Competitor Keyword Rankings
-
Is there a way within SEOMoz to uncover the keywords your competitors rank for and their respective SERPs?
Thx
-
Hi David,
I was wondering if you have come across a tool for this? Or what the tool is that Broadbeach recommended? (I can't see his post??)
Thanks
-
Keri, you are of course absolutely correct. One way it can be useful is that it allows organizing your competitor's keywords into related groups
Looking at my own eCommerce analytics identifying those which have proven conversions and matching them with the keyword groups. At this point do the competitor linking research to identify those high value to go after.
Not only is it a great way to understand the keyword landscape (clusters) better but can show keyword phrase variations you can use in creating content.
Never was my intend to blindly use my competitor's keywords and blindly copy their linking / keyword profile.
-
Keep in mind a site can rank for a ton of keywords that no one ever searches for. Our business ranks first in Google (above Wikipedia!) for the string [Fast Gun, Treaty, and Big Gun styles of RC model warship combat] but I can tell you nobody has ever come into my site with that exact query.
-
Hi David,
If you are willing to spend money, then the above is a very good way to go about finding what keywords your competitors are ranking for. Just to clarify, the tool I listed above is free (choose the demo option), the only thing what differentiates the free and paid version, is that the paid version allows you to bring up fancy (and customizable) ranking reports, and it allows you the save the keywords you entered so you can re-check it easier next time. What I just do is save the keywords in an excel file and just copy/paste it each time into the tool. Ranking reports can easily be made yourself anyway and the "hassle" of copy/pasting keywords into the tool for me isn't worth buying the pro version..
Fingers crossed that SEOMoz will have it one day!
Regards
-
I will checkout the tool Broadbeach recommended and see if that suits me.
The only thing is that I am not interested in learning what any particular website is hoping to rank for based on keyword meta research, etc....but what they actually do rank for.
If the suggested "free" tool provides me with that answer I will be a happy camper. Thanks for your input 406Lucy.
-
@David Corner - Based on that input, Broadbeach addressed your question much better than I.
Also, it looks (to me) that there are some close similarities between the described functionality of SEMRush and the free link assistant tracker tool Broadbeach recommends in his answer .
-
Thanks for your input as this is addressing more the reason behind my question.
Even though the "Anchor Text" tab can give insight into what a particular website is aiming to rank for, it does not tell you what they actually rank for. Same holds true for checking their meta keywords.
I think the best and most efficient option is to use SEMRush to get the (excel) list of my competitor 's ranking keywords and their SERP's. It would be a great feature for SEOMoz to have (realize not everything is possible -:).
- Competitor keyword and SERPs
- Get their demand and competitiveness (Google KW tool)
- Filter for low/medium competitiveness and minimum demand
- Use resulting keywords as starting point for linking strategy (process described by 406lucy)
-
406lucy, thx for your answer.
I understand the process you describe which assumes you already have your keywords through traditional keyword research.
For some reason the starting point (including when talking to SEO companies) seems always that keywords obtained through researching demand vs. competition is appropriate starting point.
For what I am trying to accomplish it is important to have the ranking keywords of my competitors with some further pruning is the starting point for the process you described above.
Was hoping to avoid the extra cost of SEMRush or SpyFu in order to obtain the list I am looking for.
Reason why is that knowing my competitor's keywords and their respective SERPs in conjunction with keywords obtained through regular demand / competition research, allows for much more specific targeting.
-
Good day David,
The above information is great. What I could add though is if you add competitors into Open Site Explorer, there is an "Anchor Text" tab you can click, which often shows what keywords they are trying to rank for. It could also be possible that the website might have a meta keywords (even though they were outdated years ago). To access these, go to their website and check their source (ctrl+u), then look for the meta keywords line.
Once you have a general list of keywords that you think they are trying to rank for, instead of manually checking yourself with Google, I use the following software (http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/). Even with their free version, you can enter any URL, followed by a list of keywords you would like to see the rankings of.
Good Luck
-
The Keyword Difficulty & SERP analyis tool, available with in the pro dashboard [ http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty ] allows you to input a keyword or keyphrase - it then returns the top-ranking 10 competitors, who usually fall on the first SERP for the keyword of interest.
By running the report for a number of your keywords, you'll be able to identify which competitors have the best strategies in place, helping narrow your focus on which competitors to target.
Next, you may want to input these competitors into the Open Site Explorer (also in the Pro Tools section) to get insight into their link-building strategies, as well as visiting their websites directly to review their content strategies.
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
-
Why our competitor has bigger DA?
I just compare our website www.simpletranslation.com with one of our competitor www.straker.com.au and their DA is much better than ours even we have more external backlinks. Can somebody explain me why? We worked really hard on new content on our blog and did few guest posts and instead of see some results on increasing of our DA our DA went down in last 2 months and I have no idea why.
Competitive Research | | Lukas-ST0 -
Competitive Keywords on Adwords
We are in a very competitive industry for adwords and would like to know what is the best way to find low searched keywords with a low cpc - it is the low cpc we are really after. Thanks
Competitive Research | | webguru20140 -
How to understand a site's current ranking
I know this is basic stuff, so sorry for the beginners post... I offer primarily web design services, and I need to know when taking on a new client, how can I assess the current 'lay of the land' for their site in terms of their SEO? I have had some issues in the past where launching a new design negatively affected their performance for their keywords, and obviously I would like to avoid this in future without having to go to 3rd parties. In particular I have an issue where the client themselves are very bad at giving information about what keywords they currently rank for, and what SEO activities they may have done in the past. How can I make these assessments myself? thanks for any help p
Competitive Research | | panamandm0 -
Anyone want to test out my keyword research theory?
Hi all, I'm relatively new here but not new to the world of SEO / SEM. Over the years I've loved using SEOmoz and other tools but of course have found certain limitations with respect to how I like to work. That's the case with any tool / service. So over the years I've put together a keyword research / competitor analysis process that has worked well for me and I'm wondering if it might also work for others. I've spent the last 15 years of my life as a director of a range of companies, mainly in printing but also in systems development, marketing, etc. I spent a large percentage of my time developing systems and tools to help me with my search engine marketing. I've now sold all my companies and I'm semi-retired, somewhat bored, and would love it if I can assist others with the process I've used over the years. I'm curious to know whether SEM professionals agree with the way my system ranks search terms from "best" to "worst". If you're interested in testing this process and telling me if you think the resulting list of search terms that I come up with for your website is "spot on", "not bad" or "horrible!", then please read on. My key motivation here is to educate myself as well as others. I'm not charging for any of this... If you give me your website URL, your top 5 competitors and your top 5 search terms, I will return to you: a complete list of search terms including "niche" and longtail search terms you can then... really easily filter out irrelevant search terms, thus creating a list of negative keywords, ready to import into your Adwords campaign. easily group your search terms in "education" and "purchase" search terms so I can analyse these two groups of keywords separately see which words are used most often across all the search terms so you can easily create keyword specific Ad Groups in your Adwords campaign. You can tell me which options you prefer: broad match, "phrase match" or [exact match] when getting search engine results specify any country you want the SERP results for, or even any city. I will then: do all the keyword research, getting the latest (live) Google SERP results combine all competitor metrics (page rank, domain age, juice links, etc) and search term information (search volume, CPC, search term length, etc) together to give you a list of search terms ranked from "best" to "worst" do the same for both organic search terms and paid (Adwords) search terms do the same for both direct search terms and niche search terms take into account "word count" (number of words in a search term) as longtail keywords generally higher-converting search terms And you can adjust things to change how the keywords are ranked: specify "thresholds". eg; you can ignore the really competitive search terms, or ignore the really short search terms specify "weightings". eg; you can put a greater emphasis on search term length, or a lesser emphasis on cost per click As a result of the keyword analysis, it'll also show you who your organic and adwords competitors are based on all keywords, or just your top ranked ("best") keywords. In that competitor data you can see: which paid ads appear at the top, side AND bottom of the results page which organic results are shopping, image, video, and local results all the metrics for each competitor (page rank, domain age, juice links, etc) All of this is is handled in a simple web interface that I threw together recently. It's really simple, merely asking for your site and preferences and then an interface to view / sort the results. Interested?
Competitive Research | | eatyourveggies
I'd like to hear from any SEM professionals who want to test this process. Once I have your basic details, I can get a keyword list together simply (using my internal process / software) and then you need to do some basic sorting, particularly if your search terms are in an industry that I know nothing about. Your input will be required. From there, give me 24-48 hours and I'll return 2 lists of search terms: "organic", and "Adwords". I'd love to hear your opinion about the relevance of the search term lists. I hope it will also spark some interesting discussion and hopefully help people learn a bit more about keyword / competitor research. If you're interested, please shoot me a private message letting me know why you'd be a good candidate to test this system. I really do want people who are well versed in search engine marketing. So please include a basic "resume" about who you are. If you have an SEM company and that's your main career focus then I definitely want to hear from you. Adam0 -
Local/Geo-Targeted SEO Keywords
Hey everyone, I work for a local jeweler who only has one store and wants to rank for geo-targeted and local results. We want to rank for "jewelry Minneapolis", "Minnesota engagement rings" and terms like that, since we're not an e-tailer we don't need to rank nationally... just in the MSP metro. I've been trying to find a service that has accurate search volume information for local search. I want to see how many searches are being conducted for various terms so I know where to focus our time and effort to rank for these terms. Does such a service exist? Or something that is more geared toward a strictly local strategy such as ours? Thanks in advance for all of your assistance! Jayme
Competitive Research | | jpretz0 -
Keywords and Getting Started with them to the top of the Search Engines
We are an online Saas Based startup. Strongly 70% of our daily users come directly to us since they know us by the url . Now there these 30% who scout for software's like ours online. Get to us by some hook or crook and then maybe end up giving the trial a shot. Our Main site is only of say 5-6 pages. These pages have basic info about our product , pricing and contact etc. What I wish to understand is that when one says" getting those keywords to the top of the engines rankings" who do you mean by these - I presume one means that get the keywords you want to compete for and then push in "Adwords" or better content pages? So If I want to rank well - then my websites should have good content pages you mean? Is that correct-? That means now I have to write good content on those keywords or around those keywords- without that there is no hope to come on good on engines right? Correct me here if I sway away from the actual meaning. Next I wish to have campaigns setup in google adwords keeping in mind those competitive keywords - here again does content on my website play a role? If I have no content and then have google adwords setup does that help? Please advice How long before I add good content pages and expect them to show up in my analytics etc? Thanks
Competitive Research | | shanky10 -
Find competitors based on keywords
Are there any tools where I can enter say 5 keywords and it will look at the top 10 sites for each of those keywords then return which sites show up the most.
Competitive Research | | eyeflow0 -
Keyword Ranks reported by SEOMOZ don't match actual searches
SEO Moz reported that various keywords I was tracking were not in the top 50 results on Yahoo or Bing, yet when I did a Yahoo or Bing search for those keywords (from multiple computers and not logged into any Yahoo or MSN/Bing account) I found the keywords easily. What's the scoop?
Competitive Research | | Cybernautic0