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
-
Keyword comparison and importance
hello, how can i compare two keywords? let's say i have i those two keywords: a) πτυχιακες εργασιες β) πτυχιακές εργασίες how can i see in what way most people are searching?
Competitive Research | | anavasis0 -
How can you rank nr 1 for high competitive keyword with low DA and only 1 backlink?
Hi! Was wondering if anyone can explain this a bit clearer...
Competitive Research | | AleksanderOlsen
Image attatched... How is it possible to rank on Google Norway for spot nr.1 (page in English language) and spot nr.2 (page in Norwegian language) , when all you competitors have higher PA, DA and a lot more backlinks and better on-page optimization according to MOZ? Is there something I´m misunderstanding?
Just when I thought SEO started to make sense 😞 7sXH00d0 -
How to break into a serp dominated by large companies? (but low keyword difficulty)
I'm currently doing some keyword research, and on favourable keywords such as: "weekend breaks in lake district" (320 searches per month with 39% keyword difficulty), I see that all of the first page SERPS are from larger companies (last minute, centerparcs etc) How likely will it be that I can get on that first page, assuming I am focusing my page on that particular keyword. Sparse info I know, but I didn't want to spend hours going down a dead end street. Is it simply that these larger companies are in the top 10 because there are no specific pages targeting that keyword, or do I have little chance?
Competitive Research | | Gordon_Hall1 -
Comparing 3 sites and their ranks
I am looking at 3 sites and what they have going for them and why they are ranking how they are. I would like to get some of your feedback on why certain sites are above other ones. One of these sites is a client of mine, I will not point out which one. The other 2 are just competitors. http://www.cornhole-game.org/cornhole-bags.html http://www.samscornholebags.com/ http://www.ajjcornhole.com/cornhole-bags.php I have compared them in OSE and they have PA of 39, 29, and 58 respectively. AJJ has a ton of links, many of which are spammy and irrelevant. It looks like a link package was bought at some point. The other two have a similar number of links but www.cornhole-game.org/cornhole-bags.html has more anchor text themed links. None of which seem to be overly optimized. http://www.samscornholebags.com/ seems to have a lot of company branded anchor text links compared to keyword links. http://www.ajjcornhole.com/cornhole-bags.php as I said obviously bought links and has a ton of stuffed keyword links on poor sites http://www.ajjcornhole.com/cornhole-bags.php has minimal social shares http://www.cornhole-game.org/cornhole-bags.html has about 30 shares http://www.samscornholebags.com/ has about 30 shares but a good number of likes and some other social signals. All 3 sites have an A grade using the on page grade tool here on this site. All 3 got dinged for keyword stuffing. http://www.samscornholebags.com/ ranks the highest with the least amount of links and PA http://www.ajjcornhole.com/cornhole-bags.php ranks next with a really poor link profile and the least amount of social activity http://www.cornhole-game.org/cornhole-bags.html ranks the lowest with anchor text links that are not spammed and some social activity So with all of this in mind, would anybody care to weigh in on why they think any of these sites are ranking where they are in comparison to one another.
Competitive Research | | Atomicx0 -
How much keyword density for Google?
I have several pages on one site which have gone down during the past few months. They keyword density on those pages, which is not unnatural, pleased Google for many years. it still pleases Bing. But Google now seems very picky. Based upon your experience, what is the ideal % keyword density for 2 and 3 word phrases, and should they be left out of alt tags even when proper to put them there? While Google dominates, we do not wish to alienate BIng/Yahoo. It is a huge mystery, and experimentation with more non-keyword-related text has so far not born any fruit. Thank you, GH
Competitive Research | | gheh20130 -
Would sharing the same IP address with competitors in the same market hurt SEO?
I work for the Chevy dealership in New York who is trying to rank against other Chevy dealerships in the same area. All the dealerships, including my client, are using the same Chevy endorsed CMS (Cobalt). I just noticed that all of these competitors, including my client, are using the SAME IP address. Would it be beneficial to SEO if we were to ditch the Cobalt platform and choose another one that gave us a unique IP address? Have any of you run into this before? Any help would be appreciated.
Competitive Research | | tjkirgin0 -
Question about Keywords & Ranking
I hope this isn't too basic of a question, but I am confused about something. If you use the Keyword Research tool and type in "Stained Concrete Flooring", the 3rd result (stainedconcrete.org) has the lowest numbers of any of the sites in the top 8-10... Is it because they have a large amount of traffic? or is there some other factor that I am missing?
Competitive Research | | Timvroom0 -
What is the best way to know your accurate ranking on google? what analytics are most trustworthy?
with seomoz, i rank on google in one spot. With market samurai, I rank in another spot, With KPMRS (or whatever) i rank another place. But then when i just type my keywords into google, it puts me in a whole different world... am confused... and the client i am trying to help rank higher is confused. Thanks for any help you can offer be blessed bd
Competitive Research | | creativeguy0