing it up for lots of keywords in the industry top spots. I can build a few links and surpass them, but I have to do it every week or so and I think they are doing something fishy. I just want to figure out what they are doing and bury them. I don't want to post their url and mine here as I don't want them to see this post in search results.
Competitive Research | | photoseo10 -
Competitive Link building
Hi Folks According to Site Explorer this link ... www.quotationspage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12032&p=98500 .... has a page Authority of 42 and a domain Authority of 87. Looking at this it seems to be 3 links embedded in a forum comment. What I would love to understand is... how valuable is this link? (Especially with Panda and Penguin?) ... How do i decide if I should also peruse a similar link for my site? Thank you in advance
Competitive Research | | PHD0 -
What are the pros and cons of putting all content under directory named after target keyword?
The question sounds complicated but is actually quite simple. We want to rank high for the keyword "publicity". Here are some facts: Google Keyword Research: Competition 0.02 & Global monthly searches: 22,200 SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool: highly competitive We are producing plenty of editorial content every day on our online magazine which right now resides under http://mag.publiseek.com and we are thinking of renaming the magazine: "Publicity" and moving it to http://publiseek.com/publicity That way every new article will be under the publicity subdirectory. Of course we would redirect all the existing articles under the old structure to the new one using 301's. And we're hoping that with time we get the top position for the keyword publicity. I am interested to hear from the experts out there what are the pros and cons of this approach?
Competitive Research | | davhad0 -
Help link building
Í am looking for a good company to help me on high cuality link building . Please can someone give any recommendations of good seo companies
Competitive Research | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Fast Multiple Keyword research
Does anyone know of a good tool to drop a list of keywords into and get competitive and search volume results from? Don't want to have to enter them one by one to the Google KWT.
Competitive Research | | AESEO0 -
SEO Keyword Research
Hi, We are SEO beginners so please bear with us! We are trying to promote "Web based Invoicing Software". The SEO company we have signed with offer us 5 keywords for the package we are on with them. They have suggested\offered us: 1. Invoicing Software - Fine
Competitive Research | | Studio33
2. Online Invoicing - Fine
3. Online Invoicing Software - Covered by 1 and 2
4. Small Business Invoicing Software - Covered by 1
5. Invoice Template - Fine. Will Invoice templateS be covered on this one too? My question is does number 3 cover number 1,2 & 4 anyway? If so I am thinking to not go for 1,2, & 4 just keep 3 and choose three other new keywords. Would this be a better strategy and "more for our money?" Or, keep 1 and 2 and lose 3 and 4, would that be a good option. So, in summary options are (all assuming keeping number 5) 1. Keep all
2. Keep 1 & 2 - Lose 3 & 4
3. Keep 3 - Lose 1,2 & 4 4. Any other combo you can suggest? Any advice welcomed Thanks nutnut0 -
What does 70% Keyword Difficulty mean in reality?
I did a quick search in SEOmoz keyword difficuilty tool and found out most of the keyword I pick with some nice traffic are all 70%. Keyword list: http://screencast.com/t/Y4pPK42ZXrST How "difficult" is 70%? If someone ask you to optimize and rank a (very) new website for a keyword with 70% difficulty: Will you take the challedge or you think mission impossible? Why? How do you relate this reletively abstract "number" to the real world? Thank you!
Competitive Research | | johnzhel0