I tried SEMRUSH and they are a great tool, but's very limited for the free version.

I've tried that.  They will only allow you to compare 2 sites at once.

I'm banging my head on this one.  In the past I was able to use Compete.com, Quancast, Google Trends, and Alexa, but now all these sites either required you to have Pro membership (pay) or they discontinue it like Google Trends for website.

I need to do this comparison for one of my client... their traffic versus 4 of their competitors.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Have a blessed Day,

Benny

Thanks Shane,

That was very simple and to the point.  I am doing SEO on a php site where there's a header and a footer and I didin't know how to add the canoical tag to the header correctly and the On page.  Thanks again.

Benny

I tend to agree that you can't take everything Google says at face value, at the end of the day they're still a company and have their own interests to defend.

You indeed could develop several other KW-specific domains (assuming you had the domain names), but I think the big reason not to is that it would take a lot of time and money to get peripheral sites to the point where they compete with 12 year old domains with thousands of quality links. IMO this time is better spent on your own site on something other than SEO - like marketing, which has its own SEO benefits.

I think you're right that the cost would outweigh the benefit, and I'm going to focus instead on marketing & some juicy link bait.

Thank you for the responses! First, it seems some people missed my point that "math problems" and "rocketmathproblems.com" is an example to illustrate our situation. If you would like to take a look at the actual domain and the keyword phrase we're targeting let me know and I'll send it to you in a PM.

saibose - this seems to be a very good reason not to change it. However, the variety of pages in the top 10 results, from PR 2 with less than 100 domains linking in, to PR 9 with thousands of domains linking in, makes me think that the domain name still carries significant weight.

Dunamis - those sites are pretty extreme examples. Instead, look at a real Google search using my example: "math problems". These ratios are almost exact replicas of my actual keyword phrase results.

9/10 have the most important keyword, "math" in the URL.

3/10 have the full phrase, "math problems" in the URL.

Keeping with my example of "Rocketproblems.com", right now my website does not have the important keyword "math" in it.

I suppose the biggest reason for me not to make the switch is because of losing link value in the 301 redirect. Again, if anybody would like to actually look at the home page's SEO or the website and keywords just say so and I'll send you the domain name.

EDIT: About the SEO strength of the page:

SEOMoz On-Page Report Card: A

Page Authority: 52

Domain Authority: 42

I do agree that more links will help, but I need to decide if changing the URL will also make a sizeable difference (+5 spots would be worthwhile).

I'd really like to emphasize the incredible value of the exact keyword phrase "math problems". Even if we were on page 1 for this keyword, but didn't show up for nearly any other phrase aside from our domain name, it would be fantastic.

Currently we're ranked #22, it looks like the highest we've been is #10. This phrase is definitely a niche, but not proprietary. Another close example is "PHP programming", which is even close in search volume according to Google Trends. In my example would it be worth switching from "www.RocketProgramming" to "www.Rocket-php-programming"? (included dashes because it was too verbose.. our scenario wouldn't be that bad.).

Our niche has one keyword phrase that is much, much more active than any other comparable phrase. Let's call that phrase "math problems". Within this phrase, the "math" is absolutely the most important keyword, as it is also used in every spin-off search phrase, like "math answers", "math practice", etc.

We've had our domain since 1996, and is currently the company name - "Rocketproblems.com". Over the last year (2010-2011) our SERPs have steadily dropped to the point where we're not getting a sustainable level of business from organic search, whereas in 2009 we were doing fantastic.

However, we've also had "Rocketmathproblems.com" since about 2000, just gathering dust. What I've noticed from the top search results is that nearly every domain has either "math" or "math problems" in its URL.

Do you think it's worth it to switch to the keyword-rich URL? It is a bit more verbose, and the "Rocketmathproblems.com" v.s. "Rocketproblems.com" example perfectly captures the different feeling. My inclination is that SEO is only becoming more competitive, and if we aren't getting worthwhile business from organic search at the moment then we should bite the bullet and make the switch for the future, along with ramping up our content generation. However, I also noticed that in late 2009 a previous webmaster switched to "Rogermath.com" but switched back within a month when our SERP for the key phrase was a page lower - I gleaned this from a Moz Juicy Keywords Report :). Thoughts?

I'd really like to emphasize the incredible value of the exact keyword phrase "math problems". Even if we were on page 1 for this keyword, but didn't show up for nearly any other phrase aside from our domain name, it would be fantastic.

Currently we're ranked #22, it looks like the highest we've been is #10. This phrase is definitely a niche, but not proprietary. Another close example is "PHP programming", which is even close in search volume according to Google Trends. In my example would it be worth switching from "www.RocketProgramming" to "www.Rocket-php-programming"? (included dashes because it was too verbose.. our scenario wouldn't be that bad.).

I'm banging my head on this one.  In the past I was able to use Compete.com, Quancast, Google Trends, and Alexa, but now all these sites either required you to have Pro membership (pay) or they discontinue it like Google Trends for website.

I need to do this comparison for one of my client... their traffic versus 4 of their competitors.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Have a blessed Day,

Benny